I woke up with a burst of inspiration this morning (granted, after a lazy bit of snoozing/fantasizing) and ended up with the beginnings of what is, for now, a free verse poem. No idea if it’ll stay free verse or not as I work through the drafts . . . I’m on the chapter on “line” in The Art & Craft of Poetry, so free verse it is. (I’m not big on free verse, you can probably tell, but hey, that’s all I know how to do yet!)

Will probably intersperse today’s housecleaning and continued cookie baking with working on planning Scorpion/Steward/Whatever-its-called-for-now. Also, still reading Hart’s Hope. I’ll follow that up with a quick read of Alanna by Tamora Pierce, and with any luck, Jenna Rhodes’s The Four Forges will be in my hot little hands by week’s end.

This year, I’m making a list of New Year’s Writing Resolutions. Of course I’ve got the usual stuff, but I’m hoping things will work out better for me on the writing front than ever before in 2007.

• Finish a novel
  Always at the top of my list, I’m still working on this crucial measure of success. I’ve finished a fanfic novel before, but never an original work.
• Write a collection of poetry
  With the above, this is pretty ambitious, I guess, but I feel like it’s sort of this year or never.
• Work through A Writer’s Book of Days
  When I was doing daily freewrites using this helpful book of prompts, I was much more creative and productive overall. Because good prompts like these can be used over and over again, this book provides a potentially endless font of inspiration.
• Write a little every day
  This used to be easier. Now I have to work at it. I hope to write at least five minutes a day, or work on world-building or story planning, every day from now on.
• Submit something
  –even if it’s the world’s crappiest piece of poetry. I’d like to make my first submission to a professional publication.

And that’s it. Have you got any writing resolutions for the coming year?

“If you don’t risk being garish, you risk being bland.” - Monica Wood, The Pocket Muse

I’m so digging the recently announced title of Harry Potter book seven, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Of course, everybody’s got to weigh in on what they think it means, but in the past I’ve found speculating to usually be fruitless: Jo hardly ever fails to confound us (Confundus?) whenever she can. There are, however, some interesting observations at The Leaky Cauldron.

I for one will not be suprised at all if “Deathly Hallows” refers to either 1) the name of a wizarding family, or 2) a place name, possibly the spot where Harry confronts either Snape or You-Know-Who himself.

Yeah, I speculated anyway. So sue me. :P

A couple of days ago, I bought Danielle’s Christmas present, a copy of The Art & Craft of Poetry (No, I’m not giving anything away. I handed it to her unwrapped as soon as I’d bought it. That’s all the fanfare “best friend presents” get around here, hehe.) It got me thinking.

I bought my own copy of the book earlier this year, and it’s already been helpful, though so far I’m still writing newbie free verse (I won’t be satisfied till I can write Crowns of Sonnets). I’ve always been a bit terrified of poetry; I love reading it but although I put the “tears of pain” and “black hearts dripping blood” behind me in the seventh grade where they belong, I’ve never felt I could write anything but what I consider pure drivel. That’s been changing lately.

It’s almost a requirement for good poetry that you have some life behind you. Not necessarily tragedy, but something that helps you to dig beneath the superficial into the dark earth where all the growing, green thoughts take root and springs of truth have their source. I’m reaching that place in my life, the place where I’m able to face my own failings and look with clear assessment at my desires, to decide which ones should be put aside, and which I should cling to with all my faith.

Since the novels are taking their sweet time, I think I’m going to focus on poetry for awhile. I won’t put away the worldbuilding and story planning completely, but if there was ever a time when I ought to spend time ruminating and writing on the state of my emotions, it’s now.

I recently read “Tree and Leaf” in The Tolkien Reader. “Tree and Leaf” is actually two parts, Tolkien’s classic essay “On Fairy Stories”, and “Leaf by Niggle”, a touching short story illustrating the most important points in the essay. In “Tree and Leaf”, he discusses not only the definition and origins of fairy stories, but why they are valuable reading and shouldn’t be regulated to the nursery.

With whole shelves of books devoted to Fantasy literature, it might seem these questions are no longer important, but in spite of its popularity and the amount of floor space it dominates, the Fantasy genre remains one of the most disrespected and sniffed-at genres in the bookshop. It’s readers are still accused of “childishness” and “escapism”, and so Tolkien’s examination of both accusations are a refreshing reminder of why we read, and why “escape” is often the best course of action. After all, “the first obligation of a prisoner is to escape”, isn’t it?

You may have noticed NaNoWriMo 2006 was a wash for me. Unfortunately, the insanity of my personal life has drained my will to write, so I’m concentrating on reading for the time being. Expect to see more book reviews and thoughts on what I’m reading in the future, with a random smattering of posts on the worldbuilding/planning process.

Scorpion and The Steward have merged into the same novel (don’t ask me how that’s gonna work; I haven’t quite figured it out yet. I just know it sorta clicked like a baseball card in bicycle spokes, so there ya go.) The Trouvere is still simmering on the backburner, and I’m thinking about throwing a little more magic and fairy-dust into the mixture when I finally get back to it.

Okay, that was a bit too cute even for me.