Writing, Huh?

Fiction, Non-Fiction, Scribbles, and "Pomes"

Disclaimer: I write short fiction, reviews, humour and opinions professionally. I write "poatry" to amuse myself and the insane few who share my tastes. I am not a poet, nor am I contemplating releasing a chapbook!

• Writer's Mews
• Writer's Block
• Music by Elaine Miller. Well, really it should be "A piece entitled "Music", by Elaine Miller"

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Writer's Mews

I've heard common wisdom about that thing without which all writers fail:
A muse to ease the flow of words, to inspire the moving pen.
But why do I keep the muse I have? A witches' familiar with half-mad gaze,
purr-petual motion and devilish antics to distract

I understand, from writer's POV, the graceful drape of a parentheses
tail held in exclamation or relaxed, a question.
But, 0 these wicked, merry semi-colon winks
and sharp claws kneading punctu(r)ation into my distracted lap

My muse tests a continued state of opacity
atop my paper, or 'tween screen and eyes
Plays the game I've named Paper Chase - and Destroy
Or another: Kitten on the Keys

Quiet contemplation, introspection a thing of yesteryear
as is the easy location of pen which I'm sure I left right here. ...
Trains of thought derailed, flashes of insight come broken
By a muse good-humoured, playful, and over cute to banish

But my bane is my helpmeet in a way I had not thought
For with my muse as helpmeet I am immune to the writer's trance
That else would keep me, rapt, helpless in the cyclopean monitor's eye
or blinded by the heartless white of an unbroken page.

So although I oft must fight to scribble half-formed thought,
When I wrest my paper from destruction, and sit to pen-scratch the page,
I can be secure then, that I will not be swallowed up
That my muse is not my link to words but rather--to my life.

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Writer's Block

I spend a lot of time not knowing what the heck to write... a lot of time gazing at a blank sheet of computer screen, wondering what will soon spring to life, small black characters dancing across a CRT.

This one will be about.... Who can tell?

Best if when I stop myself from formatting the words I have just trickled meagerly on to the screen, and actually keep going with whatever thought is there. Friends chide me for, in this day of formatting and coloured font email for still using asterisks to denote emphasis on key words. Little do they know how much time I could waste organizing my words as images, and forgetting the actual content.

I am also a notoriously inaccurate typist, and when compliment s pass my way about the speed of my typing (even accounting for the three fingers and one thumb that I use, I am quick to point out that a lot of those little clicks represent the backspace, or delete key.

I'd love to be able to write easily, comfortable, about any subject, but find myself lost in a morass of What First, and How Will That Sound, spending time one again staring at my supposed friend of cold yet static-y comfort, the computer screen.

Worse, I have become impotent with paper and pen for the most part, hesitant to spend time creating something that I can't make six copies of and send by email to a friend with the touch of a key.

Enough babbling, I keep saying. this turns into not a warm-up preamble but a self -exploratory (and in these days who needs more self-exploration) digression of a scope and magnitude unparalleled in recent history.

I'd like to get to a point, actually any point would do...

My other computer freezes up, forcing me to lean 'way over and hit the reset button with my HB pencil. Such archaic technology interfacing with bright new media... there's a column in there. I know there is.

Casting a jaundiced eye back over the just written text, I noticed my handy program is helpfully and devotedly pointing out all the typos, with a neat little red underline. If I was in a self-punishing mood, I could get it to also point out my grammatical errors. Which are many. Sentence fragments being my worst sin. So there.

Alright, I couldn't help it, I spell checked it and fixed all those little transposed letters. Bad enough a ramble with no purpose, but with typos as well? Intolerable!

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