Wednesday, January 26, 2005

This and that and a few other things

      Other than getting my 500 words (actually 1,000 this evening) and working on my family newsletter, I spent the rest of the time updating the web page for the local community theater. I added a photo, cleaned up some links, fixed the scrollie, added a counter, and then played with various color schemes. I've decided that I will update the page only once a week, usually on Wednesday. That way I can train people to get their material to me -- always supposing they will ever submit any.
      On this blog, I added a few more blogs on my Blogs of Interest, including Event Horizon, Narcissusworks, Rantings and Ravings for Twilight (Hi, Jean!) and Smith & Stephenson. I particularly like Rantings and Ravings for Twilight and Narcissusworks. Check them out! (I used the linkdomain: command to discover who was linking to me. I didn't know these were. Imagine my delight to find them and also to find that they all featured good writing. Cool.)
      I finished one of my meds tonight and have just a few more days on the others. I'm feeling much better. My IBD doesn't like the meds, but I can deal with that.
      I appreciated the nice comments on my little poems of yesterday's entry. When I teach one of my poetry classes, I always assign three haiku. Students find them easy, and it makes poetry less intimidating. I love poetry, completely and foolishly, even though I know it will never make me much money. With one article to OKMagazine, I made more money than I've ever made in my poetry.
      This lack of financial rewards turns a lot of writers off poetry. In fact, I had once thought about teaching a poetry class at Forward Motion. Some people seemed interested until we started talking about the no pay part. A couple members gently explained that writers at FM wanted to make money. I certainly understand that, but I think poetry is a way of playing with language, of learning how to make every word count. It benefits everyone from novelists to journalists, even if it doesn't directly bring in the coins. I know I'm preaching to the choir. Most of my readers write and/or read poetry. Y'all are simply top notch, but some of you need to blog more. You know who you are ...
      And on that nagging note, I'll say good night.

4 comments:

Gloria Williams said...

You did all that and still found the time to write 1,000 words? Do you ever sleep? :) I don't know how you do it.

Anonymous said...

Glad to hear you're doing better. Hope to see you at church Sunday! We missed you.
-C.J. & family

Anonymous said...

Hi, TECH. (waves) I concur with your assessment of poetry. I'm sure it's possible to make money with poetry, but it's got to be tough. The real value I see in it, besides expression, is the clarity and specificity of language it helps develop. To find just the right word for just the right place is not only satisfying but challenging.

I like to write poetry that also has a physical shape.I haven't written anything like that in a long time, though.

Jean

CrystalDiggory said...

I've never been very good at writing poetry, but occassionally the muse will whisper something to me I have to get down. I enjoy reading your poetry very much.