The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like.
– Neil Gaiman
Month: August 2011
haiku 178
neighbor dog
ousted from reunion –
in-laws get dessert
Author’s Note: 420 Chars
My friend Greg Bryant came up with a new format: 420 Chars. You can read about that at his blog, The Poet’s Eye (part 1, part 2). Cletis Stump, proprietor of The Book of Cletis, has collected what Greg wrote and added two of his own pieces plus a couple of my efforts; it’s part of his regular Creative Sunday spotlight. Pop over to Cletis’ place and get the full effect, to date. Then try your own. (This paragraph is way over the limit, if you’re wondering.)
Pen to Paper: Practical Haiku
Dylan Tweney is (among other fascinating things) a popular modern haiku poet. You can read a few of his haiku at his Tinywords site.
Below is his slideshow, “Practical Haiku: How Reading and Writing an Ancient Form of Poetry Can Change Your Life.” This is a nice introduction or re-introduction to haiku, showing us in haiku-like brevity the value of this form of poetry. Enjoy.
Fiction: Relic
“Behold, the symbol of our faith and the focus of our works.”
The priest opened the small, sturdy wooden box. The interior was lined with bubble wrap, and the relic lay on a thick velvet cloth. The relic gleamed as the priest held it up in the fading light of the sunset. The members of the small congregation stared at the relic, their eyes filled with longing.
“Be of strong faith and good cheer,” the priest intoned, “in the certain hope that our efforts will bring about the Second Coming of the Power that will light our way once more.”
Quotable 66
The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it.
– Frank Herbert
haiku 177
military airplanes
fly low and slow
over the cornfields
Pen to Paper: Writers and Alcohol
Let me be clear at the outset that I have no hatchet to grind, let alone to smash a tavern with. I am a teetotaler but strictly from medical necessity (it’s a migraine trigger) rather than preference (how do you think I learned it’s a migraine trigger?).
No, this entry comes about because I have collected some interesting quotations about writers and drinking. I think they would look a bit peculiar in the Wednesday Quotation spot bereft of larger context, so I decided to provide the context, and the quotations, here.
Fiction: The Devil You Know
Satan slouched on his throne, one leathery wing idly beating time to the off-key tune its owner hummed.
He watched the parade of souls stream by him. Some quailed and screamed at the sight of the overlord of evil; others, hoping to be spared a little misery, genuflected before the throne, not realizing that Satan fried every 417th person to do that.
As the endless line of wrecked humanity slunk past him, he would meditatively torture one in a particular fashion and another in a different way. For the better part of an hour, he drilled holes in various sordid souls so that he wasn’t the only one in Hell who was bored.
A flash of movement caught his eye; he turned his horned head to see one of his lieutenants rushing toward him. The demon bowed before his infernal lord.
“What?” Satan demanded.
“My prince, there is … something odd. Something new, and none of us in Admissions can explain it.”
Quotable 65
There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do.
– Anaïs Nin