Category Archives: writing

Some Thoughts on Poetry and Editors

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I’m still working on the Gladstone story, just not very fast. However, I am writing plenty of poetry. If I were a scientist I would probably put forward the theory that freeing myself from the shackles of WP and numismatic writing, has made me feel more relaxed and has released my ability to write poetry.

However, other variables include lower temperatures, better sleep and reading a book on how to write better poetry. And coincidence. I have always written in a way I could compare to peaks and troughs. However, it used to take me longer to descend from a peak and the troughs just represented a lower level of output. Now I seem to drop off the peaks much more quickly and the troughs are deeper, and are often accompanied by a period of struggle to write.

A lot of the problem, I think, goes back a few years to the times when I had some serious infections. Each one stopped me writing for a week or so, then slowed me down, sometimes for months. Before the infections I used to submit my work on the first day a submission window opened. I like to have things ready. As I slowed down I slipped back until I was struggling to have enough poetry to submit. I often had to resort to submitting things written on the day of submission, and sending submissions to the USA after my midnight, because the time difference worked in my favour.  Sometimes, of course, I came unstuck.

And before you ask, yes, various people declare that you should leave poetry in a drawer for a month, or even a year, before sending it to an editor. I agree. It’s always better when you give yourself time, as early drafts can contain clunkiness, and even downright gibberish.  However, I can confirm that it’s possible to write a poem, send it off the same day and still have it accepted. It’s not a good working practice, but if that’s the only choice you have, you have to work with it.

I also believe that getting in first gives you an advantage. If you write well, someone has to write even better to displace you in the selection process. If two poems are submitted on the same subject, the first one is in a better position for selection. It’s not scientific, and it may not accurately reflect the actual way that editors select, but I always think any possible advantage is worth having.

I’m currently in a position to make five submissions now, instead of waiting until the end of the month. I will do that in the next couple of days and start work on next month’s submissions. Next month is a strenuous month and it will be good to approach it well prepared. I often say that of course, but this time I really feel I can mange it.

Another benefit, (and one I am sure about) is that if you submit early you can get early rejections, and they can be recycled. It’s possible, doing that, to submit the same piece twice in the same submission period. Very efficient and when, as sometimes happens, it is accepted second time around, a useful reminder that all editors have different opinions.

 

A Writer’s Guide to Non-Writing Things You Need To Do

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I’ve just caught up on several days worth of posts I hadn’t read. I’ve also allowed myself to divert into the shadowy byways of Wikipedia. One of those was necessary, the other occupies an anomalous position – it’s top level procrastination, but it’s also a source of inspiration (or so I tell myself).

Several of the posts I have read are poetry blogs, which is always useful. I like seeing what proper poets are doing.

I had a bit of research to do on a poem I was writing, so I ordered a book from World of Books on Amazon. It wasn’t expensive, just under £5 with P&P, but it was described as Used- Very Good. When it arrived, with bumped corners, mild staining, yellowed pages and an old sticky label, it looked more like Shabby would have been a better description. I was not pleased but will suck it up as it had the information I required. I’ll be looking at other companies in future. It’s not the first time they have over-claimed on a book’s condition.

I’ve now had the first of the emails about July Submissions. It’s an acceptance for a Haibun, albeit a frustrating one.

They liked all three but could only select one, which seems to be increasingly common. They went for one above the others because it covers current events. In due course i will let you know when it is published.

Meanwhile, I have been sorting out my poems. Everytime a deadline comes round for haiku, it becomes clear that I have some poems i could probably send, if only I had a better system of filing them. Actually, it applies to all my poems, but is worse with haiku. 

I have sorted a couple of years of haiku submissions and estimate I have thirty or forty I could retrieve from the rejected poems. That’s the frustration of the system where you send ten in to get one selected. Admittedly 5/10 are poor and better being deleted, but there is still usable material in the rejects.

It took most of a day, and there is a lot left to sort through. I’d better get going . . .

 

Time to Write a List

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Wild flowers

Today, after all the normal impedimenta of life had been cleared and Julia had been waved off to her afternoon in the tearoom, I started work in earnest.

First – the list, specifically the poetry list.

I need around 20 haiku for various things and have about six which are currently suitable. Some of them are needed for the end of the week. Last week was not a good writing week and I needed some discipline. I put it on my list and I now have 21 to sort through. It’s not enough, as there are always some that fail to make the grade, but it’s a start.

I need a variety of other poems, but I have until the end of the month to finish them. It’s not an ideal timescale but it’s more relaxed than last month.

Pigs and flowers

It’s not an ideal system, because it is probably best characterised as the triumph of quantity over quality. On the other hand, it’s unavoidable that the doctrine of practice makes perfect also takes a hand and the more I write, the better I get. There was a drop back in quality a year or so ago but as I had sepsis twice, and as it’s usually accompanied by the words “life threatening” when you see it described in newspapers, I’m going to cut myself some slack there.

I’m feeling a lot better now that’s settled, and all it took was a list to set me going. I notes and prompts but until I made a list, nothing happened.  By tomorrow the effect of the list will have worn off, but I’m going to be happy this afternoon.

However, Julia will be back in an hour and I’d like to get more done so I will leave it now. The more of this month’s writing that I do now, the more of next month’s I can get a head start on.

Flowers

A note on modern retail – they don’t do the cheap flowers at TESCO now, you have to buy from an affiliate. The difference is that flowers at £3.99-£5.99 are something you can add on a whim and delivery, with the groceries, is easy. They are now much nicer flowers, but they cost £24.99 and come at inconvenient times. I’m going to re-examine my flower buying habits.

 

 

Feeling Pleased with Myself

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I am sitting here, and I admit that I am feeling smug, I have just sent off a first free verse poem since spring 2023. In some ways it isn’t a long time, but it was long enough for me to lose the knack and it has taken a couple of months to get back into the swing of it.

I must have spent a month or so wondering if the skill was ever going to come back. But if you keep writing, even if it is rubbish, you eventually get back to something usable.

This, however, is as far as it goes for now. There is a lot more competition for space in traditional poetry magazines than there is in the word of haibun and tanka and it could be some time before I see anything in print. At least I’m pushing up my number of submissions for the year.

It’s important to submit as part of the process of learning to do better. As I have said in earlier posts, I am poor at writing haiku. I’ve always struggled and although I don’t particularly like it as a form, I feel I should practice haiku to improve myself, and to improve my haibun. You don’t improve at anything by only doing the easy bits.

This one is The Prince and the Orange Toad. I have two characters in mind. One will be a handsome Prince, willowy and thin. The other will be squatter, and with an immense self-satisfied grin. I’m not sure how it’s going to progress yet, but that doesn’t matter, because we all know I talk about more projects than I ever begin.

Finally, three views of a small bowl that Julia has done using a piece of wood that somebody gave her.  It’s her first bowl, it’s quite small and it is designed for putting rings in at night. It has turned out to have a very interesting grain pattern, and the inside reminds me of the Time Tunnel.

 

Writing and Watching the Time Pass

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Despite being very erratic over the last week or two I have mainly kept to the plan, though a post a day has actually meant “averaging” a post a day. Or nothing some days and two or three on others, if I’m honest. I’m currently on 117 posts in 117 days. It is good, but I need this one to keep up.

Stones at Carsington Water

That’s how people do the Buson 100. That’s ten haiku a day for 100 days. I’ve tried three times, completed it twice, failed once. That’s life. However, I’m driven by the hope of improvement rather than the fear of failure so, though I’m not happy to have failed, I’m not going to let it ruin my life. I achieved some improvement in my haiku, then I let it fall away again. I’m not, in truth, greatly enthused by haiku and write them bacause they are necessary if you want to write haibun. The article I first read about it indicated that you could catch up if you got behind, as long as you ended up with 1,000 haiku at the end of it. The link in the post that I have just linked to is no longer available, but this one is very good too.

Stone head – Rufford Abbey

Yosa Buson, an eighteenth century poet and artist, after whom the Buson 100 is named, tried to write ten haiku a day for a hundred days twice and as I recall he didn’t finish either one. He did, however have a lot of other things to do, and he did die in the middle of the second one. He was 68, which will be my age soon – probably an indicator that I should look after myself better and write faster.

It is tempting to set myself a poetry target, but I don’t think it would help. Keeping up with the current regime of one blog post a day and one numismatic article a week are hard enough as it is.

Detail from gravestone – Crowland

Some Thoughts on Poetry and Particularly Tanka

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Julia’s latest vase (she gave the last one away as a present) with silk fritilleries.

I’ve just been replying to two emails from editors. One was comparatively simple, a quick note of thanks for an acceptance. I had an automatic reply by return, telling me that they weren’t taking submissions at the moment – an impersonal response to my attempt at being polite. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised – some magazines are like that.

The other was more complicated. It was a rejection with some suggested links to articles which would help me improve. It’s the sort of response that always invites being categorised as condescending.

I read the first one and it told me that most western definitions of haiku were too restrictive. This explains why editors annoy me by publishing haiku that fall outside the published definitions. Maybe they should take down the definitions hey often display, or display a current one. Same goes for the people who are often quoted on the subject – if your definition is outdated, have the courtesy to indicate this or update it.

As for the haibun article, it quoted a number of haibun. One of the haiku wasn’t a haiku by any definition and the rest all reiterated the subject material, which you aren’t supposed to do. I can’t help feeling that if I’d have submitted any of them, they would have been turned down, not used as examples. I just wrote and thanked them for the feedback and said they provided food for thought.

Email is not the forum to exchange views over something like that, as it could be construed as argumentative and although I have issues with things, I don’t want to start an argument with someone who is trying to help.

This is the one she gave away as a present.

That’s the nice thing about tanka – fewer rules, more freedom, and fewer people writing about them.

 

Thinking About Doing Something

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Nothing happens, they say, until somebody sells something.

It’s one of those glib one-liners they use in sales training. However, it’s true. Nothing happens until you do something. Whether it’s the glorious poetry career that is waiting, (if you can manage to send off that first submission), or one of those numismatic articles I keep meaning to write, it’s true. Nothing will happen until you do something.

So I wrote a paragraph about doing things.

Then I looked at details of a number of poetry magazines. It started as a list of possible places for submission, and ended with a half-formed rant in my head.

There is so much detail in some of the submission guidelines. Some 10 point, some 12 point and quite a few don’t mind. Some Times New Roman, one I hadn’t heard of and quite a few don’t mind. Several are still only accepting postal submissions. One explains why it is easier for them to read and digest. What they mean, I think, is that it cuts down on submissions. Or they hate trees.

Generally I avoid these as I still don’t have my printer set up. I really should do that, but I would probably still avoid these magazines. One has published me in the past, but email submissions are so much easier.

I realise that poetry editors are unpaid, and that they are snowed under with submissions, but are they missing something good by making their submission procedures overly complex?

One of the coaches at Newark RUFC, an excellent club that Number One Son played for briefly, once expounded a theory of recruitment to me. It was in relation to one of their age-groups, which was led by an ambitious coach who tried to relive his imagined past glories by bossing kids about. He poached players from surrounding teams and then decided to stop signing new players.

How, the other coach asked, did you know that you weren’t turning away the next Dusty Hare?

That’s a good point, Make it difficult and you might put off a nervous genius. Even if you don’t, is it (rugby or poetry) about finding talent, or about helping people be the best they can be?

How to Write a Tanka Prose

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Buzzard pursued by crow

This an answer to a query raised in the comments, but it’s something for everyone to read. Have a go, you might like it.

First, read this. Then abandon thoughts of haiku and haibun for a moment.

If I were starting again I would start with tanka prose. These are like haibun in that they contain prose and a poem, but they are more relaxed.

The trouble lies with the poem. A tanka is a small poem (5-7-5-7-7) according to general wisdom. This isn’t true. That syllable count should be the maximum. You can write fewer syllables.

Some editors like to preserve the short-long-short-long-long layout, others don’t mind as long as it has five lines. It’s just a poem and can include poetic effects, though probably not rhyme. As such, it is free from all the baggage that comes with haiku, and all the conflicting views of editors.

Little Egret at Aldeburgh

You can find tanka and tanka prose in Contemporary Haibun Online, Quail Eggs and Cattails. These are all available online. They are also easy to submit to if you want to have a go at being published.

Rather than listen to me, just read tanka and then practice. If I write ten tanka (which can take between twenty minutes and a week) you can be sure that at least one will tail off without being finished, and a couple will clearly be rubbish that can’t be helped by editing. Even after editing it’s likely that only two or three will be good enough to retain. That’s normal. Just keep writing and eventually you will get there. Don’t take notice of your internal editor until you have written a batch, or you will never actually finish a poem.

Eventually you will have enough to send off. Do it. You won’t be published unless you make submissions.

I send out a batch, one is probably accepted, the rest come back. I add another and send them out again. Usually one of the rejects will be picked at this point. I sometimes send things out three four times before I get fed up with them. By that time I usually have replacements written.

Little Egret – Blacktoft Sands

Next – tanka prose. They are like a haibun but with a tanka rather than a haiku. There is some discussion whether a haibun should be in haiku-like language (ie terse and often slightly stilted). You don’t have that with tanka prose, just write what you like. If you can write a blog post you can write a prose section for a tanka prose.

Then write the tanka to go with it. Some people claim to write the haiku/tanka first then write the prose section. I can’t do that. I write the prose and then write a suitable tanka.

Here are some comments I had recently.

“I think the haiku are not nearly as successful as the prose in your haibun.”

“After a careful review of your poem, I regret that I have had to pass it on.”

“Unfortunately, your work did not quite fit the shape that the issue ended up taking.”

“I’m afraid I don’t get this piece. Is it me or is its meaning or intention too obscure?”

The lesson from those comments is that not every submission ends in success and it’s all par of the process.

Heron

So, to summarise – read, write, submit, expect rejection, read, write, submit . . .

Eventually it will work out, but expect some rejections to begin with. At the start the rejections can seem depressing, overpowering and inevitable. Eventually you will get an acceptance, then another, and it will gradually build up . . .

There’s a lot of other stuff tha goes into writing a good tanka prose, and eventually I might learn some of it, but for the moment I find that the best way to work is to write plenty, submit a lot, shrug off rejection and recycle the rejects.

The recycling is key to my writing – it saves effort, and when a reject is accepted it proves that editing is a matter of opinions and rejected work is not always bad work. And above all, it’s about hard work and  persistence rather than that ephemeral thing we call talent

Good luck.

Cormorant, Lowestoft, Suffolk

Words Per Day

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Tree cutting on the island.

Well, I said i was going to talk about word targets, so here I am. I have Checked the shopping list for Saturday, read emails (there were just two), checked WP (again, just a couple of comments, not needing much work) and turned to blogging. It is now 7.53 and I got out of bed at 7.31. That’s 22 minutes.

I didn’t experience an avalanche of regrets from people who preferred word counts to woodpeckers, so I’m going to take it that nobody is too concerned about the subject, except me and maybe a few passing writers.

Hemingway did 500 a day, Stephen King does 2,000 and a lot of people are somewhere in between. A thousand words a day seems to suit many people. I have written several book length accumulations of words and know that I can certainly do 1,000 to 2,000 a day. For an average sort of novel that means You should be able to do it in three months. At that rate, I can also polish a lot of it as I go along. What I can’t do is all the other stuff that goes into it. I end up, like Dr Frankenstein, with a pile of spare parts stitched together with good intentions (I think that’s part of a quote from Augusten Burroughs –  I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions. My words do not live, and they certainly don’t build into a book. That’s why I turned to blogging (which is just rambling) and poetry, where you can get away with a handful or words, some mystery and a decent editor. Indecent editors, in case you are wondering, are the ones who don’t recognise my talent.

Mandarin drake at Arnot Hill Park, Nottinghamshire

Even with a diversion to check numbers and the quote I have just done 224 words in 14 minutes. Words aren’t the problem. Even good words aren’t the problem. The problem is that I’ve just gone back to add a bit and that’s another 6 minutes gone.

I’m now suspending writing at 8.12 to make breakfast for Julia as she is going out this morning and I try to be attentive.

But first, I will kill another minute or two reading back what I just wrote. That’s what writers do.

I bet Stephen King doesn’t have to stop and make breakfast for his wife. He probably has a housekeeper. I’ve read his book about writing but I don’t think he covers domestic staff.

8.14, I’m definitely going . . .

9.12 and I’m back. We had a moderate breakfast as Julia won’t be home until early afternoon, chatted and watched birds on the feeders. Nothing happened that needs noting down and it’s time to get back to work.

Nuthatch at Rufford Abbey

I was going well, but the pause has stopped me in my tracks. I re-read what I wrote earlier and am now staring at the screen. A lesser man would have writer’s block, I just can’t think of anything to say right now.

I’m examining word count from the point of view of a man trying to do many things. Tomorrow, for instance, I will be baking, amongst other things. I once read something that said it takes about fifteen minutes to change tasks and get back into the next one. That’s why multi-tasking, despite its almost mythic status, doesn’t really work. I researched that while I was working in the office at Quercus, as we used to call the corner with the desk in it.

That’s one of my problems with productivity, I’m trying to do too many things at a time and each one swallows up a small portion of time as you swap between them. It might be more like 5 minutes than the 15 minutes the research suggests, but do it a dozen times a day and that’s an hour gone for no result.

There’s also the time spent on research. Sometimes I can rip through something fairly quickly if I’m carrying the facts in my head (though they still need checking). Other times it takes a long time to gather all the facts and get them into order. It’s an imprecise calculation because sometimes I know what I need, or know where to look. Other times I just have to search, and search . . .

Gadwall

An example of that is a group of medals I’ve just been researching. Just before calling it finished, I checked the article and decided to run a quick newspaper search on his sons.  One went farming in Kenya after WW2 (having served in the Army since before the Great War). His grave showed him as a Lt Colonel, but I had a gap between him retiring in the late 1930s and reappearing on a gravestone in 1955. Reports of his death, which were printed in several newspapers, indicated that he had been in the Home Guard in WW2, before going to Kenya to farm. He had been gored by a rhinoceros which charged him as he was walking with his wife near their farm house. He pushed her behind a thorn bush for safety and tried to fight off the rhino with his walking stick. It has little to recommend it in some ways, as I was really researching the father, but it’s an interesting story to round things off. However, it probably took me half an hour to find the three reports and patch them together. It’s taken me a while here, as I’ve amended the last paragraph a couple of times to make it flow.

9.39 now. By the time I finish, I will have done a thousand words, just like a proper writer. It’s easier, of course, when you can just ramble rather than having to worry about plots and pacing and possibly, with my thoughts on detective fiction, probably poisons. Prussic acid, strychnine or perhaps the poisonous mushroom tha is only lethal when taken with alcohol. Sorry, I just wandered off to have a look at poisonous mushrooms. The facts don’t seem quite as cut and dried as stories I have read about it. It would be great if you wanted to make someone very ill, less good if you wanted to kill them. And it took me eight minutes to read.

Lomg Tailed Tit at Rufford Abbey

9.49 and I have passed 1,000 words. So, my point for today is that words are simple, even in quantity, but organisation and research, and domestic tasks, are making me less efficient. I will think about this, as I think their are large efficiencies to be had from organising, making lists and doing the research before the writing rather than alongside. If anyone has hints of efficiency please let me know.

1087 Words. 9.52. Allowing an hour for breakfast that’s a thousand words an hour. A touch over that if you add the final reading I just did.

Now, in my disorganised way, I will waste some time wondering what to do next . . .

They say, in case you are interested, that Edgar Wallace could write a 70,000 word novel in 3 days, using wax cylinder recordings and secretaries. That’s quick.

Heron at Arnot Hill Park

Is Writing a Pleasure or is it Publication?

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We woke this morning after hearing moderately heavy rain overnight. The general aspect of the morning was wet, rather than snowy, icy or frosty.  Looking at the choice of words there, I realise that the story of the Innuit and all their words for snow might not be as outlandish as we think. We seem to have a good selection of words for it and some years we don’t get any. This year, I think, we may have a snowy winter. That will be good as it will see a lot of rats and disease off. On the other hand, the birds will need plenty of food.

For the first time in 12 months the rain did not make it inside, the builders having done their job well. I can’t help thinking it may have been more cost effective just to retile he roof with banknotes but hopefully the pain will subside.

The worst bit of the builders being here, apart from having to get up at a time dictated by someone else, is that we had the dining table in the living space and the conservatory contents in the dining area. Two days of living with clutter brought back a lot of old memories and was not pleasant. This morning, as 7pm dawned, I pulled the flannelette duvet cover up to my chin, arranged the coverlet to block any gaps and luxuriated in the warmth. It was good.

I suppose I ought to have used this as the beginning of the last post, but that one seemed to take on a life of its own. I also note that I seem to be a day behind again. This, I think, is mainly due to my lack of routine. The days bleed into one, particularly if I sleep in front of TV and restart late at night. I must get to grips with this for several reasons – health, vitality, writing quality and consistency are ones I can think of immediately.

During the day I exchanged emails with someone who told me I shouldn’t be stressing over the amount I wrote as it should be a relaxation now I was retired. Writing, he said, should be a pleasure. I have never found it to be a pleasure. For me, the pleasure comes from finishing and from publication. The writing is a real grind.

How about you? And, as an extra question,  would you carry on writing if you had nobody to read it?