Jan Marquart's Blog - Posts Tagged "write-it"

This Was a Surprise to Me!

I love reading large books. In the 70's I read Michener's Hawaii. Then QB VII. I loved reading large books because they allowed me to savor a story and live with characters for weeks. I didn't buy thin books. They were simply a tease.

My appreciation grew for those authors as I started writing my own books and found I couldn't write any more than 266 pages, as you can see in The Basket Weaver, www.createspace.com/3553668, without getting really stressed out. Just how did those authors do it? I sometimes feel that I wimped out on my own love for thick books by writing thinner ones. The divide between what I love to read and what I love to write got wider and deeper.

So never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever write poetry. Not to mention the fact that I rarely understood poetry and felt it a waste of time to read something I didn't understand. So when I jotted down a list of words, because moving to another state took my concentration to write books, I can honestly say, I hadn't planned on writing poetry, in fact, I didn't see it as poetry.

I simply started out with words. Just words. I thought they would be prompts for me to remember what I had hoped one day to write about. Then I added an adjective or adverb and I let it stay there. However, I found myself editing the list for meaning, again to remember what I wanted to write, and realized that I had created something else. Was this how the poets did it? Was this poetry? If it wasn't poetry, what was it?

This was a surprise to me! I decided to send these pieces to online publishing magazines and I was stunned. Several of them got accepted. Many will appear in upcoming issues; I don't believe most of them are out yet.

But check it out:
www.everywritesresource.com published Unemployment
Randomly Accessed Poetry will publish two pieces, Poetry and Cycles
Poetry Victims will publish Stalker

Although this is not a poem, www.ladyinkmagazine.com accepted Old Friends - this is already online, as is Henry's Goodbye published by www.Solecisms.

So to all those of you who write and do nothing with your writing: take the next step and send out your work. You just never know...

until next time,
jan
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Published on February 01, 2012 07:41 Tags: poetry, write-it