Warren Bluhm's Blog, page 25

Happy Monday!

Here, at the beginning, at the onset, with a clean slate, with a blank page, a new week before us, and some of us, freshly graduated or newly hired or finally retired, starting the next stage of a lifetime, with the bloom of a new day, a new week, a new season, a new year, the newness beckons.

We hear the call, re-energized, re-inspired, refreshed and renewed, as ready as we’ll ever be. We know setbacks are inevitable, but for now we step forward ready for the challenge and eager to get s...

The fine art of riding the torrent

Why do the young (supposedly) write the most amazing songs? The Beatles were in their 20s. I know, not so, not so — some of the great works were by mature authors — but maybe foolish youth doesn’t know better and unleashes work that hasn’t been tinkered and edited to death.

After that first burst of success, they begin to think, “I am a recognized whatever now, and so I am obligated to produce works of genius,” as opposed to “I am flowing with the universe and I must share what I experience, ...

We risk our lives

We risk our lives
every time
we connect
in love.

We risk our lives
every time
we connect
in life.

The depth
of our love
is measured
by the depth
of our loss.

In the end,

we find,
the net gain
in our lives
is greater than the loss,

and
that buoys us
in our grief
and we begin
to heal.

Save your dreams

“Grown people were so strangely oblivious to the truly important things of life. Material for new garments, of night or day, could be bought in any shop for a trifling sum and made up out of hand. But if a dream escape you, in what market-place the wide world over can you hope to regain it? What coin of earthly minting will ever buy back for you that lost and lovely vision?”

— L.M. Montgomery
The Story Girl

I have and I haven’t

I haven’t updated the home page on my website in more than a year, so if you haven’t been reading this blog you couldn’t know that I released Gladness is Infectious or 24 flashes or updated A Little Volume of Secrets and Resistance to Civil Government and Letters to the Citizens of the United States and got Myke Phoenix into wider distribution.

I haven’t sent out an author newsletter. I haven’t promoted my books. I haven’t …

Enough of what I haven’t. I have kept posting on the blog every d...

Just. Show. Up.

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It was one of those scattered mornings where day-job deadlines loomed and my mind rebelled against the idea of staying in one place and doing The Work first — you know, The Work, not the stuff that brings home the bacon but the other stuff, the stories and the blog posts and the magical music of words — the fun.

I have been trying to take The Work as seriously as I’ve always taken the day job, and so I sat, a little tense and unfocused but determined to robot my way through the morning wr...

Surprise underfoot

Now I know why Dejah has been acting so odd on the deck lately, snuffling and snurfing at the floor.

A robin has built her nest on a crossbar underneath! Second pic is aimed between the cracks.

3 brilliant books

Circumstances have put me in the car alone a lot more lately, and my preferred electronic companion on the highway is an audiobook. I’ve been choosing wisely of late.

After a couple of compelling young adult series that nonetheless left me emptier than I wished (Renegades-Archenemies-Supernova by Marissa Meyer and Uglies-Pretties-Specials by Scott Westerfeld), I switched to sampling “fully adult” authors who had blown me away before.

Klara and the Sun is a new novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, ...

no magic pill

I know
What To Do
and
just.
don’t.
do.
it.

What disorder
or syndrome
do you call that?

Or am I
typical
and need
to stop
fretting?

Funny there’s no
magic pill
for beating
inertia:

“Don’t take
Getonwizzit
if you’re allergic
to Getonwizzit.”

When the spigot turns

I can’t just turn the spigot and the words come pouring out into rockets, bells and poetry. I have to sit in an easy chair and THEN turn the spigot.

I have to pick up a pen or turn on the computer and imagine a girl whose mother was an explorer of time and space and dimensions. I have to look out the window and write down what I see. I have to listen to music and feel what I feel and then tell you. I have to read a book about living on Prince Edward Island during a terrible war overseas a...