Kern Carter's Blog, page 3
April 26, 2023
La Flâneur
Image by Alesha BurtonWe made these forests of concrete, wood, metal, and clay. We should admire them as well.
Admire the pounds of dirt and bulldozers that cruise across the street. They drag a dusty odor across the streets, like cracking soil. They drive like cars, unobstructed and ruling over us fleshy masses. The dirt piles higher, growing taller than the heads of the people on the sidewalks. Soon the dirt takes over the buildings too.
Admire the towers. Glass, steel, concrete, paint, plastic. High rise apartment buildings that resemble children’s playing blocks. Condos of Lego towers. Blue crystal glass mirrors that reflect your smallness back at you. The Starship Monument: spinning, revolving, ebbing.
Admire the wires. They hang everywhere. In the cracks at the subway tunnels. Overhead where the streetcars fly through. Between the car parking lots and opening parks. Between side street light posts and alleyways without light. Above my head in libraries, yellow and thick as bile.
Admire the planes. Small. Big. Red and white. One engine. Two engines. More than two engines blowing through my ears. Sounds ring off of glass and brick, weaving through tight corners and narrow streets to get to me. Admire the helicopters too. Orange. Black. Red, again. Once there was a military helicopter, two engines worth of propellers buzzing like a swarm of bees flying over the city. Through my headphones the bees graze over the city sky until the helicopter disappears from the reflective buildings.
Admire the train stations. Water stains running down the names of the stations. Poorly cleaned blood stains, coffee stains, and used tissues by the edges of the walls. The smell of dying roadkill in the summer. A musty clarity seeps onto the dirty clay tracks. The third rail that looks like a wooden plank in an abandoned house. The coffee cup molded into the wall of the tunnel.
If nothing else remains within society to prove we ever existed, the coffee cup in the tunnel wall might.
Admire the cars. The lines filling the roads with rows and rows of cars, trucks, and police. Admire the cars. Park at the roadside. Leave a sidewalk solely for the cars. Admire the cars. Cars from 2004. Cars from 2014. Cars from dealerships in other provinces. Cars that rev loudly through the corner. Cars that make no noise at all. Long-nosed, flat cars shined down twice over. Voluptuous carts with differently coloured rear bumpers to passenger doors. Admire the cars.
Admire the parks. Trees, concrete and gravel swirl together for kids and dogs alike to run and play in. Polygonal plastic playground equipment. Dark green slides that melt in the sun. Metal slides that melt you in the sun. The monkey bars. The sand. Thin pebbles of blood and glass lay on the ground. Spirals of trees, artificial forests, and metal benches flow like rivers.
There’s an assumption that the cityscape, the ever-changing concrete spaces we built, are not made for the looker. That their existence is not beautiful by any means.
It is an assumption to believe that beauty and familiarity are only allowed to be positive. That the city is the inate opposite.
I wish to be a flâneur. I wish everyone to be a flâneur. To admire their walks home after a long day at work. To see the city as a crooked diamond rather than a lump of coal. Escape is not the only way to find sweetness.
Yonindale overwhelms me for that sweet reason. There’s always something to look at admire in your head for a bit. If you walk far enough, you find the downtown buildings shrinking around you. Subway stations and bus terminals quietly beside neighbourhoods. Sidewalks under and over highways.
We tend to go far to look for the beautiful. What if we just looked outside?
— Heleza
[image error]La Flâneur was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
April 25, 2023
Free workshop this Saturday
You know what time it is. I’m back again this Saturday to host another free writing workshop.
This week, we’ll be talking about how to write book proposals. A book proposal is literally the most important step to getting published outside of your actual manuscript. If you don’t know how to query, you won’t get published. It’s that simple.
Knowing that, I’ll be sharing exactly what goes into a book proposal. If you’ve been to one of my workshops, you know I don’t hold back.
Here’s the link to sign up. Come join us this Saturday.
[image error]Free workshop this Saturday was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
April 24, 2023
April 22, 2023
April 21, 2023
April 18, 2023
April 17, 2023
The Productive Procrastinator
Artwork by author (Agnes). Find more illustrations on my Instagram!I keep putting it off.Consciously, unconsciously, maybe it’s a bit of both.
I keep putting it off and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the usual fear of not being good enough, or maybe it’s the thought that I might be and that it might not be enough. Either way, I haven’t been sitting down to write. Or rather I am writing, but I’m not writing that.
I am and have been for a while, a pretty productive procrastinator. I don’t procrastinate with TV, TikTok, sleeping in, or online shopping for items I don’t need and probably won’t buy. When I’m really running away, I work overtime on the day job, check off chores, create illustrations for the Instagram account and commissions, tackle the TBR pile — highlighting sentences and passing them as inspiration — and I write. I write random bits and pieces, short stories, poems, lists, and questions. I write everything but the novels I’m trying to write.
So when another day goes by, and the word count is the same as yesterday and last week, and last month, I have all these other creations with which my mind rationalizes why.
The part of me that yells JUST SIT DOWN TO WRITE, as loud as a shipwrecked soul screaming into the night, is met by an ocean of other creations and nonsensical justifications. There’s a part of my brain that is going to sleep hoarse, and there’s another working overtime rocking the boat with waves of indecision, excuses, and wishful whens. When you regularize your part-time work situation… when you fix up the apartment… when you reschedule that doctor’s appointment you missed… when you finish the illustration for the contest, when you submit your story to the new publication, or when you finish meal prep for the week… if… when… then…
Some backstoryI’ve been writing novels for years, but most people in my life had no idea. Then, sometime during the pandemic, I managed to cross the 50,000-word mark on one of my stories. It felt big and real, and I dared to tell a couple of people about it: both the story and the fact that I was writing it. There were months when the novel made progress and then months when it didn’t but, all in all, it moved forward. Then 2021 was a year that didn’t feel like a year, and 2022 was a year that felt like three, and in its ups and downs, a new novel was born along with new bravery to tell more people this is what I want to do, that this is what I’m doing.
Some people were skeptical, but most were supportive. Now, every time they see me, they ask, how is it going? And to them, I can say: “It’s going. It’s a process.” I pick excuses from the waves and share them like a child offering up the seashells she’s found. The same seashells I show myself, except I know better. Except, I have the screaming voice in my head that’s yelling “JUST SIT DOWN TO WRITE” a lot louder than I can say, ooh that’s nice.
Where we’re nowI could be writing. Right now, I could be opening the other document, and instead, here I am. Hi. The productive procrastinator strikes again. But before you tell me off, I haven’t written about this yet, and writing usually helps. Maybe I’m hoping that by spelling it out to myself, the excuses will dissolve like foam on the sand. Perhaps then, I can see what’s underneath, or better still, perhaps I can finally SIT DOWN TO WRITE.
[image error]The Productive Procrastinator was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Call For Submissions — What “Yes” Are You Most Anticipating this Year?
My team and I had a call with what would be our biggest client ever. We sent over everything we needed to and right now, we’re waiting for the “yes” that would change our business.
What about you? What “yes” are you waiting for this year? Have you been querying agents? Did you finally submit to your dream publication? How will that “yes” impact your writing career?
Same rules as always:You can submit to this or ANY of our past writing prompts. Just scroll through our previous newsletters. They’ll be marked “Call for Submissions.”If you’re already a writer for CRY, go ahead and submit.Be as creative as you want in your submissions. As long as you stick to the topic, we’ll consider it.Just because you submit doesn’t mean we’ll post. If you haven’t heard back from us in three days, consider that a pass.[image error]Call For Submissions — What “Yes” Are You Most Anticipating this Year? was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
April 14, 2023
Unapologetically you
I think those who can’t smile for a camera are “unequivocally you.”
That is to say,
When you can’t fake smile for the camera,
And it looks awkward,
And it looks silly
And it looks bizarre —
That’s Because it is!
They feel awkward,
They feel silly,
It feels bizarre;
It’s just not who they are.
They smile when they smile,
And only then it feels real
Because that’s who they are!
“It’s just you,
Being you,
Unapologetically.”
So smile.
Photo by Jacqueline Munguía on Unsplash[image error]Unapologetically you was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
