Tag: blogging

Uncategorized

Blogging About My Next Poetry Collection?

carolyncordon

Blogging about poetry, interesting? I hope so! Now I’m wondering, could I write a poem about blogging, or even lots of poems about blogging, a whole collection’s worth?

Back to the subject of this blog post, regarding my next poetry collection. It’s underway, written, submitted, and has a back blurb written. Now it just needs to finish off the editing, get looked at by me for approval of the proof copy, and then it gets printed!

In case you’re interested, the title of this new collection is ‘Leonard Cohen Is Dead’, because that is the title of the first poem in the collection, and it’s an attention grabbing title, isn’t it? I wrote further about getting this collection to the ‘published’ stage here, which may be of interest to poets who have had a collection published, or would like to have one published.

My ideas about this are my own, and different people may get to that point in different ways. Some of the bits may be the same though, and it has worked well for me, on this occasion, and previously, in slightly different ways perhaps … But until you try it, you won’t know the best way you have for getting that collection published, yourself.

I haven’t always had my work published by actual publishers, but most recently, that is the way I’ve been going with my poetry recently, and it’s been ‘working for me’, as in, books get produced, and I get some money out of it all! The connections with readers are always the most important thing for me, though. I love sharing my words with people!

A Poem About Blogging?
A poem or a blog post, that is the question –
One a mere slice, a taste, or is it more?
A poem can be so small, but so deep,
an ocean’s worth of words, in a thimble
of meaning, and truth …

A blog post, can be a brief piece too,
but it may connect with hordes of readers, 
internet surfing, and include so much –
research, images, links, comments 
from interested others

Which is best, is it a contest of words?
Worth and value, trite words or true?
Or is it simple fact, all words can win?
This is the way I see it, for sure, all words
are worthy to me!

********************************

That little poem just cropped up yesterday, and I finished it today. I’m posting it here, on this blog post to show, perhaps what a poem can do, in few words, that would usually use many more words, in a blog post. And while I don’t consider this little poem to be my best work ever, I feel it does show the difference, between the two forms of writing.

And it was easier for me to express my point in that poem, that the truth is that I consider words, all of them, to be the best thing, in whatever form/genre they are presented. And if you are reading this piece, what to you think? Are you a word lover too? I won’t be surprised if you say yes!

And going back to the heading for this blog post, I am sure most of the poems in my next poetry collection, which is titled “Leonard Cohen Is Dead”, are far more worthy, and worked on, than the poem above this. But the poem up there has done what I wanted it to do, to give an example to further the point I wanted to make …

So that task is done, and so it is time for me to finish off, lest this short blog post out stay its welcome! Please leave a comment, if you have anything to say about blogging, or poetry, or words in general!

Writing

My Post, Someone Else’s Blog!

carolyncordon

I was recently asked whether I would like to write a post for someone else’s blog, a post about my writing life, and I thought briefly only, and said yes, I’d love to!

And it happened, I wrote my words, Lindy tidied it all up and made it lovely, and posted it out into the world! This is the link to my post: https://www.wattletales.com.au/i-love-words-by-carolyn-cordon/

Go there and be amazed, as I was, about my writing life! I knew all of it, because I wrote it for Lindy, but seeing it put up there, out there, is an interesting experience. And reading my post there encouraged me to read more of the other posts on Lindy’s lovely “Wattle Tales” blog, there are posts from other writers, asked by Lindy Warrell to write their post for her blog. And there are interesting explorations of life there too, of course, written by Lindy herself.

So if you’d like to read about how and why some other writers write, I heartily recommend visiting the blog of my friend in blogging, and in real life too, here! Read my post there, and then explore the other interesting posts, I’m sure you’ll be glad you did!

Cozy Mystery

Strange Times …

carolyncordon

Thinking about what is going on in the world right now, I’m wondering, is there really any point in getting concerned about what is happening in countries I’ll never visit, people I’ll never know. But of course that is a head in the sand kind of thought. Places, and people, are important. Things that happen in one place bring echoes of what occurs to other places, as people doing things in one place can link with other people in other places.

I’m not only looking at this from the point of view of a world being held in stasis, at home, trying to find new ways to live our lives … The coronavirus, Covid 19 has us all looking and hoping, grasping greedily, some of us, and sharing compassionately some others. I know of city people ‘invading’ small tourist towns, causing difficulties for permanent residents, who are not accustomed to having so many people there, out of tourist times.

As a person with a chronic illness that means I may be affected in worse ways that others, I am doing my best to stay at home, as much as possible. I go outside, often, but only outside my own house, and mostly remaining on my own property. I gather herbs, and make myself cups of herbal tea, or let our dog in and out, for ‘comfort trips’ into the backyard.

But I’m a writer, so this locked in time could be the ideal time to get writing my Cosy Murder Mystery series, but, even though I have indeed written a little bit of the first book in the series, I don’t seem to be able to settle down to getting it all written, my mind is skipping around from here to there, and I write a blog post, a poem there, and perhaps another couple of paragraphs of the novel, but not necessarily in any kind of order.

I have the TV on, mostly on news channels, seeing and hearing the same news, slightly changed perhaps, watching the numbers, worrying, and staying safe inside … If I could, I’d be like Missy, my dog, lounging around on the sofa, and not worrying about anything except having food, and getting to the toilet as needed …

Missy ‘lounging around’

But I’m not a dog, I’m a writer, and even though writing blog posts is writing, what I really want to be writing, is my Cosy Mysteries … Oh brain, please, think about the people and places in Talloola, and write more words for that first book “Winds of Death At Talloola”!

So enough of this blog post, and perhaps back to my novel-in-progress!

Cozy Mystery, Uncategorized, Writing

Locked In or Reaching Out?

carolyncordon

Even as we are (most of us anyway) in Locked in mode, keeping ourselves and others safe, by staying at home, most of the time. Many are bemoaning these scaled back quiet times, and they’re worried about not being able to work.

Not me though, and not many of my friends. A locked in life can feel like bliss, nothing you have to go out and do, the days are yours, to explore your writing options. The projects that had been put on hold, waiting for a time, when you actually had time, and suddenly, that time is now!

While many businesses have closed down, many publishers, especially small ones, are still very much at work, and they are able to go on doing their publishing thing, calling for submissions, receiving them, putting anthologies or other books together, then sending them off to be printed.

This is great news for many of us, and many of my friends are getting published, and we celebrate the good news with them, when they post the news on blogs, or on Social Media. But the sad part is there won’t be any Book Launches, where everyone comes together in the same room, words are read out, and hugs are given, food and drinks are consumed, and much chat happens.

No more. It is possible to still hold a book launch, one online, but many of the best elements are missing. There are no hugs, the purchaser is unable to watch as the writer of the book signs the new copy the purchaser has handed money over for. If books are purchased, it happens online, and there are definitely no hugs.

Personally, I’ve had two poems accepted by two different publishers, I’ve entered a short story in a competition, and I’ve written some more (but not enough) of my bigger work in progress. That work in (slow) progress is a Cosy Murder Mystery series. I have characters, and a setting, as well as many book titles and slight notes on what each book will be about. There are I think twenty books in the series. If I ever get them written, I expect I will be in my late seventies … This is not a bad thing necessarily, many authors of such books are more mature, they’ve lived lives, and know much about people, it’s all fine!

But the rate my writing of this series, I’m likely to be more like in my nineties. I sincerely hope the writing of Murder books helps to ward off dementia, because otherwise I’ll have no chance of making my way to the end of my list! Whether poetry, or mystery books, or anything else really, being locked in makes it all easier, with so much time available. Sadly, more time can also mean more things to procrastinate about.

And this crazy Covid 19 time, when there is non stop media about death rates, recovery rates, things to do, meals to make, cleaning to do, decades old boxes of ‘stuff’ to sort through, the dog to walk and feed, gardening to do, and so on. So tasks you’ve never had on your list of things to do may appear, and all of those things can stop the writing happening …

With no sense of routine, things can just drift away, things happen, but they don’t amount to much, and little or no writing is done. Where does the time go? It goes down the drain, and even though your house is clean, and dishes are done, with different recipes tried out now that time is there, sourcing ingredients might take more time than usual, and you may not be able to get those ingredients, so you have to find a different idea.

And no writing gets done … I’ve been able to get some sort of sense to things happening, by moving from breakfast table to laptop every morning, Emails read and dealt with, and then writing happens, most of the time. The writing might be a poem, a bit more of that novel, a blog post, something for the monthly community newsletter I edit, but writing. Words happen every day, and I am still a writer, just a locked down one.

My Locked in view …

If you have a plan that works for you at the moment, I’d love to read about your ideas, please leave a comment, and we can perhaps all get better at managing our time, and get some great writing done!

inspiration, Uncategorized

It All Starts Tomorrow

carolyncordon

Today is the penultimate day of January, and I can almost say that tomorrow will be the first day of February, and that means it’s also the first day of February, and the first day of the month of creative writing prompts! I’ve been talking with members of my writing group about this, and the blog posts I’ve written about it, are on my Facebook page, and being read by some people.

I’ve put some links on my twitter accounts, and who knows how many people may have seen the information there. I’d like hundreds of people to be reading this blog post, obviously, but life isn’t like that – you have to work hard to get stuff like that happening in your life.

And my life is full of lots of different things, and I don’t have the time or the knowledge, understanding, or inclination to get all of those kinds of things done. In my ideal life, I’ll have a p/a, who will attend to the details, and I’ll be able to concentrate on the big picture stuff only. I’m not living that ideal life though.

Puss in Boots and I hape we all have a great creative month together, for February, with lots and lots of words written!

So I do what I can, what I want to do, what interests me the most, and what ‘floats my boat’. I get a huge kick out of inspiring other people to write, when they never realised creative writing was a skill they had. Giving feedback and encouragement taught me these things, and I’m grateful to the people who helled me in these ways. This February writing prompt idea is a way of giving to others.

Giving to others, helping them to write better, inspiring them to write, as a writer, of course I want others to write too, they’re my peers, and writers, are also readers, and of course writers and readers have a symbiotic relationship, giving to each other …

So the month of February will be a month of exploring ideas, writing on the new prompts I’ll be handing out, a new one every single day … And I’ve just today discovered that Writers’ Week starts in Adelaide, on the last day of this project, and that seems so appropriate to me, a month of new writing, ending with a great writing and listening and learning, as well as chat and schmoozing event, that brings together writers and readers from around the world, all getting together in the that little grassed space …

I’ll be there, for some of the event, not sure how many days, but at least two days, hopefully more. Writers Week always feels like I’m ‘one of the gang’ the gang of writers, sharing with others, and learning more and more about this writing world …

So this month of writing prompts starts tomorrow, the fun starts tomorrow (I hope!), and with luck, by the end of February, I may have enough poems for my next poetry collection! Or I may have a breakthrough and really truly get to work on my series of Cosy Murder Mysteries, or I may even turn the first draft of the novel I’ve written into the second draft, and have begun giving it to readers to make it into a publishable book, perhaps! You never know what might happen, when inspiration is in the room!

So I hope you’re feeling inspired for February to bring good writing, as I am, buckle in and be preapared to write and write and write!