Tag: write what you know

poetry

A Chapbook Underway

carolyncordon

If you don’t know what a chapbook is, I’ll tell you – a chapbook is a small volume of poetry, usually somewhere around 15 to 40 pages, and in a size smaller than a common paperback size. They are a handy size to fit in a pocket, and usually sell for $5 or so, or are given away at times.

I’ve been thinking about putting together my first chapbook ever since I became aware of them, but until now, have never had a theme I could decide on, that seemed suitable. Until now. Now, I have a theme, I have a title, and at the moment I have 10 poems I am happy with, and hope to have at least one or two more poems before the end of the day.

I have written about this proposed chapbook on another of my blogs, the most relevant blog for this proposed book. Here is the link for that blog post. I plan to have this small book ready to send off for possible publication by the end of the month.

I know I can have a good book launch, in Gawler, where my writing group meets every week (usually), and where two of the group members (I’m one of them), hold a monthly poetry reading. All of this fun happens at the P/A Hotel on the main road in Gawler, and we have had many happy times with poetry there.

The idea of having a theme for a poetry collection always seems like a good idea to me, as it helps to hold poems together in some way, even if, as in my proposed collection, there are different poetic forms. Some of these poems are rhyming, others not. There is one page of Senryu (a Japanese poetic form, similar to Haiku). Some of the poems are serious, others not so serious.

The theme is very personal to me, as it relates to my most pressing thing for me right at the moment, the theme is my broken right ankle, which happened at the end of September. It happened on a date I will always be able to remember, it was the day of the AFL Grand Final, and it happened after the game was finished.

I suspect I should write a poem about that … Hmm, Yes, definitely, it will be a kind of wryly amusing poem, I suspect … I’m enjoying doing my wryly amusing thing, if feels right for me, and this kind of thing goes down well when reading poems to others, a bit funny, but not too much, something to connect with people without overwhelming them.

So who would have thought a broken ankle could lead to a new poetry book? Actually it isn’t that surprising. I’m a poet, I’m having to spend lots of time just sitting around at home as I heal, and my ankle and immobility are taking up a lot of my attention.

They say ‘write what you know’ and I sure know “Broken ankle”, now! I’d appreciate any thoughts about this project! It won’t be a morbid little book, I have a bit about having a Stoic attitude in there, and I’m aiming at wry rather than wretched …

 

Writing

What You’d Like To Know

carolyncordon

New writers are often given the advice to “Write what they know”. I don’t know who it was to first come up with that one, and I don’t really care who it was. I believe my advice, to write what you’d like to know is far better advice.

If you are writing non fiction on a subject, you will have so much more fun, and write a far more interesting piece, if you look more deeply into something you’d like to know more about. The research will be more fun and interesting, and by the end of your article or book, you could be well on your way to being an expert on the subject, with a new book to promote!

And if you’re writing fiction, have your main characters with different hobbies, or lifestyles, to what you have yourself, but that you’d like to know more about. The characters will then be new and interesting to you, and you will make them interesting to the reader, because they, and what they know or do, are interesting to you. I know about dogs, quite a bit about them, actually, but I don’t write books about dogs as the only point of interest. In my series about Buster the Dog, I write about Dogs and something else. The first book was dogs and gardening, the second dogs and mindfulness, and the final on was dogs and buddhism.

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These books were all written with Buster the Dog as the main character and they are in his point of view (first person POV). Dogs do many things that people do, but they don’t necessarily do them how people do them. In fact they often do them how people DON’T do them, and that is where the humour comes from.

I know more about dogs now, than I knew back when I wrote that first book “Dig It! Gardening Tips for Dogs”, and I know more about gardening now too. The same with Mindfulness and Buddhism, I know more about both of them before I wrote “Doggone It – Mindfulness from a Dog’s Point of View”, and “Dog Buddha’s Thoughts”. I had enormous fun researching the subjects, and thinking on how a dog would view the same things that I was learning about.

When your writing brings you joyful fun, it isn’t tedious getting the words written, it’s a good time. And talking about your books is still a fun thing to do, talking about dogs and the funny, silly things they sometimes do!

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