poetry

Blogging Insights — What I Like to Write

Fandango14 Comments

For this week’s Blogging Insights prompt, Dr. Tanya has asked us…

What type of writing do you enjoy the most?

My blog contains four types of writing: flash fiction, non-fiction, writing prompts, and “poetry.” The last category, “poetry,” represents a tiny fraction of my posts. And I put poetry in quotes because my “poetry” is mostly short prose where I randomly insert line breaks, capitalize the first word of the next line, minimize other punctuation, and rarely rhyme. So to call my alleged “poetry” poetry is a stretch.

My prompts are mostly for other bloggers. I don’t typically respond to my own prompts. I have one daily prompt that I host and a handful of weekly prompts, so that adds up to about 12 posts per week. So my prompts account for about 1/3 of my post each week.

The other two thirds is probably split evenly between flash fiction and non-fiction. My flash fiction posts are often in response to photo or word or music prompts from other bloggers and I enjoy writing them because it gives me an opportunity to use my imagination and to weave stories around pictures and words.

My non-fiction posts are often rants about politics, society, technology, religion, and various other things that are bubbling around inside my brain. Writing such posts can be cathartic, but they can also kick my blood pressure up a notch or two. On the other hand, I enjoy responding to Q&A prompts (like this one) and to music posts like Jim Adams’ Song Lyric Sunday prompt.

My non-fiction posts can also be about what’s going on in my life, and for the past three months, that’s been mostly about falling off a ladder, fracturing my hip, busting my right arm at the shoulder, and my rehabilitation struggles, which I’m sure my readers are tired of reading.

So, having just read what I’ve written so far, I’d say my short answer to Dr. Tanya’s question is that the type of writing I enjoy the most is flash fiction.

SoCS — The Periodic Table of Elements

Fandango19 Comments

Alvin and Doris were college freshmen at State University. Alvin was in the engineering college, majoring in chemical engineering. Doris was in the liberal arts college, majoring in literature.

Alvin was a very handsome young man. Doris was a very pretty young woman. As a chemistry major, Alvin was in his element when his class began to study the periodic table of elements. Doris, on the other hand, was very much out of her element, not just in chemistry, but in all of the science courses. Her real love was poetry.

It just so happened that Alvin was out of his element when it came to the humanities and was clueless about poetry. And with Doris being out of her element in chemistry, it seemed almost serendipitous that these two attractive college freshmen would figure out a way to leverage one another’s strength to the benefit of both.

Doris made the first move, approaching Alvin and asking him if he could help her with learning the periodic table of elements. He gladly accepted the challenge, saying to her that teaching her all about the elements would be quite elementary. Doris appreciated Alvin’s play on words and offered to help him to understand poetry.

Alvin tutored Doris on the elements in the periodic table, while Doris introduced Alvin the basic elements of poetry, such as meter, rhyme, scheme, verse, and stanza. It was a win-win for the two of them.

As they got to know one another, the chemistry between them was elemental, like a powerful force of nature. Their relation flowed with a natural rhythm and all the elements of a lyric romantic poem.

Needless to say, Alvin and Doris fell in love during their freshman year at State University and even today, years later, their relationship maintains all of the elements of that love and all of the chemistry that binds them together.

Written for Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. as you’ve probably guessed by now, Linda has given us the word “element” to play with.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — June 18th

Fandango39 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 18th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on June 18, 2014 on my old blog.

A Day in the Life

I wake up
I wash up
I brew a cup

I log on
I blog on
I work on

I eat
I meet
I greet

I stare
I share
I care

I eat some more
I do a chore
I’m such a bore

I read some blogs
I drop some logs
I fix some clogs

I earn my pay
I end my day
I hit the hay

This post is in response to yesterday’s Daily Prompt, Rare Medium. We were asked to “describe a typical day in your life — but do it in a form or in a medium you’ve rarely — if ever — used before.” I rarely write poetry primarily because…

I am not good at poetry.
What I wrote above was a poem.
Or my version of poem.
It had no set meter.
But it had a rhyme.
Albeit forced at times.
And it had stanzas.
So it was a poem.
Or not.
I don’t know.
I am not good at poetry.

Fibbing Friday — Poetry in Motion

Fandango5 Comments

Frank (aka PCGuy) and Di (aka Pensitivity101) alternate as hosts for Fibbing Friday, a silly little exercise where we are to write a post with our answers to the ten questions below. But as the title suggests, truth is not an option. The idea is to fib a little, a lot, tell whoppers, be inventive, silly, or even outrageous, in our responses. Today is Di’s turn to host and here are her questions.

1. What is the significance of today in 1564 and 1616?

They both occurred a log time ago.

2. Who said “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”?

Martin Scorsese.

3. Who was widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and one of the world’s greatest dramatists?

Fandango. Thank you. Thank you very much.

4. What was The Globe?

It was a scale model of the planet Earth before the Flat-Earthers came to power and destroyed everything round.

5. “Much ado about nothing” was about what?

Nothing much.

6. Who were Titania and Oberon?

Tristan and Isolde’s first cousins.

7. Who were known as The Weird Sisters or Wayward Sisters?

Those were the previous names used by the members of the band “Twisted Sisters” before they became famous.

8. What is Bardolatry?

It’s the worship of poets.

9. Who said “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none?”

The Pope.

10. Who was known as The Swan of Avon?

The Ugly Duckling.

Blogging Insights — Comfort Zone

Fandango13 Comments

Blogging insightsDr. Tanya is seeking more Blogging Insights from our community of bloggers. She said that she read lots of posts and watched many videos on blogging, most of which advised that selecting a niche is essential for a blog to be a success. A niche means a particular subject or genre. People become expert at writing in a particular form and subject. Today’s question is about stretching your wings and flying beyond your comfort zone.

Do you ever ‘stretch’ (i.e.,expand your horizons) by writing outside your comfort zone? If not, why not?

I really don’t have a specific niche for my blog. My “comfort zone” is essentially whatever occurs to me. Sometimes I write about politics. Sometimes about religion. Sometimes about society and what’s going in my country and the world.

My comfort zone also includes responding to other bloggers’ prompts, be they song prompts, word prompts, or photo prompts, and I use these prompts for writing flash fiction posts. I even generate a few prompts of my own as fodder for other bloggers to use to stimulate their imaginations and creativity.

But Dr. Tanya’s question isn’t about what is inside my comfort zone, it’s about whether or not I stretch myself and wander outside of it. My answer is not often. My comfort zone is prose, yet I have, on a few unfortunate occasions, attempted to write poems — mostly very bad poems. So bad, in fact, that anyone who knows anything about poetry would be hard pressed to even label my feeble, misguided, and failed attempts to venture into writing poems to be poetry.

Does that answer the question?
If not, I have a suggestion
That is for your own protection
So please pay close attention
And organize an intervention
With the very good intention
Of bringing about a cessation
To this unwanted expression
And I will offer my confession
I disabuse myself of an impression
That I have in my possession
The ability and skill to write a poem