Category: Writing

Unofficial NaNo

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

This year, NaNoWriMo is going to look different for me.

Yes, I still intend to write 50,000 words during the month of November. However, I’m not officially participating in NaNoWriMo.

Earlier this year, the folks at NaNoWriMo issued a statement in support of generative AI, which resulted in something of a controversy, as well it should. First of all, the whole point of NaNo is for people to sit down and write a 50,000 word novel. That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you consider yourself a writer. It doesn’t matter if everything you write is absolute garbage (it’s a first draft, so there’s a real good chance of this, actually). The point is that you put your ass in the chair and you write the words. What is the point of having generative AI do that for you? You’re not writing shit. You might as well not even participate. You’d be putting in the same amount of effort. Generative AI goes against the whole point of the entire purpose of NaNo. Having the folks at NaNoWriMo support it is like fucking for chastity here.

But I suppose if you’ve got a couple of AI companies as your sponsors, you’re going to say nice things because money is always in your best interest. Never mind that it comes from people who want to put writers out of business.

The NaNo folks also tried to say that generative AI was like a disability aid for writers, which writers with disabilities quickly shut down. AI isn’t what those writers use or need to write their stories. And if I may be so bold, being unwilling to write that great idea isn’t a disability. The worst writers among us could write better drivel than what generative AI has proven to come up with. You can achieve that dull, mediocrity on your own.

Then there’s the whole thing about how generative AI is based on theft (mining the works of other people without credit or compensation or permission), it costs people jobs, and it destroys the environment. No supporting clarification statements are going to undo that knowledge.

In the end, I cannot in good faith continue to support this organization that was once beneficial and that now has been corrupted by the greed and avarice of late capitalism. It’s difficult to exercise morals in this hellscape, but fuck it, I’ll die on this particular hill.

After twenty NaNos, I really don’t need the crutch of their daily word count graph and the reward of their little gifties in exchange for a donation anymore. It doesn’t need to be November for me to write 50,000 in thirty days anymore. If I’m going to be honest, I don’t even need to write 50,000 words in 30 days anymore. I’ve mastered the art of completing first drafts in a wide range of time spans. NaNo was just something to look forward to every year, a month of unbridled writing for the sake of writing, a guaranteed time to work on and/or complete the draft of a project.

And now it’s not.

So, I’ll make my own.

Poem–Magnificent Seven–“Faraday”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Yes, it’s only been a minute since the last poem, but I’m struggling with my schedule right now. If I have to suffer, so do you.

This was the second to the last poem I wrote for The Magnificent Seven experiment, and I’ll be honest, Faraday is my least favorite of the Seven. Chisholm was last because he brought the Seven together and it seemed appropriate to write everyone else’s poems before his. Faraday, though, I procrastinated. I struggled to tell his story.

I chose deibide baise fri toin as his poetic form, which is an Irish quatrain form. One thing I learned about Irish poetry forms is that they have a lot of rules. The rules of this form are four line stanzas (or the whole poem is four lines), rhyme scheme is aabb, lines one and two rhyme on a two-syllable word, lines three and four rhyme on a monosyllabic word, line one has three syllables, lines two and three have seven syllables, and line four has one syllable.

And this is one of the easier Irish forms.

I can’t say this made writing Farady’s poem easier for me, but I do think it turned out pretty okay and it might not have turned out at all without the stricter rules.

Farady

Home traded
for chips in a life jaded,
finds the good use for his gun
done.

Hopes bolster.
Dynamite in his holster.
All in, throws down his last card
hard.

Poem–Magnificent Seven–“Chisholm”

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

I had the most terrible idea while I was struggling to come up with a blog post for the week. Yes, I could have just skipped -I doubt anyone would notice- but this idea came to me and I couldn’t pass it up.

I realized that there are seven months until National Poetry Month in April. And I wrote a poem about each member of the Magnificent Seven (2016) as an exercise to experiment with more poetry forms.

Do you see where I’m going here?

Yes! I will be subjecting you to my bad poetry outside of the confines of the month of April. I will be posting my Magnificent Seven poems on a monthly basis as a way to lead into National Poetry Month. Aren’t you excited?

I’m sure you’re ecstatic.

To make it worse, I’m going to go identify and explain the poetic form I chose for each poem.

No doubt you’re tingling with anticipation by now, so let’s get to it.

The first poem I’m posting is actually the last one I wrote for the Seven. I decided on a sonnet for Chisholm. You might remember that from English class when you were studying Shakespeare. 14 lines, usually rhymes, often has iambic pentameter. I managed the 14 lines and the traditional ababcdcdefefgg rhyme scheme, but aside from getting 10 syllables a line, really didn’t go hard for the iambic pentameter.

Close enough for bad poetry.

I also totally admit to incorporating a line from the movie into the poem. It was too good not to.

Chisholm

A man in black riding alone, trouble
he finds for his wage. Come the day
an offer is made and from precious rubble
emerges an old monster to be slain.
The promise of gold no match for his past,
he rounds up others who cannot resist
the lure of this flame, this fight to the last.
A challenge. Now his reason to exist.
Plans well laid, graves well dug, vengeance well sought
to save a home not his for one he lost.
Blood that’s spilled added to battles he’s fought,
the price he’s paid multiplies in its cost.
What the fires consumed, lost in flashes,
he finds it again sifting through ashes.

Honorably Mentioned

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’ve entered the Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Contest off and on for years. It’s a multi-category competition and I’ve tried my luck in many of them. My luck has been mostly bad. But I did earn 10th place in the genre short story category one year, and then years later earned 5th place in the movie script category.

I’ve made no secret of chasing my high school poetry glory days by entering poems into contests -including this one- trying to do better than the 2nd place I earned my sophomore year. It’s only sort of a joke.

Well, I finally got a laugh.

This year I entered two poems into the contest, one in the non-rhyming category and one in the rhyming category. I am pleased to report that my poem “Cobwebs” got an honorable mention in the rhyming category. It’s not a big victory. I’m not getting any prize money and my poem isn’t getting published. I get a neat graphic denoting my honor (not pictured) and my name listed on the website. And I’m happy with that.

No, it’s not 2nd place or better, but it’s more official validation than I’ve gotten for a poem I wrote in more than 25 years. I’m not taking that lightly. This means something to me. It’s a little pat on the back that suggests that maybe I’m not nearly as bad at this as I say, that maybe there’s some merit in continuing to do this.

Not that I’d ever actually stop writing poetry. Or writing in general. It’s been years since I’ve had anything published and yet I continue to spew words from my brain. But there’s something sparkly about having someone who’s not a friend or relative, a total stranger in the business of writing, to read something you wrote and say, “You know what? This is pretty good.”

I needed that. I needed that tiny victory, that little bit of external validation. It gives my ego a warm fuzzy that I didn’t realize that I needed. I’m grateful.

I’m also sad. I’m sad for my other poem that didn’t get honorably mentioned. I wanted it to be recognized, too. Clearly non-rhyming poetry is still a victory that escapes me. Even though it is the poetry I default to the most, that I feel most comfortable writing, it’s also the validation that I’m still chasing. I’m not sure what it is about that poetry that I’m missing, the thing that makes it worthy of the little pat on the back that I crave. Non-rhyming poetry is much harder than it looks.

Anyway, I think my non-mentioned poem is a neat little thing and I feel that it deserves its own little moment in the sun. I hope to give it that one day.

I hope that for both poems. Even though “Cobwebs” got that little bit of recognition, it still remains unread by everyone else. I was asked if I was going to make it available to read, and I’m still not sure. I’ve never submitted poetry anywhere except for contests. I’d like to try to get a poem traditionally published and maybe “Cobwebs” would be a good one to submit. It’s something to consider.

But for now, I’m just going to enjoy this honor for a little bit longer.

I Got a Bright Idea

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been pondering the notion of self-publishing chapbooks or collections of my poetry. It would be easy to do since I already have plenty of experience self-publishing novels and novellas and short story collections. I know how to put a book together and I’ve made plenty of my own covers. I could do a print and an ebook version. No problem. Yeah, I’d have to do some research on the the difference between a poetry chapbook and a poetry collection and which would be the one to do. And, yeah, my poetry isn’t great and not really worthy of either of those incarnations. But that doesn’t matter. It’s a bright idea.

That’s the thing about me. I get a lot of bright ideas. Ideas that would probably be brilliant if they were executed by others. Ideas that fall significantly short of expectations because they are executed by me. It turns out that I am the lethal injection of bright ideas.

The problem with me and my bright ideas is two-fold: Once I get an idea I want it done yesterday; and I do not have what it takes to make my bright idea successful.

See, I have a very Field of Dreams attitude towards my bright ideas. If I build it, they will come. Only they don’t. Because I didn’t build it so great. And I don’t really have that kind of draw anyway.

I’ll give you an example. Patreon.

I got the bright idea to make a Patreon. I thought I knew what I was doing, thought I knew how I was going to do it, and went ahead and did it. I was just sure that I was going to attract patrons in no time at all. With what? I don’t know. My charm, I guess. Must have forgot that I have less of that than I have talent. I digress. The first incarnation of my Patreon was a disaster because I really didn’t develop my idea much past the initial sparkle. The second version –The Murderville novellas- was better because I actually had a plan in place and was able to execute it. It took a lot more work than the first version. Imagine that.

The current version of my Patreon, with the four tiers and multiple projects, is probably the best version of my bright idea. And it only took me more years than I wish to count. However, it’s still not the Iowa cornfield ballpark I was hoping for because a) I don’t put out nearly enough free content to attract potential patrons and b) it’s MY content. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my years of writing is that I do not write what people want to read. Sure, my self-promotion game also isn’t the greatest (I feel like I’m annoying people), but if what I was promoting was even slightly appealing, I think it would make up for it.

This isn’t to say that I don’t appreciate the people who have become patrons. Yes, I question their decision-making skills, but I’m also grateful that they choose to continue to invest in my work. Knowing I have this little, core audience keeps my ego inflated. I’m just saying that I have a way of dimming my bright ideas so they don’t quite shine like they should.

I’ve done it with self-publishing, traditional publishing, podcasting, self-employment, .you name it. My creative endeavor bright ideas suffer in my hands. I don’t plan and construct them correctly because I’m in a hurry to get to that gain -money, attention, applause, advancement, whatever. I want the result. And the result is too often disappointing.

So for now, my bright idea of self-publishing my poetry will remain just that. A bright idea.

Want To See My Poetic Forms?

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

Last month I decided to make a point of working on my poetry. Specifically, I wanted to experiment with as many new poetic forms as I could. As someone who defaults to free verse and who only remembers a scant few forms from school, I thought it would be a good idea to learn a few more. Lucky for me, I have this handy dandy list of 168 poetic forms from Writer’s Digest.

I actually started doing this a couple of months before. I adore The Magnificent Seven remake from 2016, so I challenged myself to write a poem for each of the seven and each poem had to be in a different poetic form. I gave myself a break by allowing one poem in my default free verse, but the rest had to be a different form. It took a few Sundays, but I got all seven poems written. And I had a lot of fun doing it. (If you’re curious, the forms I used were free verse, sonnet, echo verse, nonet, sijo, espinela, and deibide baise fri troin.)

I’ve experimented with a few more forms since, but I decided to make July my little poem laboratory of trying out poetic forms. Here’s what I’ve learned:

-I don’t like forms with too many rules. There are some Irish poetry forms that I didn’t even try because they have more rules than a strict parent.

-But I do like some rules. They push me to up my game and have given me better insight into what I need to do to write a decent poem.

-I’m hesitant when it comes to rhyming and syllables. I think it’s a free verse thing. I want to be specific with my word choice, but I don’t want to be limited.

-But I also like the challenge of rhyming and syllables. Once I get the groove of it, I have a good time.

-I like to match my subjects to forms. It was interesting to see how I couldn’t make a poem work in one form, but if I switched the form, it happened like magic.

-I’ve discovered several new poetic forms that I’ll be using from now on. I’m no longer a one form poet.

Make no mistake that I will probably continue to prefer free verse, though now with other poetic forms in my utility belt, it will be less of a default and more of an intentional choice. But I think by trying new forms and finding new forms that I like, it’s given me a boost of confidence in my poem making. Is my poetry still bad? Yes. Is it less bad than it was before? Also yes. The needle has moved just a bit towards not-god-awful, and that is also a confidence boost.

Even though I will occasionally submit my poems to contests in a spaghetti-wall effort to try to reclaim the glory I once obtained by winning second in state in a poetry contest when I was a sophomore in high school, my main pursuit in poetry is the joy of it. Sure, every poem I write inadvertently improves my prose writing by making me translate emotions into words and those words need to be chosen and arranged carefully to help convey that emotion, which I in turn utilize in my prose. It’s the joy I get that really keeps me writing poems, though. Even when I’m writing about really messy emotions or enraging realities, there is a joy in the act that I can’t find anywhere else.

And now it comes in a stornello.

Ruminations on the Accusation of Superficial Stylistic Choices in Storytelling

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

At the library I work at we offer two book discussion groups: general fiction/non-fiction led by the director, and sci-fi/fantasy led by the circulation supervisor. The other day I overheard a conversation between the circulation supervisor (who is my direct supervisor, so therefore, I am his biggest pain in the ass) and a member of his book discussion group. I guess the book they’re currently reading shifts back and forth between timelines. My supervisor complained that he didn’t like this timeline shifting. He felt the story could have been told linearly. He said the author just did it for show.

This statement caused a record scratch in my brain.

To put it plainly, I was offended by the dismissive tone of his opinion. I wasn’t particularly fond of the other person’s follow-up that everyone is writing dual timelines now, like it’s a trend. And maybe it is. What do I know? I don’t typically read much fiction with this type of storytelling style.

What I do know is that writing multiple timelines and shifting between them is fucking difficult.

One of my WIPs, What Happened to the Man in the Cabin?, is written with multiple timelines that the story shifts between. Once I stopped biting my tongue, I looked inward and asked myself if part of the reason my hackles raised was because I perceived this as a slight on my own work. And while, yeah, maybe a little of my instant rage was a gut reaction to a glancing ego blow, I think more of it had to do with dismissive attitude toward the craft as a whole.

Full disclaimer: I am not speaking on behalf of every writer. I can’t do that. I can barely speak for myself. I don’t know how every writer acquires, cultivates, and translates their ideas to paper. Speaking for myself, though, I can tell you how I do it and one thing I will screech from the top of my lungs is I don’t do things for show.

What Happened to the Man in the Cabin? is written in multiple timelines that are shifted between because that’s the story. That’s how the story is coming out of my brain. That’s how the story wants to be told. Maybe other authors have a little more say in their structural decisions, but I’ve found that a story is what it is and if I try to change what it is, then it does not is.

Sure, I could pull apart my story and tell it in a linear fashion to suit my supervisor’s taste, and you know what? He probably wouldn’t finish it because he’d find it boring. It would be a very okay story in which a terrible thing happens in this town and that terrible thing greatly impacts the lives of these people thirty years later. The end.

Or I could tell the story the way it’s meant to be told, which creates a whole lot more tension and much more impact when revelations are made. Maybe I’m biased, but I think this version would be a lot more interesting to read. It’s definitely been more interesting to write.

Which is another thing. I have no idea how other people write multiple timelines, but in my case, I had a basic outline of what happened in the past and what was going on in the now (and the near now in one timeline), and I just started writing. I didn’t write each timeline separately. I shifted between them as I wrote. I let my story tell me when to switch the timelines. Is that the best approach for this? I have no idea. This is the first time I’ve done it and I haven’t finished yet.

I haven’t read the book my supervisor was complaining about (for the record it’s The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean, which I had to go look up because I couldn’t remember what the pick was, which is really kind of bad because I’m the one that makes the fliers for the book discussions, but anyway), so I can’t say whether or not he’s right and that the book would have been better off written linearly. I have no idea whether or not the author chose this story structure “for show” (I bet not). But I’m willing to go out on a limb in my belief that the choices she made -whether anyone agrees with them or not- were in the best interest of the story.

After all, the story is the boss.

Those Five Years Made a Difference, I Guess

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been working on next year’s audio project for my Patreon ($3 a month will let you listen!) and I’ve once again decided to do audio recordings of one of my self-published collections. Take a Bite is my last self-publishing venture to date, published about five years ago and just about five years after I published Yearly. I thought it was fitting to follow the audio version of my first self-published short story collection with my last.

While I stand by my good idea because recording twenty-five flash fiction stories has been easy peasy puddin’ ‘n’ pie, I was not prepared to be so struck by the difference in quality between Yearly and Take a Bite. And, friends, I am struck.

Here’s the thing. I’m not someone who typically goes back and reads my old work. Once it’s published, it’s no longer any of my business. It’s not that I don’t like the stories I wrote; it’s just that I’m done with them. Unless I have to revisit them for some reason -like recording audio versions- I let those sleeping dogs lie. So, while I may remember the plots of the stories, I don’t remember exactly what I wrote.

It had probably been a good few years since I last read Yearly before I recorded it. Reading it out loud really highlighted the flaws of those stories. Not just the typos (my laws I caught so many typos I feel like I should offer people a refund), but all the ways the stories could have been improved, everything I would have done differently had I written the stories now. I’m not saying the stories in Yearly are bad; they’re pretty okay, enjoyable reads if I do say so myself (ignore the typos). But I’ve learned a thing or two, developed my craft a little bit since I wrote those stories.

Recording Take a Bite really illuminated my progress. Allowing for the fact that I was writing flash fiction -each story was limited to 1,000 words- the stories are just a little bit better. The sentence structure, the word choice, the descriptions are of much better quality than the stories in Yearly. The improvement is apparent. Visible. Obvious, even. My craft got craftier, as it were.

There’s also fewer typos, which means my editing skills improved right along with my writing, and I think I’m a little more blessed for that.

I think sometimes it’s easy to miss certain kinds of improvement because it is so gradual and takes place over a longer period of time. Even within Yearly, I could see which stories I wrote earlier in my writing career (as much as you can call it that) and which ones I wrote later just within that collection. I can see the same sort of progress happening within Take a Bite even though those stories were written in a shorter period of time. It’s not quite as obvious, but I can still see what I did there.

I think this kind of improvement is also sneaky because I’m not consciously trying to improve. My focus is always trying to write the best story I can and to edit it to be the best story I can and as a result of my dedication to do my best -learning from my mistakes, trying new things, giving myself the time, space, and patience to grow and experiment- I get better as a writer.

It’s the sneakiest of win-wins.

Maybe a Septet Will Help

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been struggling with a poem lately. I keep adding lines, tweaking words, messing with metaphors. It’s not working and all of the tinkering I’ve been doing hasn’t helped elicit a breakthrough. My ah-ha moment remains elusive.

The funny part about this brick wall I’m banging my head against is that this poem is just for me. I have no current intention to publish it anywhere or submit it to a contest. It’s just something that has seized my brain and it brings me joy to work on it. Yes, even as I struggle, I’m enjoying the challenge of it. I’ll enjoy the finished product even more, even if my eyes are the only ones that read it.

You may be asking why I’d put so much effort into something that I have no intention (as of now) of getting published. Why would I spend so much time on something that I’m not going to cash in on?

Well, I’ll tell ya, Mert. I played that game of only working on projects for the purpose of gain. Only writing stories and poems that I could submit to contests or zines or anthologies or self-publish or put on Patreon. There is nothing wrong with wanting to get paid for my work. I like to get paid for my writing. I’d like to get paid more for my words, if I’m going to be honest.

But.

I think a big part of the creative wasteland and writer’s malaise I experienced for several years was because the end goal was purely to get paid. How can I profit off of this pile of syllables? There were a lot of other contributing factors in my life at the time, but that was a pretty large vibe killer. What helped to bring me out of that funk? Writing something that was just for me, something that seized my brain and wouldn’t let go, and the whole point of me writing it was just to write it. That’s it. No goal beyond getting it on the page.

And lo, I felt the chains I’d wrapped myself in fall away and the joy returned.

Now I’m working on three fiction projects, two of which are for myself, with no thoughts beyond just finishing them. The third is for a contest, and it’s the first short story I’ve written specifically for a contest in a long time.

In the past few months, I’ve found a real joy in writing poetry. I’ve always liked doing it (Bad Poetry April is my testament), but this new emotional high has made me want to experiment and invest in the craft of it. I default to free verse when I write poetry. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a very cromulent form of poetry. But I need to broaden my play palace. So, I wrote seven poems in seven different forms about seven characters from a movie I love. I had a blast doing it, too. I found a couple of new poetry forms that I enjoy working with and the courage to continue experimenting with new ones.

No one is probably going to read any of these poems, but that doesn’t mean they’re pointless or a waste. First of all, I like them and I like to reread them and I may continue to tinker with a few of them until I get them just right. That’s not time wasted. That’s craft. Craft is important. So is the creative process. Sometimes you need to get a little ridiculous -like writing poems about movie characters- as part of the process. Wonderful things can happen when you have that freedom to be silly without any pressure.

As for the poem I’m working on right now, I think the trouble is that I’m once again defaulting to free verse when what this poem might need is more structure.

Maybe a septet really will help.

Writing Advice From an Unsuccessful Writer

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

One of my younger coworkers has decided to wade into the world of fiction writing and she asked me for some writing advice as she’s never written fiction before. Caught off-guard by the question as I frequently forget that people I know in the meatspace are aware that I’m a writer, what spewed forth from my mouth was a mess of wisdom that probably just confused the hell out of her. But hopefully, she pulled some useful bits from my rambling.

Upon reflection, here are the most important, coherent bits of writing advice from the big mouth of an unsuccessful writer.

  1. Write for yourself. Telling the story that you want to tell, writing the story that you want to read, that’s the best advice I’ve ever heard. Writing can be lonely, frustrating work, but the joy of it is in the creation of something that’s for yourself. There’s also less disappointment when you find out that you’re the only one who wants to read it.
  2. There’s no right way to write. Word counts, timers, pantsing, outling, revising as you go, revising when the draft is done. The only real requirement is that your butt is in the seat writing the words on a reliable basis. Discipline is the key no matter which way you find is best for you.
  3. Not writing is part of writing. Let your ideas marinate, develop, fester, etc. Living with the characters and scenarios and stories in your head, sometimes for years, is part of writing. Yes, eventually what’s in your head has to make it to the page, but until they’re ready to be birthed, letting them cook is still writing.
  4. Writing is rewriting. No first draft is perfect and the worst shit can always be made better with some effort. I take great comfort in that. You don’t have to be perfect. Not on the first draft. Not even on the fifth. Enjoy the revisions.
  5. Write for the joy of it. Sometimes writing is a slog. Trying to get published (if you want to do that) can be soul crushing. Rejection is going to be frequent. Improving your craft is a lot of dedication and work and sometimes it feels like you’re not getting any better. It’s easy to forget the joy that made you want to put pen to paper in the first place. But it’s there every time you get the spark of a new idea or figure out a plot problem or name a new character or get lost in the act of wordsmithing or finally -finally!- finishing that story. If you’re going to write, write for the joy of it. You’ll never want to quit.

My coworker has such a fun idea for a story and I really hope that my blathering didn’t turn her off from pursuing it. I hope that out of that large, tossed word salad I fed her, she found some morsels that nourished her enthusiasm to put this idea down on the page.

I realize it might be ridiculous for an unsuccessful writer to be giving writing advice, but look at it this way…

Just because I’m no good doesn’t mean the advice is bad.