Tag: writing

Poem–Magnificent Seven–“Vasquez”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

It’s time for your monthly punishment of poetry.

I had the form for Vasquez’s poem chosen before I had an idea of what I was going to write. He’s an interesting character in that of the Seven, he is unquestionably an outlaw. Chisholm has a warrant for his arrest and trades his freedom for his participation. We glean a little of his character -he’s proudly Mexican and his granddaddy fought at the Alamo (maybe killing Goodnight Robicheaux’s granddaddy at that same battle, which, as Goodnight says, is a charming thought)- and he’s quickly established as Faraday’s frenemy, but we’re never explicitly told what he’s done that landed his warrant in Chisholm’s hands. Judging by the way he handles his gun and his pride, I’m guessing it’s murder-related.

But our Mexican outlaw must have a heart of gold, or at the very least some kind of honor, to go along with Chisholm’s plan to defend the town from a guy doing way worse than Vasquez would ever dream.

For his poem, I decided on an Espinela, named after the form’s creator Vincente Espinel. It’s a ten line poem broken into two stanzas with four lines in the first stanza and six in the second. There’s eight syllables per line and the rhyme scheme is abba/accddc. One of the easier forms I chose for the Seven.

Also, I got to use the word “loam”. A criminally underused word, in my opinion.

Vasquez

The writ claims he’s a wanted man,
his survival against the law.
His life a wound opened and raw.
Taking whatever edge he can.

Unaware of a change in plan.
The path he crosses on his roam,
leading him to fight on the loam.
The worst he’s done put to good use.
The battle within brought to truce.
He knows the cost of losing home.

Lessons Learned from a First Draft

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I finished the first draft of That’s Punk at the end of October. I started it in June of 2022 (I think). The story idea seized upon me while I was working on other things and I couldn’t get it out of my head. I ended up blasting out the outline for it one night, thinking that might get it out of my system enough that I could concentrate on my other projects again.

It didn’t work.

I ended up coming to sort of compromise with the story eating my brain. I would write it on Sundays, writing as much or as little as I wanted and revising as I went along. This was new for me. I usually write a first draft as fast as I can and deal with the carnage later during the revisions.

This was how I proceeded for over a year. I took my time. At one point, I even went back to the beginning and revised everything I had written. I’d never done that with any other first draft.

After the big revision, I realized that it was time to start wrapping it up, but doing it quickly would not happen. I had too much left to write and too many other projects going on. For much of 2024, I was working on four podcasts as well as revising What Happened to the Man in the Cabin?, which needed a lot of work. Months of work. I didn’t have a lot of time to commit to a big daily word count. I settled on at least 500 words a week. It didn’t matter when I wrote them or how much I wrote at one time, as long as I hit at least 500 words a week. It wasn’t a lot, but it was consistent progress and that had to be good enough while I was busy.

The small, but mighty steady progress paid off. By the time I finished revising What Happened to the Man in the Cabin?, I was in a good position to made a real push towards the finish line. I went from at least 500 words a week to at least 500 words a day, usually more than that. The 2,500+ words I wrote a week rushed me along. I had given myself until the end of 2024. One final push had typing “the end” before the end of October.

The one concession I made in my bid to get the first draft wrapped up before the end of the year was that I stopped revising as I went along. Once I started making a set word count, I stopped looking back. It was full steam ahead. This may or may not hurt me when it comes time to revise the whole thing, but I’m not going to worry about that until I get there.

What I ended up with by writing a first draft this way was the longest thing I’ve ever written. That’s Punk clocked in at over 145,000 words. I never thought I’d ever write anything this long. I also learned something about trying new methods of writing. That fast as lightning brain dump of a first draft works, but so does slow and methodical. Some projects I can afford to have the patience on. Maybe next time, I’ll actually give myself a chance to do the revise-as-I-go thing for the whole trip. Or maybe I’ll try a whole new approach to getting a first draft done.

Even if nothing ever comes of That’s Punk in the long run, I’ve learned some valuable lessons that I can apply to future projects.

And maybe something will come from one of them.

Unofficial NaNo 2024

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

As I mentioned previously, I’m still planning to write 50,000 words this month, but I’m not officially participating in NaNo.

This year’s project is called Stateline. And it’s actually been something I’ve been working on for over a decade (probably closer to two) in one form or another.

Stateline began its life as a short story that I wrote in my late 20’s. Three cousins -Julian, Silas, and Amelia- take a midnight trip to ditch the body of Julian’s neighbor and nemesis, Glen, across the the state line after Julian kills him in self-defense. This version of the story featured the protagonists being in their late 20’s and only scratched the surface of their issues, both with each other and with themselves.

In my 30’s, I reworked Stateline as a script. Or at least, a script treatment with only fifteen pages and a synopsis submitted to a contest, which placed fifth. This version aged the characters along with me, putting them in their 30’s and 40’s, creating more of an age difference and more of an affectionately antagonistic relationship between the cousins. The treatment also better defined the cousins’ issues and the bullying/harassment that led to Glen’s demise.

And now here I am in my 40’s, reworking Stateline as a novel. The characters are getting another age-up, putting them in their 40’s and 50’s, in part to keep them in line with me since that’s become something of a tradition now, but also because I find something intriguing and fun about middle-aged fuck-ups. Their issues have evolved and the trip to the state line has gotten longer. After all, bladders are different over 40.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this project translates to a novel form. I’m anticipating the first draft to be a short one, most likely finished in 30 days and not much beyond 50,000 words, but we’ll see. I may just surprise myself.

I think spending my November on a road trip with these three will be a good time.

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.