Sweeeeet… I’m going back to bed

This is the color of DREAM

we are children, unseeing
we open our eye
unlocking the verse and meter
of the universe.

This is the color of FORGET

it is here
look closer.
this is the color

This is the color of SAD

baby girl, club-footed
opens her eyes.
pressed between hot sun
and rough mountain
welcomed to the world
by no one.

This is the color of GREED

whatever is written here
it is not enough.

This is the color of LOVE

one plump drop
sneaks from a fang.

This is the color of DREAMS

one by one
we close our eyes
no longer children.

I creak and moan. I shout to him, “Go outside! Go play! It’s too nice to sit here all day!”

He doesn’t hear, just continues typing.

I shrug my shoulders.

I am Wednesday.

those words, salt
your voice, awake
my flesh, dried
a raw monopoly of god

when you remember words
remember the copper tang,
the smoky perfume,
the sad, warm woman

your work must be
porcelain steel rythms

their wild steel universe
surrounds him

broken through sex,
velvet worry - once live -
now devoured color

perhaps, sister, you listen -
stiff lipped laugh, trembling

explore them, pick and haunt,
time stream pooling

[ Original Images: ]

[ Achi Tryptichon ]
[ AbuGraibAbuse11 ]
[ AbuGraibAbuse14 ]
[ ForgetMeNotFlower ]
[ A Galvanized Corpse ]

There’s an excellent site - an adventerous woman takes a motorcycle tour of Chernobyl and surrounding areas, including Pripiat. See KIDDofSPEED. It is thought-provoking, saddening, and generally depressing. It provided the example for which I was looking.

After reading the site, I began to wonder if some of the pictures she had could be viewable on google maps. They were. Here are some interesting comparisons.

• Ship Graveyard: KiddOfSpeed vs. GoogleMaps
• Ferris Wheel: KiddOfSpeed vs. GoogleMaps

Also, you can go to wikimapia and search for Chernobyl or Prypiat. There, people have outlined places and you can get a little more infomation.

Check out this YouTube video of Prypiat:

Some of the participants I checked ran way over, some nearing 100,000 words, but when I checked their excerpts, I must say YAWN. Not worth the time. Not one excerpt I read sparked my interested except maybe the one for a piece titled AFTRLYF. To be honest, I only checked people in my region, and maybe, just maybe there’s truth to the 700 monkeys for 700 years, that one of these folks has turned out the works of the master himself, but I’d be hard pressed to figure out which one it was!

Long and short, with a writing plan, I’ve proven to myself that I can still maintain home life, my full time job, and produce sizable and (hopefully) worthwhile works of fiction in a reasonable amount of time. Oh, and the piece I started is only about half done. I wasn’t in any hurry to meet the NaNoWriMo goal necessarily because it was in no way indicative of the novel I’m writing.

The story is called “The Secret of Kingship”. I know NaNoWriMo is supposed to just be for fun, but I’m using it to see if I can more easily discipline myself to write when I already know what I’m writing. I do intend to publish the book, and assuming the outline really does help in the long run, I’ll make that the first step in my writing process. If I can’t get an agent or publisher, I’ll post the work here, and I will also look into print on demand for anyone who might be interested.

Well, I’m going back to writing now!

Anyhow, I’ve been working on an actual outline, character dossiers, and other such stuff for a week or so now. And I’m going into this feeling very well prepared. I guess we’ll see, but I think when it comes down to it, good writing is not an accident. Good writing is planned. Maybe not down to the smallest detail, but it is planned. One of my (new) favorite quotes from McKee’s book is:

When forced to work within a strict framework the imagination is taxed to its utmost - and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom the work is likely to sprawl.

- T. S. Eliot

I think my work sprawls when it’s not planned out. My first attempt at NaNoWriMo flopped, no because I couldn’t write, but because I ran out of things to write. I think having a plan (chapters, scenes, characters, themes, subplots) ahead of time will permit me to spend the month of November actually doing what NaNoWriMo requires - producing quantity.