Category Archives: writing process

Day 16: Happy National Poetry Month

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So yesterday I posted a failed sestina. But what I didn’t realize was it could always get worse. My second try was so bad I named it “Take 2” and I haven’t even gone back to work on punctuation and capitalization. If you’ve ever read the children’s rhyme about the old lady who swallowed the fly, then the frog to eat the fly, then the cat to eat frog, well, that’s what Take 2 is like. I can post it here for fun. Shall I? Why not? This is all about learning, right?

Take 2

let me tell you a secret

it’s beautiful like a rose

although filled with regret

you told me a lie

when we stood in the rain

but still I decided to stay

why should I stay

I dream of places so secret

and getting lost in the rain

until the sun’s rose

reveals that lie

you told without regret

I cannot help but regret

the decision I made to stay

even after I knew the lie

that you tried to keep secret

by handing me a rose

all covered with rain

here comes the rain

and it fills me with regret

that I can’t find a single rose

or a real reason to stay

but it’s still a secret

that you told me that lie

don’t we all tell a lie

when we stand in the rain

we keep it a secret

so that we won’t regret

but do we stay

or follow the compass rose

follow the direction of the rose

or choose. Instead. the lie

we never know unless we stay

if it will always rain

and that, I guess, is my regret

after all, it’s not a secret

if you regret the lie you told

come find me in the secret roses

where I stay, living in the rain

Truly awful. Sestina three is slightly better. I chose the words at random. I’m not sure why it’s a murder mystery/ghost story set in South Korea (okay, my fascination with Korean drama and K-pop probably influenced that), but it’s definitely better.

Han River

Meet me by the Han River

where no one looks like me.

But I’ll carry a yellow rose

and you can wear a white coat.

That’s where I can tell my tale

of love long lost and buried.

Meet me where seeds are buried

asleep on the banks of the river.

Are you sure you wish to hear my tale?

it’s really only about me.

There’s no real way to sugarcoat

or exchange my yellow for a red rose.

It’s been a while since I rose

from where they thought I was buried

and stood without dress or coat

at the edge of the Han River.

I’m not sure why you linger with me

just to hear this tired old tale.

They thought I’d never tell the tale

of how I was deceived by his rose

and how they tortured and murdered me,

dug a shallow grave and buried

me there on the frozen banks of the river

where ice had begun to freeze and coat.

I saw a beaver shake water off his coat

and I whispered him my sad tale

before he slipped back into the river.

It was winter then, there was no rose

of any color where I was buried

in this icy wasteland where they left me.

You say you’re only here to help me,

you in your beautiful white coat.

Do you know where the dead are buried?

Do you know how to tell my tale?

But we watched as the sun rose

above the banks of the Han River.

The same river where they buried me…

I can’t pin a rose on your white coat…

My tale ends here where I am buried.

So that’s where I am with sestinas. It is definitely not my favorite form I’ve tried, but it is the most challenging. I didn’t think it could get harder than villanelle, either! Will I continue writing them? Tune in tomorrow to find out. In the meantime:

A rose I found outside a Church kind of makes me believe in God. Photo and poems copyright 2023 Michelle Garren-Flye

A Brief History of Word Processing and a bad picture of a poem

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Okay, so there’s this songwriter/musician I follow on Instagram and am a little obsessed with. (His work, not him!) Recently he’s been posting these amazing pictures of new songs he’ll be coming out with this year. They’re all neatly handwritten in a really cool looking journal with rough-edged, linen-like paper, and they brought back memories of trying to handwrite stories and poems in my own journals back before I progressed to a typewriter and then to a Brother word processor and finally to my MacBook.

I decided I should try handwriting again. So I’ve been carrying around a journal (mine is lined because my handwriting goes hopelessly uphill if I have no guides). I’m not exactly sure why, but poetry eluded me for some time while I carried that journal. I think it was fear. I think I was honestly afraid that if I tried to write something in a journal, I wouldn’t be able to do it.

Last night, just as I was supposed to begin making dinner, inspiration finally struck and I rushed for my journal and a pen and started writing. What came out of my pen isn’t exactly what inspiration whispered to me, but I don’t think I did too badly. It’s definitely different writing on paper and not as easy for my inner editor to make me rethink things. A good pen makes a huge difference. I like this one, but it’s one I picked up at my dentist’s, so it may not last long. I’ve never liked writing with a pencil (too scratchy), but I may try that next time.

I haven’t even titled this poem, either. I hope I can read it when I go to transcribe it onto the computer. My handwriting isn’t awful, but as you can see, my inner editor did kick in once or twice, resulting in a few scratch-outs.

What this experience did remind me of was that I didn’t start taking my own writing seriously UNTIL I had a computer. Until I could sit in front of a screen and type my words in and erase as necessary and have a finished product that looked like it should, I was almost literally frozen creatively. I had ideas, but when I sat down to write them, they poofed away.

Is my inner editor that strong? Did it keep me from being creative for years by whispering to me that my ideas wouldn’t turn out right if I wrote them out on a legal pad? If so, what would happen to me tomorrow if the EMP finally happens? If all computers are wiped out, will it take my creativity with it?

Maybe I better try writing in that journal more often.

The Fear of the Last Word

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Writers experience a whole cornucopia of emotions during the course of their careers—anxiety about deadlines, joy when we finish something, pride when we see our books on shelves or in the hands of others—but there is one emotion we avoid speaking of when it comes to our professional lives. Fear.

Fear that the last book really was our last.

Fear that our idea well has dried up and our muse has moved on.

Fear of the last word.

Paralyzing, engrossing, fascinating…fear.

Don’t look too close at the fear, we tell ourselves. If you believe in it, it will believe in you and that is bad news for your writing. But it’s so hard to look away from it! We don’t know where the ideas come from. Who’s to say they’ll keep coming? Who’s to say the angel of creativity might not turn his face away from us? If a writer tells you he doesn’t worry about this, he’s lying.

My very best work is accomplished when my muse sits on my shoulder and whispers it directly into my ear. It’s inspired, feverish, intense and very, very rare. Most often, I feel like I’m plodding through my story, pleading with my muse for something, anything. And I get messages back, but they’re more detached than those intimate whispers. Like emails. Or—if I’m lucky—a handwritten note on scented paper…and mailed from a great distance.

I know I haven’t written my last book. I have one waiting to be edited and I’m writing another one. But still, the last word—my last word—is out there somewhere. It hasn’t been written yet, but it will be. I just hope I write everything I want to write before I write that one.