Mental Meanderings

Reviews or Poetry

*looks like a deer caught in headlights* Um... Um... Um... *grins and winks* I'm struggling tonight. I had the opportunity to get a few reviews done today but I still have so many more on my list to get through and most of them are port raids. They just seem to keep building up. Meanwhile I'm also interested in getting more content into my port and in entering contests. I'd love to write some short stories and get to editing my novel but at the moment it seems like Reviewing and Poetry are taking precedence in my life.

The trouble is it's often hard to decide if I should review or write. If I write then my reviewing list will continue to grow and if I don't then my port won't grow and I won't get those entries into the many great contests on this site. But it's not just new poetry I want to write. I'd also like to take time to really overhaul my existing poetry.

And of course I have to get my daily blog entry written. It's just gone 9PM so I've given myself permission to do that now and at least have it out of the way so I can focus on accomplishing other things. But add the dilemma of knowing there is a movie I'd like to watch starting in about an hour so I don't have much time to do more tonight.

It's great to see some entries and interest in the Tools of Poetry Workshop. People are really reading the article and applying it to their writing. Makes me feel pretty good to know that I might be helping people. Next week I'm going to focus on meter. Apparently there are a lot of poets who know nothing about meter. Meter and the way it affects how a great deal of poetry flows or doesn't flow is a very important aspect to consider and while most people think and speak with a kind of natural meter I realised that a lot of my poetry reviews relate to meter and flow and it's entirely possible the poet hadn't even attempted to be 'in mete' and had just written it the way they thought it.

One advantage of writing these articles each week is that I can then provide links to information like this in my reviews. I could say, "I felt the meter of line 5 was a little off and recommend you have a look, read it aloud to yourself and see how you say it surrounded by the other lines. For more information on meter check out {entry:}" I could certainly help me when people turn around and say, meter? huh? What's that? *chuckles*

Of course that's true with everything. There is a poet who's visited the PPP forums and reviewed them and then wandered past some of my sonnets. She tells me she's trying to learn more about sonnets and hopes to write some of her own. So I'm thinking if she joins I'll use sonnets as week three. I feel that trying new poetry forms is as much a tool of poetry as some of the techniques that can be carried over into all poetry. I hope to focus on at least a few forms over the weeks and give the workshop some diversity.

Meanwhile I can't put aside writing more of my own poetry. I'm still enjoying the way "Invalid Item"  turned out. I still like the use of consummate in the final line although each time I read it I notice that it's not true to meter. At least not the way I naturally go to read it. I almost don't stress any of the syllables but if I were to claim any in particular it would probably be the 'con' rather than the 'sum' like the form would insist. Ultimately in order to keep the meaning of this poem it's the best alternative. So for the moment at least I've decided to just leave that be.

*grins* I think I might also do a lesson on 'Yodaisms' at some point. I occassionally point these out to people in my reviews. I seem to have an eye for catching them. But recently I had a poet reply asking me to explain more clearly what I meant and what exactly a yodaism is. I was more than happy to explain it and really quite enjoyed doing so. If I were to do it as a lesson however I'd find a way to describe the English grammar rules of sentence structure. So far every time I've gone in search of an explanation I've found none that make sense or put it simply. The only way I've been able to explain it is by example, taking a Yodaism (usually one of Yoda's actual quotes) and rewriting it as rules of grammar would prefer. I'm sure there is a way to describe WHY it is supposed to be like that rather than having to only show that it is.

Anyway, it's gone the half hour now and I really am running out of time to get much done so I'm going to call it a blog. *grins* So much to do and so few minutes to do them. Life will ever be to short. Onward, of course, I still haven't decided, reviews or poetry?

Ohhh PS. My bathroom has WALLS!!! No tiles or paint on them yet but at least I'm not seeing the inside of the walls now. *grins* And my brilliant builders managed to get the tiles and all the amenities today instead of having to wait over a week like the retail people had told us we would. They've got them connections *grins* Makes me think there is some sort of builder mafia.