Posts

Bee on my Shoulder

  While I am sitting on my front porch a bee settles on the back of my neck and I freeze. I have been the unwilling companion of the bees on my porch for over a year now. Though I treat them kindly, I would rather they not be here at all. I can feel its tiny feet on my neck, exploring a section of my skin no bigger than a dime. I am hyper aware of all its small legs. I don’t know what drew it there. I didn’t think honey bees had a proclivity for sweat, which I'm sure is on my skin, and I know for a fact that it could not be mistaken for nectar. I detected the stink of it when I was doing yoga a few minutes before. (Had I known some creature would be smelling me, I might have put on more deodorant.) I will the bee to keep its stinger at bay, and will myself to give off only a feeling of calm. The bee spends more time exploring that dime size spot of skin. Its touch is so light that there are milliseconds that I think it has taken flight, but I know when it truly lifts off. I rel...
Post a Comment
Read more

02. My Favorite Writing Tools - Show Notes

 These are the show note for episode two of my podcast  Pencil Scratches . This episode is about my favorite writing tools. I talk about a Nanowrimo work book that I unfortunately no longer have, but I recreated the page I was talking about.  Plot Points Brain Dump Giant Desk Notepad  for all your brainstorming needs. I think quite a few people know about Pinterest, but here is my Pinterest board where I have plopped all my ideas.  Story Ideas I am sure there are an abundance of tarot spread you can use for writing, but I found  Carrie Mallon's spreads  to be helpful. Otter  is the transcription tool that I use to write. These are some of my favorite artists that I buy stickers from:  JollaCo ,  Paper Minty Studio , and  moehrenkunstshop . They make such lovely writing rewards. My favorite pens  BIC Cristal Pens  and  Pilot G2 07 Pens . And, last but not least,  Five Star Notebooks
Post a Comment
Read more

#14 The Poem

     There was a spot where the water was shallow and the current was low. It was the place people went on hot days when fans and opening the windows was not enough. It was a little paradise with the shade of the trees and the babbling of the water. Some of the children swam naked while others went in fully clothed. It was a place where your last name and the state of your house didn’t matter. Everyone was hot so everyone went to the river.  I had nestled onto a rock with the tree branches hovering overhead, giving me plenty of shade. My notebook was balanced on my knee. I had a few lines of a poem jotted down in it, but I was searching for the right word to end a line. I was trying to capture that feeling of togetherness. “You are an artist.”  A man was crouched on the rock close by. His head was tilted sideways like a curious bird. His features were thinner than all the people around me, foreign. “I write poems.” “Like music.” His eyes brightened at ...
Post a Comment
Read more

#13 Shadow House

Nestled in the countryside hidden by the trees, Shadows fill a lonely house not a man has seen.  It was a local legend. Everyone knew the poem. We said it as a ghost story at flashlight lit sleepovers. Our parents used it as a warning against staying out late. Their parents skipped rope to the rhythm of its words. No one knew where it came from, but everyone had it etched in their bones. For me it had always felt like it was etched into my heart, embedded into my core. Every one of my school notebooks had it scrawled into the margins. The words would be rearranged and upside down as if the different configurations would reveal some hidden meaning. Like I would find an answer to all the questions in my life. I clung to that poem believing that I would find everything I needed if I found the house nestled in the trees. Other children did the same for fun. For them it was a phase, but I searched obsessively for it well after they had stopped. College had dulled to obsession to a...
Post a Comment
Read more

#12 - Bar at the End of the World

     We get all different types coming through here. It’s one of the only places for miles where someone won’t shoot you on sight for touching their land. There’s always a fine layer of dust settled on the bar and chairs no matter how many times I clean it and some of the windows have broken panes only covered by a bit of cloth. Before it would have been the kind of place that people avoided, but standards have gotten pretty low in the last decade.      Now it’s a way station. It’s a place where a person can sit and relax and not worry about getting hurt because Theo collects all the weapons at the door and locks them up tight. We are the last bit of humanity here and I ain’t about to let some of us get killed off in a bar brawl. It’s a forced kindness that makes some people chafe, but makes my job easier.      There are two people in the bar besides me and Theo. Vic is in the kitchen like always cooking up whatever he managed to harvest fr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Project Modification

   When I first started this project was realistic and I believe it was. However, I hadn't planned on starting to write another novel until the summer. Dedicatedly writing a novel, writing a short story every week, and working a full time job is just a bit to much work for me. The point of this wasn't to stress myself out. It was to learn and the last few short stories I have written it felt like I was just cranking them out to hit a deadline rather than giving them the time that they really needed.     Because I of this, I am modifying this project a bit. I am going to change the framework. Instead of mass production I am going to focus a on a lesson learned or an idea achieved. Honestly, after writing stories with an idea in mind and missing the mark because of a deadline I think this is a better way of going about it.     This means less stories, but it also means that the stories will hopefully be a better quality. I am going to aim for a story every mo...
Post a Comment
Read more

#11 - One Hundred Days

  The hallways dulled the sound. She didn’t know if it was by design or by accident, but she hated it. The first few times she went running through the halls of the space ship all she could hear was her own breath and her heartbeat in her ears like she was pressing her hands over them. She managed the quiet for two days then she made sure that music was playing through all the speakers when she ran. It wasn’t just the hallways that were quiet. It was her bedroom. It was the dining hall. It was the rec room. Deafening quiet that made her ears ring. That made her wonder if she even existed at all.  It was the fifth day when she decided she had to have noise all the time. It was the sixth day that she decided that cafe noises were too creepy. Those songs with lyrics were too heart wrenching. That classical music managed to make her feel a little more human. The eighth day was the day she started talking to the robots as if they could talk back. Nearly everything was aut...
Post a Comment
Read more