January 30, 2005

Recently, I have begun working with poetry to improve the expressiveness and rhythm of my prose. I don't know that the results are visible yet in my short stories, but years after having been introduced to the form in junior high school, by Mrs. Lillian Pilkington, I have managed to produce my first sonnet. I can recommend a couple of books for anyone working on the same issue:

• Finding Your Writer's Voice: a guide to creative fiction, by Thaisa Frank and Dorothy Wall
• Writing Your Rhythm: Using Native Culture, Form, and Myth, by Diane Thiel
  

The second has a section devoted to poetry with descriptions and examples of several forms and a bibliography for anyone who wants to delve deeper into working with verse. Diane Thiel's presentation makes it look invitingly easy to dabble, and no one says that you have to show anyone anything that you write in a journal that is meant strictly for experimentation and improvement.

Now, on to the question of why it has taken so long for me to write a sonnet.

I've had a mental block. I have had, from time to time, the urge to write one, but I would think immediatelyof Shakespearean sonnets, and then of Shakespeare, and then would come the "I'm not worthies." Shakespeare, Dickens and Poe, were Mrs. Pilkington's favorites, and we studied Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Night's Dream. I was suitably awed at an impressionable age.

In addition to what I have been doing with my writing, I have co-founded, with my sister, the Fill the Pantry Cookbook. We are collecting original and heirloom recipes from anyone gracious enough to create and contribute one, hint, hint. We will then supply the cookbook or cookbooks at no charge to food pantries, homeless shelters, and soup kitchens so that they may keep all the profits from sales.

The Why of this Blog

In this blog, I'll be posting updates on my writing - the projects on which I'm working, successes and failures, and what I'm doing to improve as a writer. I may post comments on writing related topics, and I'm willing to answer questions, in so far as I know the answer.