writer | teacher | artist
Thoughts of mine
As the minutes ticked by, more and more people seemed to give up. Even I started to doubt he would appear. But then the black SUVs with the flashing lights started to show up in front of the barricades and the metal loading door and we knew he must be close.
Continuing the tradition of last year's summary in poems, I present to you the 2021 edition. This year was actually even more difficult for me, emotionally, than 2020, but equally productive in terms of writing, apparently.
Poetry Postcard Fest is an annual event facilitated by what is now known as Cascadia Poetics Lab, which I learned about from founder Paul E. Nelson. Basically, you pay $15 to be put into a group of 30 other people around the world who have agreed to write a poem a day for a month and mail each one on a postcard. Sounds like fun, right? Well, it was, but once again, it seems my expectations exceeded reality.
I know, as a writer, it behooves me to spin a yarn on this event, but for now I'm going to be lazy and let my dad tell the story.
On Feb. 16, 2021, I had an idea for a feature film. In the next 12 days, I filled out a beat sheet, note-carded every scene, digitized those notes in PowerPoint (revising all the while), researched locations, watched half a dozen movies and several interviews with famous directors and screenwriters, and wrote the first 47 pages of my movie.
Last week, I had the misfortune of receiving an "acceptance" from a fake, online literary magazine called Violet & the Bird. This experience reminded me why I haven't submitted to obscure/new/online lit mags in the past, and I thought I would share my current rules of thumb for submissions.
To focus on the positives of 2020, I have compiled a list of poems to exemplify my writing successes this year.
People say "necessity is the mother of invention," but did I need to create a new poetic form?Maybe. In any case, I'd like to share with you a form I came up with called the "Jubilee."
Whether you've been forced to cancel an in-person signing as a result of stay-at-home orders and bookstore closures during a pandemic, OR you simply want to try something new and reach audiences in a new way, the virtual book launch can be a fun and gratifying way to promote your work.
If you consider yourself a writer (or even if you don't, but you've ever had to write something for someone other than yourself), you've probably experienced writer's block, and read about ways to combat it. Still, I figure it's always beneficial to hear good advice more than once (especially if you're hard-headed like me).
Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum 