So after saying I'd be more proactive I disappeared again. Mostly I've been keeping my poems in circulation, and working on a couple of new ones. I had a bit of a slump over May and June and didn't turn around anything that came back, so getting everything back out today took a while. Sixteen submissions later and I'm done, hopefully not to see them again for a while...
Since I'm being a bit more proactive on the poetry front these days I've decided to do a proper separation of poetry and my speculative fiction writing, including moving old poems to under this name. I now have a website, and have reactivated social media links on Twitter and Facebook. Several poems are available at Curious Fictions, although you may still see them under the old name where they were originally published.
My speculative fiction work remains under the name C.L. Holland, and my website can be found here. I also have profiles on Twitter and Facebook, and a blog at Dreamwidth although the content here is mirrored on the website. I didn't sign up for an online course in the end. I've decided to do some old-fashioned book-learning instead, since I can do it in my own time and I've got quite enough going on already.
Book-wise it's either going to be Alison Chisholm's Crafting Poetry, or The Art and Craft of Poetry by Michael Bugeja, since I have both of those already. My Amazon wishlist is full of others, but I've already spent my Christmas money. Both have exercises in each chapter which will give me plenty of prompts to work with. I received an email the other day saying my copy of Stories of Music Volume 2 is on its way, so I'm really looking forward to seeing that and checking out the other work. Some of it was sent along in the proofs, since contributors got to look at the whole section their work is in, but I didn't look at the other works or bibliographies because I wanted to wait until I could see the book as a whole. Part of my first of January ritual is to clear out my old diary. This time I found the first draft of a poem I'd forgotten about, which was a good way to start the year. I've puttered with it since, and have had some ideas on how to develop it further, including a new title. Hopefully it will be ready to submit next time I have a submission day. So I didn't do Poem a Day in November, or much of anything really. I've added to the store of notes and first lines on my phone but that's about it. I find winter a tough time to get motivated - it's dark when I leave home for work, and dark when I leave work for home. And December's so full of other things - work parties, present buying, present wrapping, seeing family, cleaning for family visits, food shopping, food prep... There's barely been time to stop and it's hard to believe there's only a week until Christmas.
Stories of Music: Volume 2 will be released on 10th January, and is available for preorder. Having looked at the proofs for my section, I'm really excited to see what the rest of the book looks like. I've spotted a couple of free online poetry courses that I'm thinking about taking in the New Year. Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop is run through Coursera. There's a new session starting on 2nd January, so a good way to kick start the new year, although there are at least three other session in the year. It wants four to five hours a week though. EdX is running The Art of Poetry, although it looks like it's an archived course with future dates to be announced. Both courses run for six weeks. I'm honestly not sure I wouldn't just be better of with a How To book, though - at least they're portable and don't send you spam. While I haven't had any trouble when I've taken Coursera courses in the past, last year I took an online poetry course (and I can't for the life of me remember from which site) and got dozens of emails every day - which weren't at all easy to turn off since you had to look in at least two different sections of the website. The forum interface was terrible, too. I bailed on that course pretty quickly. I'd like to do something though, and the structure of an online course might help me to keep on track. Something to think about, anyway. |
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