Wednesday, April 14, 2010

I wrote a poem.

It's shocking, I know. I bet you didn't know I was a poet. Okay, I'm really not a poet exactly. I've had a couple poems accepted on poetry.com, but I think they accept just about everyone. But, I decided to try something new, so I wrote a poem titled "A Midsummer Delight." It's inspired by this painting, and here are the first four lines of the poem.


A gentle summer's breeze rustles the leaves.
Viridian entwines with forest green.
A nightingale's melody in the trees
Awakens the fae, fluttering is seen.


I'd like to submit the poem to Emerald Tales "Midsummer Eve" issue. I've never submitted a poem for a magazine before, but I thought I'd give it a shot. I wrote the poem in sonnet form, although I'm not sure it is completely iambic pentameter, although it is ten syllables per line. Oh, well. It's as close to a sonnet as I could get, considering I'm not a poet.

In other writing news, I decided not to write "A Harlequin's Last Laugh." At least, I won't write it for now. The deadline for the Halloween Whodunit anthology is tomorrow, and I just ran out of time and energy. I may pick the story back up, if the muses allow it.

I also received my first edits for "Once Upon a December Nightmare." Boy, I have my work cut out for me. I wrote "Once Upon a December Nightmare" back in May 2009, and I really only began writing my own work in January 2009. Even when I submitted the story back in August 2009, there was so much more about writing I had to learn. I feel like my writing abilities have grown tenfold, if not more, since August of last year. So, in other words, there is a lot I'm going to have to do to make the story better. I told my editor that I needed a day or two to mull over her suggestions. Then, this weekend, I plan to begin my first edits and hope to have them finished by the end of next week.

I plan to begin writing my Mother's Day story for Raven and the Writing Desk this week. I'd like to have it finished by the end of next week, so my fellow blog authors and critique it and give me my edits. If all goes as planned, the story will be up on the blog on May 5. Then, I'm off to work on my novels.

If you like cat stories, poetry, artwork, please visit Hazard Cat. It's a blog for all things feline created by my friend Lisa Rusczyk. Hazard Cat is currently accepting submissions, so if you have a story, poetry, or artwork that involves cats, please send it her way. Also, if you own a Kindle, you can read Hazard Cat there. And, for those that might have missed it, my detective short story "Hounded" can be read here on Hazard Cat.

5 comments:

Aubrie said...

I got your poem and I love it! I'll write you an email about it tomorrow morning :) Right now I'm off to see Ghost hunters!!! Bwahahaha.

Good luck with your edits! (My critiques have gotten better by tenfold since then as well, so I feel bad that I couldn't fix some of your edits on my firts look through.) Oh well. Live and learn.

:)

Lisa Rusczyk said...

Wow, I can't believe you just started writing a little over a year ago. You must be a natural. It took me years of writing to be able to get a sentence out that didn't sound like it belonged in a poorly written kids book.

Nice poetry lines! Maybe you should write one about a cat....

Thanks for the promotion for Hazard Cat!

Cherie Reich said...

Aubrie - Thanks for reading my poem. I'm glad you liked it, and I feel like my writing and critiques have gotten better because yours has gotten better. :)

Lisa - I did write in online role playing games since 1999, but I never wrote much original work (except for two short stories) before I began my novel in January 2009. You should have seen my writing before I began my novel. It was worst than a poorly written kid's book.

I am considering writing a poem about a cat. If I do, I'll send it your way, and you're welcome about the promotion. :) I hope it helps.

Lisa Rusczyk said...

Oh yes, for sure send me a poem about cats...

Oh really, online role playing games? That is so awesome! Do you mean MMORPGs or D&D? I have played MMORPGs for a while now.

Cherie Reich said...

I haven't tried D&D or MMORPGs...I'm not really sure what MMORPGs means. *laughs* It's more like role playing games where you create a character and write with other people's characters. Right now, I typically do just Harry Potter RPGs, and I have one Twilight RPG. I used to do Phantom of the Opera ones, but I fell out of doing them.