I discovered another helpful dice trick. If I get stuck I roll for a random spot in my text and start typing additional details for that scene, or dialogue, or what a particular character is thinking.

I just got my old friend Kind!Rejection. Which is certainly better than Formal! Rejection. But still sucks in its way, and then you get to thank your rejector, which always feels a bit messed-up, though it probably is the Thing to Do. And there is a crass little person inside of me that's like "How perfect do you want this? You can't even pay me anyway."(And I don't even know where that comes from. Hand to God, this isn't about the money for me. But I like getting paid sometimes.)

It's late and I'm bored so here is my most recent updates in poetry:

Life No More

When there's a dive of five
Swimming, learning, growing
When bubbles come alive
Death takes drive

When at the door is four
Opening,entering, greeting
When drink hits floor
She's no more

When there's only three
Joking, laughing, playing
When cat gets stuck in tree
No more free

Once theres only two
Sitting, waiting, watching
Once sky is blue
Bomb go boom

Now there's only one
Hiding, Lying, Cutting
Now nothing's done
No more son

THIS ONE'S BY MY FRIEND TAYLOR:
Fly on the Wall

by Taylor Niemann

like a fly on the wall,
sit and watch the day go by.

nobody notices what i am seeing,
but i know things that they would deny.

pay few attention,
to the people i dislike.

however there is one person,
that got my attention on the sight.

saw her watching,
waiting, and wishing.

she was looking at a boy,
one who i had been previously kissing.

she caught my attention,
when i saw what she did.

when he was next to her,
she smiled like a lttle kid.

it made my heart flutter,
how her face lit up.

when all the boy did,
was give her a "what's up?"

at that moment,
decided it wasn't right,

for me to be feeling this way,
for she has felt it every night.

made my choice,
and now its her turn.

its my time now,
to have my heart burn.

BACK TO MY WRITING:

If I Dropped Down

One more day
To say goodbye
You'd take my hand
I'd feel so high
But in the end
You wouldn't catch me
If I dropped down

One more meal
To fill me so
It'd taste just right
You could not know
But now and then
I think you might care
If I passed by

It takes some time
To say goodbye

It takes the words
That feel just right

It takes more than
A helping hand

But in the end
You wouldn't catch me
If I dropped down

One more night
To fall asleep
I'd take the bow
But you wouldn't weep
Cause once again
You wouldn't save me
If I leapt off

This life is more
Than you expected

You wouldn't warm me
If I was cold

You wouldn't care for
A Me that's old

You wouldn't touch me
If I was blind
You'd take your prescense
Leave me behind

If I was blind
If I was old
If I was cold
If I leapt off
If I passed by
You wouldn't smile
Or give a "Hi".

I will take your lies
Throw them in a pot
Light em with a match
Watch em burn and rot
I'm nothing to you
So what else do I got?
What else, what else?

One more day
To say goodbye
You'd take my hand
I'd feel so high
But in the end
You wouldn't catch me
If I dropped down

Cry For Me

If you don't cry for me
I'll never learn to trust you
Never know how to make you see
I just want you to cry for me
Just cry for me, please

If you play games with me,
I might think I like you,
Might think I could make you be
Be someone that could cry for me
But you'll never be, please

If you start to stay away
I'll try a little harder
Try to make you care for me
Maybe I just want you to see
You cannot see me, please

Please cry for me
Don't do this to me
I'd never do it to you
Don't ask me to
Cause I could never hurt you
Never try to
I'd never try to

We're not so young now,
But you've not matured
Why is your head,
Filled with this blindness
It tears me apart,
That hole in my heart
From you

Where have you gone,
Whats made you so wrong
You never used to lie to me
Be better than me
Hide from me
You fool

If you don't cry for me,
I'll be done with you somewhat
Just be done since you can't see
All the love that comes from me
So much love its hard to breathe
So hard to breathe
Because you don't cry for me
You never cry for me

buffysmg, the first and last poems would make great songs, if you're at all inclined that way or know anyone who is. The first one especially sounds like something by, say, a girl singer with a deceptively light voice singing a very simple, almost nursery-rhyme-like tune (maybe a bit like the incredibly eerie "Pretty Fly" sung by little Pearl in The Night of the Hunter).

Ugh, erika, that sucks. But the Kind!Rejection does at least mean that they wouldn't mind hearing from you again. If they put enough effort in to make the rejection not Formal!, they saw something in your writing that's worth that effort. It's still a rejection and it still feels lousy, but they're definitely not slamming the door in your face.

This is true. This editor knows my work and likes it, so it's not as if I don't thank her, but...

I found out something cool, recently. My friend Donna teaches a class called "Perspectives In Disability" and she uses my tattoo article in class.

buffysmg, the first and last poems would make great songs, if you're > at all inclined that way or know anyone who is. The first one > especially sounds like something by, say, a girl singer with a > deceptively light voice singing a very simple, almost nursery-rhyme-like > tune (maybe a bit like the incredibly eerie "Pretty Fly" sung by little > Pearl in The Night of the Hunter).

I actually had been singing the lines in my head as I wrote them, but I am in no way capable of singing them. LOL

This is a bit more basic/mechanical than our usual topics on this thread, but I have a question:

I just replaced the prologue of my alternate history with an obituary--that of the Important Personage whose premature death is where my world's history first departs from that of the one we're all living in. Incidentally, I hated killing that prologue, since it was very prettily written. I came closer to channeling Patrick O'Brian than I'm normally capable of, and I kept re-reading it to gloat over my elegant turns of phrase. However, I realized that it was more than the reader needs to know about events happening 25 years before the main action of the story, featuring a character who never appears again for the very good reason that he's dead.

So I cut the affecting death scene and just wrote a one-sentence obituary (one sentence because in my world the guy dies too young to become that Important of a Personage). And I'm proud of my google-fu in tracking down a newspaper for the town where he died and in figuring out how to word a period-appropriate obituary. But I don't know how to format the darn thing. Should I still have "PROLOGUE" as the section header? Right now it's something like this:

From the PERIODICAL of PLACE, DATE

The obituary itself, which is one longish sentence about the guy, how old he was, where he died, and what of.

Does that sound right for manuscript formatting? I'm sure it'll look different in the actual book if I'm so fortunate as to sell it, but that's not my problem.