February 7, 2025

Writing practice: prose into blank verse “it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a noble of that country”: The banner’s stitch forespoke the shield’s design “I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on …

February 6, 2025

Writing practice: prose into blank verse “the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth”: The western stent engorged with Danube’s blood “took us among the traditions of Turkish rule”: Of Turkish past reborn in modern traits “We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall …

February 5, 2025

Writing practice: write prose into blank verse, using imagery where you can All quotes below are from Dracula: “There is throughout no statement of past things wherein memory may err”: The echoes from all past events ring clear [fine enough] “for all the records chosen are exactly contemporary”: All echoed notes were played by authors’ …

February 4, 2025

Writing practice: More imagery As an exercise, I’ll rewrite headlines from yesterday’s newspapers… “Rubio takes message to Panama”: Then State unsheathed the silk-wrapped sword of war [not what happened, but it’s an attempt] “Europe Weighs How to Bolster Military Might”: Europe looks to marshal martial marshals [ok that’s just silly and not imagery, but whatever] …

February 3, 2025

Writing practice: more imagery [ok more of this first…] Integrity encompasses many things. Intellectual integrity means you constantly work to expand your perspective and knowledge, to eliminate the adjectives and adverbs when you try to identify the facts of reality, to take ego out of your thought progression when examining the facts of a situation. …

February 2, 2025

Writing practice: more imagery [ok but more thoughts right now] Personal integrity is not just intellectual integrity, and integrity of conduct. It’s also conducting yourself in a way that discourages others from treating you without integrity. Keeping yourself fit, capable of standing up for yourself not just socially/professionally but also physically (or at least being …

February 1, 2025

Writing practice: more imagery [from notes written early this morning:] Confront your fears, insecurities, doubts, lack of knowledge, limited perspective. Anything that shrinks you, confront, identify, understand, eliminate. If you are scared of confronting reality, you lose. You always lose. You must identify what is behind the fear because that’s really the reason you’re afraid. …

January 31, 2025

Writing practice: more imagery work [embers of the hand. time shall unfold what pleated cunning hides] [from notes i wrote yesterday:] That which you fear is grounded in a weakness. you need to confront, address, and strengthen, and it’s a lifelong endeavor. Experiences which trigger a fear or a red light can be useful to …

January 30, 2025

Writing practice: imagery tears: condensed emotional overload frozen emotions melting [still too literal] recovery seeds [ok that’s at least a little better. recovery isn’t great, but seeds is a decent metaphor. try again with that. relate one aspect of seeds that applies to tears. i love embers of the hand because it’s two static images …

January 29, 2025

Writing practice: more work on metaphor/imagery premise: all human action is condensed thought, conscious or unconscious as for embers of the hand, creating a metaphor is to identify one specific aspect of a thing and relate it to one aspect of another thing that creates an image. so for tears, say. what’s one specific aspect? …