CBMused

Mixed Greens and Diced Tomatoes
I’m overwhelmed and touched by everyone who has responded to The Heart of the Matter. You’ve all given me valuable insights and positive ideas that I will pass on to my friend. Thank you.

Blue Cheese and a Dash of Dijon Mustard
How to Write a Misery Memoir is an article that caught my attention. It offers advice on how to spruce up an autobiography. I have one piece of advice to add: start a blog for practice and in no time you can inject the right amount of fantasy or fiction or Dijon mustard into your bio. With so many blogs claiming to offer real stories, yet eyebrows are silently raised in doubt, we can all become wannabe writers.

Spanish Onion
One can get drunk on lack of sleep. One can get high on strong paint fumes. One can become intolerably irritable when a morning person says hello. Either way, it’s sure to end in tears. And blog posts that don’t make sense.

Roast Beef
After my reminiscent post, For the Love of Tokyo, I came across more Japanese oddities that made my heart flutter. These sexy school boys may be the equivalent to a geek’s Maid Café, and admittedly while they look ‘cute’, I prefer my ‘boys’ to look show more bulge: broad shoulders, strong pecs, washboard abs, killer legs and pinchable bums. Know wha’ I mean?

Martini Moments… While Waiting for a Muse

1. Waiting for a Muse is like watching grass grow. Or paint dry. Full of clichés, similes and metaphors which you immediately discard in favour of a blank fluoro screen. Or pale green grass. Or moonlight mist paint.

2. Can a man possess a huge ego and still be utterly likeable?

3. To be a good writer, one must be a good reader. But an avid reader does not necessarily make a good writer. Or a good critic.

4. Is “chick lit” sometimes used as a derogatory term because it sounds as naughty as ordering a Dirty Martini?

5. “Oh, I nearly forgot. The cocktail hour can be longer than an hour.”* So is the wait for a Muse…

* Frank Moorhouse: Martini – A Memoir

There is a saying that roughly states that you can never know where you are going, unless you first know where you came from. This thought sticks in my mind from time to time and gets me thinking. It may be the time of year and the inevitable reflective mood that it brings to so many of us. Regardless, it has caused me to go back and look at a few of my drafts and zArchives posts.

In the reading of some of these, I see no real path of continuity for my growth or change in writing methods. I have reached a point in my writing where I no longer consider the method I am writing in during the process. Upon reflection, I see that I write in many different styles at once or stick to one form of writing for weeks on end. What does this say about me as a blogger?

Sometimes I write with a purpose. I have a set goal in mind and use words that take me from Point A to Point B along the path that I choose. It is a very purposeful method of expression and is often nearly finished in the first draft. Other times I write with no real end in mind and just kind of get there as I wander through the story picking up words and scenes like a child on an Easter Egg hunt. This is a very exploratory method of writing and it often leads to a revision in the more purposeful A to B style. Often, my more creative pieces come from just this style of writing.

Still other times, I write in an overflowing gush of words that pours out onto the paper like a spilled glass of wine, forever imprinting the words in place no matter how hard I try to clean it up and make it blend. Sometimes, I am able to be purposeful or filled with wanderlust as I revise these drafts to something that resembles purposeful expression. These pieces seldom see the light of day in anything other than snippets as I will never be comfortable with them in an aesthetic sense. More often than not, they spur me to explore a small part of them and create a whole new draft that goes in an entirely different direction than the original piece.

How do you get from A to B?

♣