Platforming and Blogs

We’re all hearing that if we want to be successful authors, we need a platform. A platform means having an ‘audience.’  Without readers and an audience it is  difficult to sell books. You can platform by becoming a speaker, starting a blog, and networking with others of similar interests on Facebook and twitter.  It is the way of the future. Sometimes I find it distracting.

Sometimes when I’m platforming, I feel that that is time I am not actually writing. 

Except on my blog. That’s because I actually get to write pieces, essays, poems etc while I’m blogging. I get to read the writings of other writers, and have other writers read me.  Sometimes they even ’like’ my posts.  And thrill of thrills, when they leave a comment. Ah… contentment.  (I know its corny, but you can’t deny a comment now and then makes your day!) Blogging gives you feedback, and I’m finding it an important tool to discover who I am.

Then I discovered I could Publicize my writings on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc and found a good way to Platform was at the press of a button! The Publicize Button.

WordPress is a step up from the other platforms because you are actually doing your trade which is writing, if you’re a writer.  I’ve heard several authors kept WordPress, but dropped some of their other platforms, finding that too many platforms proved to be a distraction. (True story, and I read this on a couple of blogs!) 

I mean, How many balls can a writer juggle?

Signing off, (just for a little bit) to try to work a little on that novel I’ve been working on since forever!

Swift as a Star Flicker (first and second version)

Swift As A Star Flicker (First version)

Prayer, it does ascend
Up from the mind into the air
Through the highest cumulus
In an orange dusky sky

And higher still, like a tailed comet
Out of earth’s realm of spiraling starlights
And into the black of space,
And higher still

Past a rare jeweled galaxy
With stars like sapphires, rubies, emeralds and diamonds
Where a nebulous cloud, a violet mountain births
Explodes new stars forth

A factory place, a sandcastle of space
And higher still,
To the top of the highest universe-
That second sky

Swift as a star flicker
To God’s ear
An ear pressed close to the keyhole
Of that other Kingdom’s door

An ear so fine
That it can hear
The unspoken prayer
Clear as a Trumpet’s songful blare

Zellie M. Quinn
***********************************************
Swift As A Star Flicker (second version)

Prayer, it does ascend
Up from the mind into the air
Through the highest cumulus
In an orange dusky sky

And higher still, like a tailed comet
Out of earth’s realm of spiraling starlights
And into the black of space,
And higher still

Past a rare jeweled galaxy
With stars like sapphires, rubies, emeralds and diamonds
Where a nebulous cloud, a violet mountain births
Explodes new stars forth

A factory place, a sandcastle of space
And higher still,
To the top of the highest universe-
That second sky

Swift as a star flicker
To God’s ear
An ear pressed close to the keyhole
Of that other Kingdom’s door

And God’s Spirit reaches forth,
Heaven descends,
To companion the soul
That prays.

Zellie M. Quinn

Why are there 2 versions? Well the first version was rejected by the initial editor. So I redid it, but not before I’d sent my mother the initial poem. She framed it, and sent it to me, with a backround of beautiful stars in space. Eventually the second version was accepted. (My mother to this day prefers the first version.- of course, she is my mother). As you can see, only the last 4 lines have changed. 

I posted both. You be the judge… (No disrespect to the editor. I think in the end he forced me to be creative and not get so stuck on one ending). I like both endings. For the record, yes, the Editor used the 2nd version of the poem.

The Prisoner in his Cell

The Prisoner in his Cell

The Spirit sighed
When you were born
And loved you even then

It watched you as
A little child
Playing with your toys

And wasn’t blind
To your surprise
When you received those blows

Then the Spirit
Wailed like you
When you found they didn’t care

And through the years
What cost Him most
Was when your heart turned black as theirs

With a holy fist
He beat the ground
When all belief in you lay dead-

And now the Spirit sits beside you in your cell
Knowing the fractures of your teeth and bones
And waits for your consent-

To take you by the hand,
And give you freedom and joy
And Life again.

Zellie M. Quinn

What Angels See

What Angels See

I turn the knob slowly
Till it will turn no more
And gently push the door to your room
Soft footed, I step long,
Over the board that sounds,
To your bed
I stand and gaze on your sleeping form
To see what it is
Those angels see
When they guard your sleep

Little one
I, once hardened,
Am awed
A sentimental fool
What propels your functions?
From where did you grasp your perfections?
You’ve melted this heart of ice
Yet you stretch and yawn unaware

I long for the stillness of the angels
To gaze and to stay
So many cares and worries call-
Child,
May your angels ever watch over you
Long after I’m gone.

Zellie M. Quinn

One by One…

One by One…

Go deeper
Where rock is set aflame

Making what is cold
Molten lava

Spewed forth
To set ablaze all in its path-

I’ve known them all
Candle flames and roaring stars

(One by one)
Doused

No longer dare I flicker idly
No longer

Zellie M. Quinn

Platinum of Highest Purity

Platinum of Highest Purity

Promising ground has been found
Hopeful men send for the drill
The steel bit rotates its teeth
Grinding and crushing through rock and earth
Till it reaches rich oil.

Men dig long tunnels
The hired go to the pipes
Drilling, blasting, crushing, and sorting
They strip the cave of blue ground
Before the diamond is exposed.

Others labor hard for Truth
Placed deep in the core of man,
Platinum of greatest density,
Truth must be drawn
Like everlasting water from a well

Else its weight may sink the man
To the earth’s fiery core
Where, like a raging fire
Consumes the forest wood
And leaves red-hot embers,

The fiery core
Consumes the dry wood
Of a soul
As forsaken as it has
Forgotten Truth.

Zellie M. Quinn

Must Poetry and Entertainment be at Odds?

I’ve read wonderful poems about endlessly named critters, bugs, and insects etc. They were engaging poems perhaps because the author was genuinely interested in this topic himself, and it showed through.

As opposed to authors who do it for the sake of being in on the latest ’fad.’

Jus’ sayin’…

I mean, why is so much poetry out there such a mental puzzle? Why can’t poems be engaging- Like a good story? I know that poetry is ‘deep’ thought, but really, why must it put readers to sleep? Rather than go for engagement, some Editors seem to go for the ever-so-important latest fad poem.

Some somewhat famous poet, a University lady, (whose name you may know if you’ve ever studied more modern poetry) wrote a book of poems 10 or more years back when all the craze was sea critters, starfish and all that. I thought, “Oh, here’s a book by this ‘award’ winner whose name I’ve heard before.  Hmm… I think I’ll read her book.”

After the 4th long poem (listing names of creatures I didn’t recognize) I wanted to cry! Or die!

Why did she think we’d want to read about endless listings of creatures? And how are endless lists poetry? And did she really love fishies? Or was she just jumping in on the the latest poetry craze?

If  I, as a fellow poet, eagerly threw myself into reading her book and couldn’t stand it, why should the common reader?

And would she write a similar book now, or does she look up what was the latest poetry fad is and write about that? Does she know who she is?

The argument is, “Well, it isn’t necessary for the common reader to understand- it’s for the sake of posterity, of importance, and of deep thought…”

There was no deep thought, but I’m sure the author impressed herself and her fellow scholars with all the names of sea fishies and ocean spiders no one knew about.

I’m just saying, that when it comes to poetry, I won’t necessarily seek to entertain. But I do wish to be true to myself and write about whats interesting to me, and not the latest poetry craze. 

Poetry Today-Is it Modern, Silly, Boring, and Stupid?

Sir Poetry Today-

So this is Sir Poetry today?
You modernists descend upon him
Devour him
And declare his death a civilized act
You, proud of the glazed eyes
And stiff limbs fingered by the blind-
Why the surprise as
Commoners hurry by your prize?

Zellie M. Quinn

I sat in my College English class and the professor announced we were going to have a guest, a poet was coming to do a reading in our class. When the poet came and did her reading, I leaned forward in my chair to catch every word, hoping to glean some new knowledge about this ‘mystery’ called ‘poetry’.

Then it was question and answer time. When one student asked, “What did that line mean, about ‘the fire over the hill’ the poet immediately got uncomfortable and waved the question away saying, “I don’t ‘interpret’ my poetry, I leave that to the critics.” I leaned back in my chair and thought her comment odd, since I wrote poetry and knew exactly what it was about.

In articles on Poetry these days, many have written that poetry isn’t supposed to mean anything, that it is a sort of compilation of words that it is up to the reader to interpret. Hmmm. And then the experts wonder why poetry doesn’t sell these days.

A distinguished white haired poet was interviewed on T.V. after winning an important prize or two (or many!)  I couldn’t help but notice just how important he was since he talked down to the interviewer, seemed very put off by the whole T.V. interview thing, sniffed many times, and looked all in all like a person I would want to avoid. At one point the interviewer asked him “And what did that poem ‘mean.’” Immediately the poet looked at him sharply and proclaimed in a very stern tone, “I DON’T INTERPRET MY POEMS – I LEAVE THAT TO THE CRITICS!”  Needless to say, the interviewer had been put in his place!  The interviewer cringed. 

I winced,  and changed the channel quickly. 

What has happened to poetry? What is this stuff they call Modern? Sometimes it’s the blathering’s of a nutty professor who receives awards from his fellow Academia (who sit around and decide whoever they aren’t mad at that year will receive the prestigious prize). The truly wonderful Academic poet’s typically aren’t the ones who win the big awards.

I once listened to an ‘important’ poet who’d won some major prize, who for ‘forever’ humphed and droned on about nothing.  Every run-on sentence lasted at least 4 long paragraphs, since he was too enlightened to use stanzas and too enlightened to end any run on phrase. Right.  No wonder he’d won a prize! Everyone was so happy that the poem had finally ended. I thought he must be a fraud, who just made put together boring nonsensical phrases, a (horror of horrors) versifier, with out the verses or any meaning. That is, he was worse than a versifier, since at least those poems usually have some entertaining quality or at least some kind of meaning or point, that I thoroughly appreciate. He was someone who put together words that not only didn’t have a topic, subject, or train of thought, he’d either written about nothing on purpose- which, I’ve been told by some modern poets, is pure genious! Or he’d been told as an Academic Professor that if he didn’t write something, his University wouldn’t be considered important. And he, having no ability for poetry, desparately put together incoherent thoughts while his fellow professors, in amazement of what they didn’t understand, promptly gave him a prize. After all, how can anyone criticize what is beyond their understanding?

Often, Professors of Academia are a tightly knit group that no one outside of their circle can penetrate. Commoners can scratch their heads in boredom, I mean, can look at them in wide-eyed wonder and realize just how below the poet they (the commoners) are. Like the townspeople in the story The Emperors New Clothes, no one wants to look stupid, so everyone pretends they are enraptured and oh so enlightened by the incoherent monotone readings.

I’ve read or heard wonderful and exquisite poems by professors.  Interestingly, they aren’t considered as ’important’  in the literary world and  typically theirs don’t win the awards. Maybe because their true poems (poems with meaning) are seen as a threat?

The description of a true poem is that it should have different levels of meaning

I’ve heard wonderful poems (read in monotones) that SHOULD win awards, some for their content, some for their music, and some for their beauty.  Other poems are read in such rich tones as to bring the poem alive. Others are read with backround music that have just the touch needed to add emotion. And others,  read in monotone,  about every day things are great too, because they have content. Whatever it takes to reach the audience…

 

How and why I write poems.

I attended a wedding once, and at the dinner I happened to be seated next to the singer for the wedding.   I complimented her, and told her I could tell she’d had professional training since her singing was so good.  She shook her head and waved my comment away with her hand and said, “Oh singing, I was born with it. I’ve never had any training. I totally take it for granted!” I thought she was  confident & assured in her singing because of training- She was confident and assured because it was something that came naturally to her.

I had an interesting discussion with my identical twin sister once. She wrote a poem. It was a very nice poem, and if I recall correctly, it was one sentence long. Wait, maybe 2 sentences… I thought it was a beautiful poem, though I can’t recall what it was.  (I will make sure to get it from her and insert it if I get her permission- stay tuned.) My mother thought it was so nice that she asked my sister if she’d really written it! I  asked her if she wrote poetry on a regular basis like I did, and she said no. That poem was a one shot deal and done under duress for a class.  She said she isn’t a ‘creative’ person.

She gave me permission, (I’m inserting it at a later date-) here is my sister’s poem;

Like Diamond’s, Sculptured

So glittery, bright
Like diamonds, sculptured.
Hands from above disperse
That crystal, shimmering frozen flake.

In truth, she is a lawyer. She is my identical twin, but she is my mirror image twin. Some twins are mirror image. That is, one is left handed, the other right handed.  She is left brained, right handed. I am right brained, left handed. I’m apparently creative artistic, and she is math analytical.

(Did you know that identical twins have different fingerprints?)

But I digress. Years ago I showed this same sister a story I’d written, and she looked at me amazed, and I said something like, “Whats the big deal, can’t you write stories?” She said emphatically, “No! I can’t!”  This was the beginning of my understanding that not everyone is naturally creative or a writer.

I was asked once by a wonderful lady, as to how I wrote poems.

Inspiration: I have to say each poem comes differently. Sometimes they come from deep emotion. Sometimes I get an idea and know right away, “I think I have a poem”- though it will need some developement. Sometimes there is something I want to express or convey.  

One time I was thinking about myself and life,  and a random line came to me completely out of the blue, expressed what I was feeling about myself, and I knew immediately that I had a poem.  An important thing creative persons must do is remember to immediately write down their inspirations, lest the inspiration vanish into never never land.  

Often nature gives me a poem.

One time I had a dream, and woke up and wrote down the makings of a poem, which later I finished, (after some coffee-.) 

Another time I awoke in the middle of the night with an understanding I didn’t previously have.  I thought, ‘maybe I should write that down so I don’t forget it’- but promptly fell asleep. Later that night, again I awoke and again had that same understanding I hadn’t previously had. Luckily that time I forced myself to get up and write.

Once I was listening to music, and got the idea for a poem based on how that music inspired me.   I was listening to the theme music (Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra)from 2001 a Space Odyssey. I thought about how amazing the music was, so grand, to powerful, so moving, heavenly. And I wrote my poem, “Harmonies from Heaven”

Harmonies of Heaven…

Have you heard what Strauss has written of late?
His ‘Space Odyssey’ just a Prelude
To fresh scores
Inspiration derived from heaven’s wonders
Soaring melodies among celestial subjects
Musicians of old performing for the banquets of paradise

His harmonies now enchant the angels
As they tend to their earthly charges
Their graceful movements
Accompanied by a most fetching score
Ah, the new melodies that I long to hear
Endless wait!

Hush!
Don’t let a whisper
Escape your lips
Listen!
Hear the
Music of angels!
And you will find
All things new!

Zellie M. Quinn

At one point in my life, when I was under many stresses, poems just flowed. I’d take a sheet of paper and fill it! Stress seems to increase either inspiration, or creativity… But it doesn’t always work, sometimes stress shuts down creativity.

Inspiration is the same when developing a story or an article or poem. I have the idea and I start brainstorming, writing thoughts and words on paper to create.  And what may be ok after the first try gets better and better the more I work on it. That is, what I am trying to express becomes more and more apparent the more time and effort I put into it.

Sometimes the writing flows. But always I have to shape it, organize it, and polish it.

Michelangelo said that when sculpting, the form was already in the stone, or marble, it was just up to him to release it, to remove the stone hiding the form within it. (I’ve tried a little of that, and believe me, it takes ‘talent’ to reveal what is in that marble or lump of clay. It takes a genious!) 

A poem’s initial inspiration is sometimes like that block of stone. It takes a lot of elbow grease to get it the way you want it to look and feel. The words, brainstorming, initial drafts are like the block of marble, or in this case the block of words.  Even when a whole poem flows out and I have a seemingly finished poem, I always go back and polish it.

So how do I write a poem? I use any inspiration, and begin writing, brainstorming, cutting, pasting, rearranging. And then I come back to it, over and over again, until I have it right, or until I have to send it in, and I bite my lip and hope I won’t kick myself later. Often after I’ve sent in a poem, I’ll redo it again, or add a stanza. I have a poem that was published years ago, and I’ve redone the ending many times. I still don’t like that last line in it.

And if you are a writer and feel you have no inspiration? Then just write. Everyday. Junk. Whatever comes to mind. Eventually you’ll be able to come up with some good tidbits in your writing scribbles that you wouldn’t have discovered if you’d never sat down to write that you had nothing to write about.

The writer Carol Houselander, who was quite prolific, wrote that when she quit writing, all her inspiration eventually dried up.  She said that the more she wrote, the more she was inspired.

 Sometimes inspiration isn’t something you wait for, but something you dig up.

I’ve found that if I try too hard to ‘wait’ for the inspiration, all I do is end up waiting. But this isn’t to say you shouldn’t be on the alert. Many of my writings would never have happened if I hadn’t jotted down that ‘spark’ or a ’thought’ that I realized might just be the makings of a future poem or article…

Zellie M. Quinn

Why are some people optimists?

Why are some people optimists? What makes some people able to overcome the great hurdles that life puts before them? Why do some have the strength, and others just get bitter?

Why is it that some who face all the hurt and obstacles of poverty bounce back and take back their lives, while others spiral down to the gutter?

Have you noticed that when the tiniest of breezes blow, some trees dance, but others are rock still?

Why do Some Trees Dance?

Why do some trees dance
At unseen breezes, on the stillest of days…
Why are some branches quite limber,
Shaking leaves in gentle spritely waves,
Making a new music of light and sound?

Other trees are still
When the winds dance by
Immoveable, waiting, hoping,
Holding their breath

Wondering if-
“Those dancing ones can’t have known the beating rains
Pelting,
Pelting,
Pelting,

The heat of that sun!
Burning,
Burning,
Burning,

The drying winds
Blowing,
Blowing,
Blowing

Or they would be
Stoic,
Hard,
Sad,
Like us…”

Zellie M. Quinn