I don’t think it was the haiku. I think they just decided that today was the day they weren’t going to write, weren’t going to work, weren’t going to cooperate. The girl who had written the poem that made her (and me) cry on Friday had lost her privileges for the week so she opted out of everything saying it didn’t matter what she did because she was already screwed. She kept mouthing out to everyone around her.

Midway we stopped to talk about what they did or didn’t like about poetry. Most of them said they liked poetry fine as long as they could write it on their own time and not in a forced poetry class. I understand them not wanting to write and being half-assed about it all but still, they are in lock up and they have to follow the rules, get credits toward graduation, etc.

No matter what I asked them the answer was no or I don’t care.

The two hours felt like 8 and I was completely drained when I was done.

I think this was one of the testing sessions that tends to happen each time I teach in lock-up situations. I need to come up with some really good and fun poetry lessons to share on Friday. I’m thinking of YouTube videos of poets performing their work. I also need to come in full of confidence to show them they haven’t beaten me.

I think what is the hardest about days like this is that I know in my heart how poetry and writing can help them think about their lives differently, how it can help them begin to heal. I know how writing things down can make things better, even if it is just for a sliver of that particular moment. I know how writing has saved me until I was strong enough to save myself.

But I can’t tell them that. I can only try to light a path.

Welcome to another installment of Write After Reading: Writing the Life Poetic, a  weekly online book club with poetry participation. It alternates between my blog and Laura’s blog. Last week, over at Laura’s blog, we talked about chapter 58 and writing the Zeitgist. Today I picked chapter 63, Taking Shape, Experimenting with Poetic Forms.

This chapter talks briefly about how the constraints of a form can actually improve your poetry or at least lead you down some interesting paths. Though I haven’t yet devoted the time to mastering some of the longer forms I do agree that having that structure often helps me focus my poetic attention in much the same way that we found when we did the Mad Libs.

Here’s an online source with easy explanations of the forms of verse – Poetry Handbook.

I opted to go for haiku since I’m writing this late at night after a crazy-making day but I hope to come back tomorrow and try some other forms as well.

sleeping dog whimpers
chases squirrel shadows, barks
hunter triumphant

one week, no flour, sugar
bad habits need undoing
how will I survive?

I wanted to come up with some wonderful title about the interesection of writing and art in my life so I could write more posts using the same wonderful title about the interesection of writing and art in my life but, you see where this is going right? I spent fifteen minutes brainstorming titles and got nothing. I seriously, I mean SERIOUSLY, considering not writing the post until I came up with the perfect title which would have meant, of course, that the post would never get written.

Luckily I caught myself in the middle of that vicious cycle and I stopped. I told myself it was just a blog post. Just get the darn thing written. (Ah, if only that worked on me for novels.)

I spent some time this weekend printing out some photographs to use in some art journals for my poetry. I printed out all the inspiration photos from any of the 15 Words or Less photopoetry exercises I’ve done over the years on  ’s blog. I printed out all the in inspiration photos to go with the Native Plant haiku I wrote for National Poetry Month a few years ago. This meant a lot of fighting with the color printer, some good prints made and some so-so prints made. And eventually I pulled out some matte photos of the same stuff I had printed at the drug store thinking I’d use some of them too. My idea was to collage the photos into some of the lovely blank journals I have painted recently and then print the short poems in the journal along with the inspiration photo. I had lots of journals prepped because my go-to thing when doing art is to do a color-wash on a page of a blank journal.

In my head I had this picture of a journal full of watercolor pages with these pictures and my poems and then I’d do some collage with my beautiful papers and then some of the doodling I love. I didn’t want a scrapbook. I wanted art. And in my head, it was a masterpiece.

In reality, at the moment, none of the project is making me happy. The thin paper has photos that don’t look very sharp and the drugstore photos look like, well, modern photographs which don’t match up with the watercolor backgrounds. I’m two steps away from tossing it all in a box and putting in the laundry room so I can forget about it for a while. I’d much rather just grab a blank journal and start covering the pages with color. It’s easy. It’s fun. And I already know how to do it.

And I realized that’s what happens with my writing too. When the going gets tough, I go write something else. Beginnings? No problem. I’m great at first chapters, first pages. Poems that will never be published? Sure thing, I’ll get right on that. Novels that are broken or unwritten or finished but need to be tossed and started over? Stories that exist as a perfect vision in my head that never make it onto the page? Got lots of those too.

Now I’m not beating myself up (much) about my habits of starting and my failures in the follow-through department. I’m just noticing the pattern. And I’m thinking that maybe what I have been worrying about so much of the time, the not finishing, the starting way too many things and then discarding them, maybe it’s not always a bad thing. Maybe it’s just “my” thing. My process. Like working a puzzle. Some people might put the outside edges together and then look for matching colors and work within that group of colors, putting things together. Other people might just start in one corner and pick up piece after piece after piece to try against the same spot. They’ll eventually make the connection, it’s just going to take them longer.

I don’t always work that way but when I do I have allowed myself to feel “less than.”  And by that I mean even while I’m doing it, I know I’m taking the longest, hardest way possible and I know other people would do it differently and get there faster and the fact that I’m not doing it the same way as other people has often made me feel less than them. Less than right. Less than the creative person I know I am.

And that’s wrong.

Now I can see that my long meandering way is just that, my long meandering way to the same end, just with a different view as I journey.

This morning I took another look at the photographs printed on paper and printed like photographs. And I looked at the colored journal pages. I gazed at the blank white pages of another journal, still tempted to just grab my watercolor crayons and do something easy.

But I thought about Max, the dog in one of my novels-in-progress. I thought about how I found that newspaper clipping last week that confirmed the crazy painful plot idea I had was valid. I knew from the start that Max was going to be a hard book to write but that it was also going to teach me a lot about writing. And I got that tingle. That little tingle we get when we know we’re on the right path even if it looks like we’re going to fall off the edge of the cliff with just one more step. I love that feeling. It confirms that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, even if I’m marching to an off-beat drummer.

I took another look at my piles of poems and photographs. I torn some photos into pieces. I grabbed some paint and glue.  And I started to think about how I could create a different sort of art, a different masterpiece than the original vision. I don’t know how long it will take. I’ll only know that when I am done, I will have told another story my way, the only way I know how to do it.

My month of play and this month of introspection has led to, well, a lot of introspection. I’ve also been working my way through my self-help and motivational books in the library. Rereading old favorites, culling books that no longer speak to me. I feel I’m in a better state of mind, happier in the here and now, than I have been in a long time, perhaps ever. But that doesn’t mean I don’t look back and wish I could undo some things, wish I could fix a lot of things I didn’t do or I did in a way I wish I hadn’t. One message comes through again and again, forgive yourself and move on. But boy, that forgiving oneself is a hard one, harder for me than learning how to be here now.

Three haiku today.

Poem a day #26

drawing the hard line
between making my amends
and making things worse

no one can tell me
if my choice is right or wrong
silence shouts at me

easily said but
looking to forgive myself
hard habit to learn

© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown.  All rights reserved

If you haven’t already seen Brené Brown’s TED talk on vulnerability, you need to go watch it now. Really. After watching it you might want to order one of her books. I highly recommend both of them but my favorite is The Gifts of Imperfection. So much of the creative world I live in is centered around feedback from others – is my work good enough to publish, to exhibit? Will I get reviewed and if so, will the review be any good? I admire those creatives who are able to say screw the rest of the world, I’m creating what I want to create. I can do it sometimes but not always.

But after reading Brené’s books I realize there are more ways to seek that approval than just with publishing. It’s all around me and I’ve become hyper-aware of it, maybe too aware of it, because I find myself hestitating to do things, to say things, because I don’t know if it will be perceived as trying to call attention to myself. As with everything else, I suppose it is a balancing act and I will have to go too far the other direction and then pull myself back to the center.

Chasing worthiness
want to quit that full-time job
my ego screams NO

© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown. All rights reserved.

Behind again. A haiku from yesterday.

monkey flower blooms
beside the unfurling fern
can you hear me laugh?

© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown. All rights reserved.

I am horrible about falling into the "compare" trap when talking about progress on a project. If I’ve written 100 words, someone else has done 500. If I manage 1,000, someone else has done a chapter. It’s discouraging to me so I find that I have to pull away from reading a lot of what my friends are doing. This is even worse when I am working in verse because word counts and chapter counts, well, they don’t count up the same. So I am trying to celebrate a poem a day. More is good. More is great. But more doesn’t always happen and that’s okay.

Poem a Day #15

one well-written poem
(no chapters, word or page counts)
a productive day

© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown. All rights reserved.

Today has been more pondering about my struggle to write or struggling to not write or struggling to not care what other people think about what I want to write. Just some rough haiku as I try to move through the muddled part of my brain.

falling on deaf ears
my words, pulled from my soul, yes,
my heart breaks again

my heart breaks again
stories stagnate within me
this is what I fear

this is what I fear
doubt wins too many battles
words unwritten wait

words unwritten wait
happily ever after
more than just a dream

© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown. All rights reserved.

For the month of March I gave myself permission to not write and to try and learn how to play (mostly with art.) My hope was that I could find a way to reconnect with my lost writer self. Now that the month of play is over I am trying to distill what I have learned on my journey in my poem-a-day project for National Poetry Month.

Painting kept me in the here and now. In ten and fifteen minute increments I could focus on colors and textures and forget about writing. Except I could never really forget. Not completely.

Two more haiku

untold stories wait
while silence overwhelms me.
at my desk, I weep

I am a writer
who does not write, undefined,
who am i now?

© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown. All rights reserved.

For the month of March I gave myself permission to not write and to try and learn how to play (mostly with art.) My hope was that I could find a way to reconnect with my lost writer self. Now that the month of play is over I am trying to distill what I have learned on my journey in my poem-a-day project for National Poetry Month.

I’ve always been one of those writers who said they "heard voices" and didn’t see pictures. I could tell you how my characters felt but not what they looked like. Even my dreams were primarily auditory and not visual.

During my month of play I gave myself the same sleep intention every night, "What stories should I tell?" I didn’t even mention a character’s name because I didn’t want to influence my subconscious. For a few weeks I had no response. None in my dreams and none in one of those moments of inspiration that come when you least except it. I just kept on doing what I was already doing. I couldn’t say that I trusted the process, I just hadn’t invested anything emotionally in a particular outcome.

After a few weeks of practicing mixing colors and playing with various texture techniques, I was surprised to find myself thinking in pictures and not words. Now considering my fears around not writing and wondering if I would ever write again, this might have made me even more afraid that my silence was permanent and not just a passing pause. But instead I found it invigorating. Laying in bed, waiting to fall asleep and I would wonder what would happen if added a glaze of burnt sienna or dripped some India ink across the half-finished collage that waited on my desk. I saw myself grabbing a handful of colorful papers and gluing them willy-nilly and watching a sunset explode in front of me.

Making art was changing the way my brain worked.

A pair of haiku for today.

Scheherazade
paints tales only I can hear
when I close my eyes

silence sits with me
I am unafraid. Art sings,
colors hold my hand

© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown. All rights reserved.

Kidlitosphere Central has the master list of all the poetic events going on this month.

I was going to post this on Friday for a Friday five but then it started getting really long. Then I was going to post it on Saturday and didn’t. By Sunday I convinced myself to wait until Monday. That’s the way my thought process has been going these days.

I haven’t been around the blogosphere lately because I’ve been doing a lot of pondering about myself and my writing and my online life and art and a whole bunch of stuff. Not sure that many folks even read this any more because I haven’t been good about interacting and I know that’s what makes you fall off of other people’s radar. Anyway, here are some thoughts around some of the things I’ve been thinking.

1. It’s important to think about the whys behind your doing of things.

I have become (mostly unintentionally) greatly disconnected from the online world. Some of this is a carryover from all the house stuff last year but some of it is me dog-paddling for so long that I just don’t have the energy to keep it up anymore. Hard to keep swimming when you don’t see any land in sight. So lately I’m not Tweeting. I’m not blogging or responding to blogs. I’m trying to keep up on Facebook status updates but that’s about it. In some ways this has been good. Online is noisy and even if the noise is virtual, for me it’s like being at a rock concert 24/7. And I don’t do concerts.

Taking in all that info, trying to remember who to check in with, making the rounds and making the rounds and then, one more time, making the rounds it can drain me. It can also fill me, when there’s the give and take with people but because of my unintentional disconnect, there hasn’t been that give and take. I’ve taken from everyone for too long without giving back so people move on. I understand. It’s the way things work. The trouble is figuring out where to jump back in again because it’s not just the jumping in…it’s the convincing myself to keep going beyond those quiet times while things build back up again. So this has been the subject of much pondering on my part.

I recently bought and watched a CD from Brene Brown called The Hustle For Worthniess which was an extension from one of her books (sorry, I can’t remember which one) but the idea of hustling around, doing things we think will make us worthy of someone’s attention rang a little bit too true for me. So I’ve been wondering, why do I Tweet? Why do I use Facebook? And most importantly, why do I blog? Am I trying to help other people or am I seeking attention for myself? And if I want the attention, is that a bad thing, a hustling for worthiness sort of thing? I’m still trying to figure that one out. What confuses me is that a friend told me recently that I am at my best when I put myself out there with honesty and transparency. That rings true for me but then it is all about me, me, me and I don’t know that I am offering anything else to the world.

2. Not everything you try is going to work, and that’s okay.

I am probably going to retire The Poetry Push I started on Tuesdays. It hasn’t taken off and I know that a big reason for that is because of my own lack of participation in the event and in other online things. I think the result might have been different if I had started it during a peak rather than a valley. I might use the list poem prompts as my project for National Poetry month since that’s coming up next month and I have no idea what I am going to do for that. Two years ago when I participated for the first time I wrote haiku about my native garden. Last year I wrote poems about the father I never knew.This year I have no idea. I thought about trying to write poems about Cassie but I don’t know if I could come up with 30 of them. I thought about doing a different poetry prompt each day, doing the exercise myself and hoping more people would participate. I thought about trying to write about art and what it is adding/doing to my life. But so far nothing seems both right and achievable. Because I really hate failing.

3. Play time is an important gift to give yourself, especially guilt-free play time.

I gave myself the gift of March as an entire month of play. It came about as a result of taking with a friend about working and not working and she said you know, there’s a big difference between not working and beating yourself up about it and feeling guilty and then, instead, giving yourself permission to take time off and then not feeling guilty about not working. She was right so when I went to my Asilomar conference at the end of March I let myself think about which one I was doing and finally decided to give myself a month of guilt-free play. I’ve been taking painting lessons online and doing a lot of art. I’ve been sitting in the garden and doing nothing. I’ve been reading non-fiction. And I’ve been waiting for stories to tell me they want me to pay attention to them. The stories, well they’ve surprised me. I’ve been reading more poetry and feeling, at times, less like writing it. I am being drawn back to some middle grade prose ideas I’ve played with. Then of course I start to second-guess myself about why I feel less like writing poetry when I go back and read what I’ve written and mostly like it. I think some of it has to do with the labels and pressures that are placed on verse novelists. (Not that labels and pressures aren’t places on all writers.) Which goes back to my first point and wondering if it is about chasing worthiness again? I’ll continue to let myself see-saw on story thoughts for the next couple of weeks and see how I feel at the end of March.

4. Doing something with a friend makes it more fun. Plus there’s that accountability factor.

Some of you might have read  posting about an upcoming poetry adventure she and I are undertaking together. So many times we get poetry books (or writing craft books) and we really MEAN to do the exercises but we don’t. So Laura and I are starting a weekly feature called Write After Reading where we actually, gasp, plan to DO the exercises in a book as we read it and then discuss it in alternating weeks on our blogs. The first book we are starting with is Writing the Life Poetic and we’d love for you to join us. I’ll write more about it all in a separate post later but for now you can pop over and read about it on Laura’s blog. She’s started us off on Wednesday.

5. Learning something new makes you look at everything else in life differently.

I’ve been mostly focused on art this month and really stretching myself to learn a lot of new things about art in a short amount of time. I love the excitement that comes with learning something new. I love the lack of pressure that comes from being a newbie. I love making "mistakes" and just letting go of the mistake as learning experience and not beating myself up.

I dug into my stash of "beautiful blank books" and just started throwing paint on the blank pages. (oh yes, artists suffer from blank page syndrome just like writers do.) I wanted to overcome the idea that the book was too beautiful for me to use and anything I put into it had to be beautiful too. I had a stash of craft paints that have (to me) a horrible chalky texture that I can’t stand to touch, especially after becoming addicting to Golden Fluid Acrylics. So I decided to use them as a first layer in a new art journal. Every time Cassie rang the bell to go outside I’d sit down at the art desk and slap a coat of paint on a couple of pages. After about a week the journal is mostly filled up with color. Some color I like. Some I don’t. It doesn’t matter. It just the first layer and it’s only paint. I can paint over it. I can collage over it. I can even rip the pages out if I really don’t like it. But I no longer have a blank page staring at me. Now I have something to edit. Just like writing. You can’t revise a blank page.

As usual this went on a lot longer than most people want to read but hey, I’m consistent with my gabbiness. Here’s hoping to be around the blogosphere more in the future.

 was asking about poetry books we might have bought for ourselves or received as gifts for Christmas. I just posted mine in response to her but thought I would add them here, since many of my new habits for 2011 involve poetry.

When Cassie first came to live with us it became apparent very quickly that she hadn’t been socialized around other dogs much at all. In fact, piecing together the few stories we knew about her it appeared the most of her interactions with other dogs had never been very positive. We wanted to change that. We wanted her to be as comfortable and as confident around other dogs as we were.

First we introduced her to my brother-in-law’s dog, Circe. Circe is a high energy German Shepherd that truly never stops moving. Poor Circe was dying for someone to play with but Cassie, after a few cautious sniffs, preferred to stay close by our side. We introduced her to the neighbor’s dogs, a trio of senior citizens who barely came up to Cassie’s knees. One of them barked twice quickly sending Cassie back to her hiding spot behind my legs.

At the dog park Cassie would take a few steps toward a dog but then as soon as the other dog showed any interest in her, she backed away. Over time, on her walks around the neighborhood, she has run into some of the same dogs over and over again. Mostly one or two sniffs is enough for her but after 2 years she has, at least, stopped hiding behind us.

I’ve written all my life and whenever people ask me what I write I’m often a bit flip about it and tell them, “Whatever I can get paid for.” In later years I’ve amended that to say that mostly books for kids. And it’s true that I’ve written and published all sorts of things from working at newspapers to writing for parenting magazines to short stories and articles about the craft of writing. I’ve written books for kids of all ages. I’ve been published in a lot of places and a lot of countries. I’m a writer. I know that and I’m pretty confident about that (even if my confidence wavers from manuscript to manuscript.)

But I never said to anyone, “I’m a poet.” I’ve never claimed it. And the less I claimed it the more it grew to be something that belonged to other people and not to me.

I think that’s because most of my poetry has been written from an organic and instinctive place to help me sort out emotions behind some pretty intense life events. Through-out my career I’ve studied characters and plots and theme and setting. I’ve read poetry but I didn’t study the craft of poetry. I don’t understand a lot about rhyme or scansion or poetic forms aside from haiku. And when people blog or write articles about what it means to be a poet or a verse novelist or to even think poetically, well, I look at every article as though it were written about me, about my deficiencies as a poet. For some reason I felt like I had to learn more, write more, publish more before I could claim that title.

For the last few weeks the lady next door has been dog sitting for her brother. Mya is a lovely, small boned Golden Lab with sweet eyes and a hunger for playing catch. She’s been in the backyard a lot the past year and I’m sure she and Cassie have sniffed through the fence a time or two. Last week, when I had the front patio door open, Cassie starting barking like crazy. It wasn’t her “something scary is out there and I’m protecting you” bark. It was different. She barked loudly then stopped. A few seconds later there was an answering bark. They went back and forth a few times until I finally went to check it out. I figured someone was walking their dog and had stopped in front of our house and Cassie was just confused about what to do.

But no. It was Mya on the front lawn next door, straining to get to Cassie and Cassie at the screen door straining to get to Mya. They’d never met face-to-face before but they were pretty excited about the possibility. I let Cassie out into the courtyard and my neighbor brought Mya over to say hello. I’ve never seen Cassie so happy to see another dog. They sniffed each other quite thoroughly (something else Cassie doesn’t normally do or allow done to her) and Cassie even gave a play bow, the first I’d ever seen from her.

My current work-in-progress, like all of my stories, is a healing journey. Not an easy one as I mine my past for emotions to carry to the page. It’s written in verse because, well, because that’s the way the voices have come to me. Before I dug into the project in earnest, I reread many of the verse novels on my shelves. Some were free verse. Some were filled with a variety of poetic forms. Some were told in a single point of view. Some were told in many voices. Some made me cry and some made me laugh. At first each book I read made me feel like there was no way I would ever be able to finish mine. That I just didn’t have it in me to do right by the story in verse. But by the time I finished rereading about 30 of them I was filled with something different than confidence. I’m pretty sure it was acceptance. Acceptance that I am a poet and poems are one vehicle I use to tell my story.

For the past few days Mya has been coming over for short visits and each time I watch Cassie greet her new friend, I am amazed at her level of confidence in approaching and allowing herself to be approached by this young and very active dog.

As a writer I am always asking why. Why does this character do this thing in this situation? Why would that character react that way?

Why would Cassie decide this was the one dog she would let be her friend?

Why now, after writing poetry (and a whole lot of other things) all my life, am I finally willing to claim that being a poet is, indeed, one part of who I am as a writer?

Maybe the why isn’t really that important.

Maybe it’s enough to just be who I am supposed to be.

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

Nana often said
good riddance to bad rubbish
her junk, my treasure

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

Today’s entry in 31 Blogs (you might not know) is great for teachers, writers, librarians and kids! It’s Reading, Writing & Elizabeth, the blog home of author Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff. Liz searches the web for writing contests for kids (and adults.) She also posts interesting writing prompts that are terrific for writers of all ages (and great for the classroom) so check them out in the sidebar.

A couple of my favorite posts are a haiku contest for all ages and KQED Radio Show’s Commentary, Video or Photo Slideshow Contest for California Youth. The KQED contest has a quick deadline, December 15th, so don’t delay taking a closer look. KQED is looking for young people to share their Perspectives on two themes: “Coming Out” and “Friday Night.” Perspectives may take the form of a short commentary, video, or photo slideshow.

Tell Liz I said hello when you stop by.

Here are just a few things you can do in the blogosphere today.

Did you know that it’s non-fiction Monday? Indeed. If you have posted about a non-fiction children’s book, head on over to the Booklist Bookends Blog and add your link to the round-up. For those who love non-fiction there are a ton of great links in this week’s round-up.

If you don’t know what non-fiction Monday is all about, mosy over to A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy and see what Liz Burns has to say about how this weekly event came into being.

And Monday’s are when Tricia posts her Poetry Stretch, a challenge to write a poem in a particular style. This week it’s Haiku Riddles.

And lastly, I’m hosting the September Carnival of Children’s Literature. I didn’t come up with a theme so please, send me your favorite post from the month and I’ll develop something after I get the entries. Deadline is this Friday. I’m hoping for lots of entries to counter the ridiculous amounts of spammy stuff that has come through via the carnival sign-up page. You can submit via the Carnival page .

I’m hoping to have a big announcement (not of the "I sold a book" kind) to make any day now.
 

Sunday marked one year since we brought Cassie home from the German Shepherd Rescue group. A lot has changed in our girl in that year. A lot has changed in us. When she came to us, Cassie was a shy, not quite nervous but very tentative dog. Her ears were close to her head a lot as though she wasn’t sure if something bad was going to happen to her or not. Her mouth was usually closed, no happy smiling doggy face. She jumped up so high and so hard when you came in the door that it’s a wonder she didn’t break someone’s nose and she always had something to say. She had pretty bad separation anxiety and when my husband would leave the house she would make herself crazy running up and down the stairs and in and out of the house looking for him. For a long time she just wanted to be in the room with us, not necessarily being touched by us. So we let her. She didn’t know what to do with toys so we bought all kinds of them and let her experiment and pick out her favorites. Some she goes back to every so often. Some never captured her attention. And some, like the egg babies, she plays with every day.

She didn’t know much when we got her. She was young and a stray but I don’t think anyone spent much time with her during that important bonding time. But in the last year she has learned the basic commands like sit, stay, wait and sometimes, come. She’s learned how to ring the bells to go outside and to ring the outside bells when she wants to come back in. She’s learned a lot of tricks like waving bye-bye, shaking hands, spinning, rolling over, find it, tell me a secret, and my favorite, peek-a-boo.

She’s come a long way baby.

None of these changes in Cassie happened to overnight. They took time. They took patience. And some of them took a large amount of “do overs.”

It’s been 9 months since I was laid off from the day job. I’ve been up and down. Twelve different kinds of nervous wondering if I could “make it” as a full-time writer. Make it is hard to define but for me it means not having to go back into the cubicle.

Because I was worried about all sorts of things I’ve spent the last 9 months focusing on doing as much freelance work as I could, wanting to prove that I could do what needed doing. The last few months have been hard, filled with a lot of work, a lot of deadlines, not much time for fiction, and no small amount of stress. I was whining a lot.

As I sat here tonight looking at my beautiful dog I realized how very much my life has been enriched in just this first year with her. I’ve learned patience as I’ve worked to get her to bond with me. I’ve learned how to laugh more because of her silly antics and funny noises. I learn love teaching her new tricks. I love watching her get brave in new situations. I love seeing her happy face staring back at me because she is just so happy to be here, now, living this wonderful life she is living.

And I started thinking about all I had done in the last 9 months. Designed and installed our wildlife garden. Taught social networking for authors in a variety of places both online and in person. Wrote a bunch of articles and a ton of WFH projects. Did a haiku a day for the month of April. And wrote a goodly number of new pages on Flyboy and Plant Kid. Nothing to sneeze at as long as I don’t fall into the trap of comparing myself to other writers who live different lives than mine.

I’ve come a long way too. I just needed to slow down long enough to recognize it.

When was the last time you stopped and really took stock of how much you have already accomplished in your writing? We spend a lot of time talking about goals and how we are always reaching for that elusive dream on down the road. I suggest you take a few minutes to just stop and turn around. You don’t have to let go of reaching for that goal but maybe you ought to take a good look at just how far you’ve already come.

For National Poetry Month I made a personal challenge to write a haiku a day based on my California Native Plant garden. After rereading them tonight I thought I would share a few of my favorites for Poetry Friday.

Catalina Ironwood

beneath feathered bark
alligator lizards hide
blue jays go hungry

Woolly Blue Curls

royal fuzzy blue
ballarina Arabesque
dancing with the bees

Mountain Mahogany

from exploding seeds
sparkling feathers light the sky
somewhere a child smiles

Western Redbud

spring unleashed, it blooms
pink kisses flirt with the sun
Kool-Aid explosion

Flannel Bush

careful where you plant
giant sunshine on a stick
where did that house go?

All poems @copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2009

If you want to read the complete list, you can find them here.

Maya Ganeson is doing the Poetry Friday round-up over at allegro

I did this for me and then thought some folks might be interested as well.

Here are links to all 30 of the California Native Plant Haiku that I wrote for National Poetry Month.

Haiku #1 Ceanothus
Haiku #2 Worms
Haiku #3 Concrete
Haiku #4 Sea Thrift
Haiku #5 Dichondra
Haiku #6 Poppies
Haiku #7 Catalina Ironwood
Haiku #8 Purple Needlegrass
Haiku #9 Wooly Blue Curls
Haiku #10 Fuschia flowered Gooseberry
Haiku #11 Coyote Bush
Haiku #12 California Pipevine
Haiku #13 Painted Ladies
Haiku #14 The Wind
Haiku #15 Wax Myrtle
Haiku #16  Mountain Mahogany
Haiku #17 Sticky Monkeyflower
Haiku #18 California Honeysuckle
Haiku #19 California Fuschia
Haiku #20 Blue-eyed Grass
Haiku #21 James Roof Silktassle
Haiku #22 Western Redbud
Haiku #23 Coyote Mint
Haiku #24 Milkweed
Haiku #25 Flannel Bush
Haiku #26 Yarrow
Haiku #27 Island Snapdragon
Haiku #29 Hummingbird sage
Haiku #30 Going Native
 

Today is the last day of National Poetry Month and the last day of my personal promise to write a haiku per day inspired by my native plant garden. I have to admit that I didn’t know if I would make it to the end. I’m usually really good at starting and not so much at finishing. But I did it and I surprised myself a time or two. I really enjoyed the process and found myself falling in love with word play once again, always a good thing for a writer.

Like

liz_scanlon

 who also wrote a haiku a day this month, I plan to keep on keeping on. Only a few of mine really hit the mark of what I wanted to say but some of them had lines that I fell in love with and I want to revise the rest of the poem to match up to those great lines. I don’t know what or when I will post more. Perhaps on my garden blog which is near ready to launch. But I will keep writing these fun but oh so challenging haiku. Thanks to everyone who supported me through this challenge.

Before we even had the keys to this house I knew what I wanted to do – create a wildlife habitat in the front and back yards. It’s a long way from done but it’s much closer than it was two years ago.

This is the house as we bought it.

And this is the house on the first of April. I really need to take another picture because everything has exploded in growth and bloom in just the last month.

I was glad to see the lawn go. I’m happy we’ve redirected the water from the downspouts underground. But what gives me the most pleasure is to go outside in the middle of the day when the neighborhood is quiet and just visit the plants, seeing spiders and predatory wasps and bumble bees and carpenter bees and the occasional hummingbird zoom by.

goodbye lawnmower
you’re not welcome anymore
wildlife wanted here

bugs and birds and beasts
move in when no one’s looking
happy neighborhood

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2009