Blind

has been a pain lately. Thankfully, that means I've come leaps and bounds with my critique skills, but my poor little notebook is being neglected. 2.3: "battered" --> 'batter' 5.1: "The picture is unseen by its viewers" --> 'The picture remains unseen' Kelsey :)

Long time no see. Writer's block. There is only one way to defeat it. Write it away. Some ideas. 1. Start with a word, and scribble down whatever comes into your head. If its nothing then write about nothing, what it is, what it does, how it tastes, looks, feels, sounds...anything and everything. Then go with the sensation it brings forth in you, and write into that new direction. And keep writing, jotting, scribbling. 2. Take a simple object, and write down every single little detail about it. A spoon, a dish, a weed, a piece of dirt, a cigarette butt, a stone, water, a burnt match, an empty can, a jewel, a pile of bones, a frozen chicken, anything, describe it in the most minutest of details. But it has to be there in front of you, not in your imagination. When you're done, take ten, put the object and the writing away, then write down every little thing about the object again...FROM MEMORY. Then take the two sets of descriptions, and write about their comparisons, and differences. 3. Have a conversation in your mind with someone or something that you absolutely detest, and record every word spoken, no matter how angry, bitter, contemptuous, disgusted or affronted. Then have the same conversation with that thing you hate and write it all down, but in the most loving terms you can. (this one's real hard!) 4. Cast your mind back to the MOST embarrassing, frightening, proud, joyful, sad or supremely happy moment in your life, and write all of it down, in one continuous sentence without punctuation. When you cannot stand to look at another word in it, go back and write the entire sentence again, from the start, no punctuation, using entirely different words. Then do it a third time, with punctuation. And on the third write, go wherever your thoughts and feeling take you, and damn the direction or the focus. Third time's the charm: you'll be ITCHING to write away from the constraint. 5. Don't throw away what you scribble in these exercises. Go back to them when you are sick of looking at your scribbling, and write about them instead, critique them, scream at them with words, cry on them with prose, laugh with them in sentences, do anything written to them but don't toss them out. Write. Its the only way to get past the barrier. Hope these help! Good poem, Tink. And good to see you. Respectfully Jim "Laws and rules don't kill freedom: narrow-minded intolerance does" : Race

but the only thing that works for me is to not write! To forget about writing or being blocked, distract myself. That's what happened with "Thrilled Savagely". I just forgot I was blocked. Cheers, Jess, Reprehensibly irrepressible, "the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind." [Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged]

that happens to me all the time!