31 days

I've now completed 30 days of consecutive writing. That is, I've posted 30 "small stones" during the month of January. I have to say the experience was great. I can't say my prose-poetry improved by the end; it actually seemed to get longer! It reminds me of a drawing class I once took, in which our first assignment was to do a self-portrait. My first one barely took up a small corner of the drawing paper. It was scrunched up and tight, protected and withdrawn. By the end, I'm not sure if my skill at capturing my own image had improved, but I had somehow managed to spread myself out across the entirety of the page, filling it up.

So, tomorrow marks the end of the writing a 'small stone-a-day" in January challenge. I have managed the challenge and learned that the more I practice, the more I trust myself and what I have to say. Whereas I used to worry that what I wrote would be 'not good enough' or 'wrong', now I know that the best thing to do is just get something down; get it out there on the page. You can always edit later. Such an easy concept, and we all know it, right?

featured today

another "small stone" of mine was posted today on http://www.ahandfulofstones.com/.

wet leaves

Some short fiction, prose-poetry, and "small stones" of mine are posted here:  wet leaves.  I've been doing most of my practicing over there, and I guess it's getting better as I go along.  I keep changing my mind about the title, though...  The good thing is, from there, I post, make edits, and, after a few revisions, submit some of them to blogzines.  That has been working well so far.

books (100 words)

Miss M couldn't remember the last time she'd read a book, but she remembered how nice it had been.

She liked the smell of books, their rich mustiness, the thickness of the pages, turning them, one by one.

The sound it made.

She could drown in books, could sink deep down, enfolded.

You weren't quite floating; it was more like going under and afterwards you'd forgotten who you were.

Birds sang. Light faded. Shadows fell.

People were murdered.

Trains passed through tunnels and sounded their horns.

Reading, time passed slowly, whereas time spent not reading passed quickly and without satisfaction.