How to use this Page

Poem a Day #27

It is good to sit
and contemplate
the things you do
that are good.


© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown.  All rights reserved.

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

Poem a Day #25

I'm thinking about friendships lately
how some grow
and how others are outgrown
and I wonder
how do you outgrow
a friendship?

Does it just slowly unravel
when you pull on a loose thread?

Do buttons get pushed
until they pop off
at the most embarrassing times?

Does it begin to pinch
like an old pair of shoes
until you are rubbed raw
in tender places?

Or does it just fall apart
like a favorite shirt
washed one too many times?



© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown.  All rights reserved.

I've spent the last few days going through 15 years worth of Horn Book Magazine, ripping out articles, quotes and mostly, artwork for a special collage project. The process has tossed me backward, to my early writer years when I wanted to do it all, write it all. The energy level I had back then was different, fueled mostly by manic moments.



Poem a Day #22

I used to be haunted
by voices of characters
begging me to tell their stories
making me ignore a lot of things
that shouldn't be ignored
in order to put words on the page.

Then it got silent
in my head.

In my heart
I worried
perhaps the lack of haunting
meant the characters had moved on to
someone else,
someone
who could give them the attention they deserved.

I hear differently now
not in such a rush
not in such a race
no need to trap the stories before they unravel.

I trust less and more
at the same time
I still listen to the voices
but I listen with my heart
instead of frantic fingertips
no longer worrying
about the silent spaces.



© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown.  All rights reserved.

I can't remember where I read this but I've come across versions of it a couple of times in recent reading....the idea that memories we access more often are more likely to be corrupted than memories that are more pristine. (writerjenn , was it you that posted something about it?) As I continue to mine my past for a couple of current WIPs I have begun to wonder how corrupted some of my own memories may have become.



Poem a Day #21


I've been so sure of my  memories
until now
now when yesterday's hurt
runs into today's doubt
I wade into a sea of what-ifs

what if it didn't really happen
or not the way I've always told myself

what if the embrodiered edges of my memories
make it the same
but different
worse than reality
less than ideal

what if I have to let go of my righteous anger
and let the past collapse into the dust that birthed it

what if who I thought I was
is someone different
from who I am trying
to become?

© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown.  All rights reserved.

Sometimes it's not a matter of learning what you need to know but understanding that you just need to be who you already are.


Poem a Day #19

There was a girl
who didn't know a lot of things
but she knew how to feel
big feelings
and how to let the ink
spill across the page
showing the world how much
she didn't know
and in the spilling
of ink her wisdom
grew.

© 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.

Allergies slowed me down yesterday so I didn't get this posted.


Poem a Day #16

I find it hard to take things
on faith alone.
I want proof that slowing down
being in the moment
is worth the investment of my time.

Today I follow the dog
down the garden path that ends
near the glider
where she sniffs the sage.

One ceanothus, still in bloom,
calls dozens and dozens of
bees to dance between
the blue blossoms.

Fat bumblebees
fuzzy carpenter bees
industrious honey bees
and bees that look like flies.

I stand still
let bees buzz all around me
and listen to the concert
I almost missed.


© 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.

I am learning to be comfortable in my silence which in turn, is helping me understand how much I have to say that is worth saying.


Poem a Day #11

Sometimes,
on those days when the voices in my head
are louder than the voices on the page,
silence scares me.

Sometimes,
when I listen not only to the space between the words
but to space that echoes from words left unspoken,
silence understands me.

Sometimes,
when I remember that saying nothing at all
can be as powerful as shouting at the top of your voice,
silence comforts me.


© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown. All rights reserved.

This poem is late to the table because there is some serious thinking going on in my brain. I'm looking for the off switch. Time to stop thinking quite so much.

Poem a Day #10

I've read just about every kind
of "how to do it" book you can read
when it comes to writing,
even if I can't remember who said what.

I think I've absorbed a lot over the years.

How to write mostly boils down to
write what you know or write
what you want to know,
just pick one and get to work.

The how to write isn't as hard as
the making yourself sit down and do it.
The world will keep on spinning
even if you never write another word.
Really.

You really just need one thing to write,
you need to want it bad.

It's the wanting that makes it so.
It's the wanting that makes it real.
It the wanting that fuels the doing.

What I forget is that wanting isn't a thinking thing,
it's a heart thing.
Wanting to write isn't based on any logic,
it is born from the need to connect,
one writer, one story, one word
a bridge,
from heart to heart.


© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown. All rights reserved.

I found that last year, writing the poems about the father I never knew took a tremendous amount of energy, creative and emotional, energy from me. It was draining. It was inspiring. And at the end, it was healing. I am a talked who never really gets to talk enough. So this pondering out loud is my way of talking and trying to use up all that energy until I don't need it for this anymore and I can move on to something else.


Poem a Day #9

I read once that if you have a hole in your story
you should point to it, over and over again,
the idea being that if you pointed enough times,
it would disappear and cease to be a hole.

So when people ask me why it is I can't seem
to quit talking about things or move on past things,
at the speed they think I should be moving on,
well, I just tell them I'm pointing to the hole,
hoping it will fill itself up by the time I'm done talking


© 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.


I know many people say, and they are right to do so, that the joy is in the process of writing, not in the sale. But truth be told, once you've made a sale or two or three, it's hard to focus on process instead of product. At least for me.



Before I'd ever heard of query letters or a synopsis
or even dared imagine the possibility
of signing with a New York agent,
I used to sit on the stoop of cement in my garage
and write exactly the kind of stories
I liked to read.

I didn't have a market guide
or a critique group
and SCBWI was just a bunch of
mixed up letters from the alphabet.

Before I ever sold a single book
I didn't wonder how many copies it would sell
or when I would earn back my advance
or whether the reviewers would be kind
if they decided to review it at all.

The Internet was still a dream
to be unfurled
so there were no worries about
blogs or websites or social media status updates.

I wrote because it made me happy
to imagine the child I used to be
in the stories I told myself.
I wrote because figuring out what happened next
was more fun than a crossword puzzle
or learning how to knit.
and I wrote because when I didn't write,
I was (according to my kids) grumpy
until I once again picked up a pad and pen.

I don't want to go back in time
or undo what I've done over the years
but I want to find a way to remember what it felt like
to sit on that cement stoop scribbling on that green steno pad
plotting stories for no one but myself.

© 2011 Susan Taylor Brown. All rights reserved.

April is here! I am happy to announce that I will be giving away children’s poetry books during National Poetry Month again this year. As in the past, all you have to do is comment at any of my Poetry Month posts to have your name included in my weekly drawings. (NOTE: If you leave comments at two posts, I’ll enter your name twice…and so on.)

Poetry Book Giveaway Schedule

First Week of NaPoMo: April 1—7 (Winner announced on April 8th.)

Second Week of NaPoMo: April 8—14 (Winner announced on April 15th.)

Third Week of NaPoMo: April 15—21 (Winner announced on April 22nd.)

Fourth Week of NaPoMo: April 22—28 (Winner announced on April 29th.)

Final Days of NaPoMo: April 29—30 (Winner announced on May 1st.)

The poetry book prize for the first week of NaPoMo is Douglas Florian’s POETREES!

5 Comments on Win a Children's Poetry Book from Wild Rose Reader!!!, last added: 4/4/2011