Category: metablogging

About the Shadormas

my latest bunch of short poems explained

Over the last few weeks, I’ve written a bunch of shadormas. A Shadorma is a poetic form that originated in Spain and is like a haiku, in a way. The scansion over six lines is 3-5-3-3-7-5. I’ve found it a fun form to play around with. I mean, I have written about 30 of the things in a two-week period, so clearly, I enjoy them.

I like short form poetry. I like the math-y-ness of the various forms I’ve tried, like American Sentences. I’m sure my enjoyment of and facility for them is related to my former avocation of songwriting.

The larger group of poems had a lot of what we all seem to be thinking about these last few months – the creeping fascism, the danger and distress of these times – but 30 poems is a lot, so after some high-grading, I found that only 2 of the 9 pieces I have for you today refer to the Trump regime directly enough so that it’s clear what I’m talking about. After practicing reading these poems a number of times, I’ve come to realize that the shadow of fascism and the stupid cruelty of the regime hovers over all of them.

So… uh… enjoy?

8/1/25

That Went Well

Not only was I not able to keep up a daily schedule, I stopped blogging for a month and a half, with a couple of relapses. It’s more complicated than the above makes it sound, but it’s also true that I had an ADHD moment. (ADHD people often have no conception of time, so sure, a month and a half can be a “moment” from my perspective!)

Part of what I did was turn my attention to the film festival I program for. I needed to commit to that as a project, and I dithered about it, as I am wont to do, because I felt like it was keeping me from my writing, and that my writing was keeping me from doing my job for the film festival as well as I should have.

But I’ve figured out this compromise, and I think it will work. I am going to put all of my creative energy into taking this memoir as close to a complete first draft as I can this spring, and then I will channel that energy into the film festival,

I am about to commit to a project that will make it impractical to blog on anything like a daily basis. I’ve got about 30,000 words of memoir done, I think I need 40,000 more. That’s what I’m going to be concentrating on until the first of July, when Wicked Queer starts up again.

I will try to post a couple of times during the next three months, but most of my writing time this spring will be spent on something you can’t see yet, sorry.

 

Mid-Season Hiatus

Hi, all.

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ll be taking a brief amount of time away from the blog while I sort out what happens next.

Thank you to everyone who has looked at this blog over the course of 2018, and who continues to be interested. You have sustained me, and you continue to.

There is definitely more to come!

Your correspondent,
Diane

Meta

I’m submitting work for publication elsewhere, and editors who are on the fence about my work come to this blog to see what other writing I put out there online. Every once in a while, I look at tracking information for this site and see one viewer look at several entries on this blog… and then two or three days later I’ll get a rejection from some literary magazine or other.

This makes me think about whether a weekly blog is a worthwhile activity or not. I admit that I’m not sure what the answer to that is. For the immediate future, I’m committed to doing this project. After a little consideration, I think I’ll keep going. I’ll simply have to make sure that I’m making as much sense as I think I am in the moment that I click “publish.”

Any reader who happens on these pages may look at what I just wrote in the above two paragraphs and think, “Are you going to take your own advice?” because I appear to be starting this post with a long digression that has little to do with the title of this entry. You’d be right to point that out, without question.

But this also seems like a good opportunity to talk about my process.

What process?

Exactly.

No one who looks at this blog could be surprised to learn that I am doing this by the seat of my pants. For good or ill, this is largely off-the-cuff, show-and-go writing. I start each blog post with “What am I going to write about this week?” and often end up revising things after I’ve published them. I did a lot of that this week, even going back several posts and sorting out sentences and sense from some of my recent posts: in effect, hitching up the pants the seat by which I steer after the fact.

I started this blog as a means of keeping myself accountable, and to prove to myself that I could consistently produce work I’m willing to let the public see. That willingness is a bar that varies in height, depending on self-esteem, on who I suspect may be looking at what I’m doing, and what kind of feedback I perceive myself to be getting. A standard that variable is difficult to meet.