Creative
Pursuits
I
enjoy writing. I always have. It was always an escape for me when times
were tough. I have written numerous
poems, scenes, and stories over the years.
I generally stick to the fantasy genre, as it is my favorite. I always loved the idea of chanting a few
archaic phrases and fire springs up across the room. Science showed me the answers to some of my
questions as a kid, and I have been a fan of that too ever since.
Poems
Back
in my early days of college, I started up a Poem of the Week
challenge. For a long time, though, I
was the only one putting up any poems. I
had a great time, and my friends would always laugh or cry, depending on what
my mood had been. I submitted some of my
poems into poetry contests and attended a poetry convention in DC. Some of my poems were published in some
anthologies, but good luck finding them.
|
This was my first
published poem. I was in a rather foul
mood when I first wrote it, and I was determined to spite myself. And I did.
This has always been one of my favorites. |
A bit of science humor
found its way to my heart when I wrote this.
The poem depicts a neutralization reaction, but if you only hear it,
it has a particularly real message embedded within. |
|
A poem commemorating my
beloved cat, Rocky. |
I saw a challenge in a
poetry magazine once to write a poem with a very detailed structure. That I did, and this was the first of three
pantoums I wrote. |
Stories
Like
everyone in high school, I found it to be a daunting place. Everyone had their troubles and
successes. One of mine was the writing
of a trilogy. It started small and
silly, with crazy items the character could find, like the Pants of
Position. They were neat, though, and
would allow him to teleport to any place he had been before. (It sounds a bit like the Wings of the Wyvern from Dragon Warrior.) From the initial seed grew an entire saga. The story spanned three books and two
generations. I tried, years ago, to seek
a publisher for the stories. I was
unsuccessful, and at the time I was crushed.
Now, though, when I read over the rewrites I did in college, I see many
issues I need to correct before I can have a realistic publishing attempt. One day, once things settle down, I may dive
back in.
|
This was always one of my
favorite chapters from the first book.
It is a moment where the main character learns that he has only just
tapped into his potential. |
I always seem to have days
like this creep upon me once in a while.
When I wrote it, a string of such events had happened to me in full
force. |
Scenes
I’m
not sure what else to call them. Some of
these are stories that swim around my mind, looking for an outlet. Since I haven’t the time to devote to them
yet, I write them out and let them live, if briefly. Tempted to share my stories with others, I
even set up a Yahoo group
for writers of science fiction and fantasy.
The group grew to 100 members, but it’s a very quiet collection of
people. I post various scenes, and some
people contribute at times, but it certainly isn’t the lavish discussion and story-telling
I had been hoping for.
|
Better to let it out than
to let it fester. It was a bad day and
I needed to vent some frustration. It
worked. I felt much better afterwards. |
This started in a moment
of annoyance, as a number of my writings seem to. It led from there to five chapters, then I ran out of time.
I definitely plan to revisit these characters in the future. |
Return to the start of it all…