Jots

Attended my first virtual author talk for while: Lisa Jewell's. Haven't read her books but it's always wonderful to hear from a writer.

• Fascinating stories often come from unanswerable questions you ask the most.
• Novels often come from a singular, recurring image that won't let you go.
• Write with love. People will notice.
• Revisions follow the same paradox as time travel: woe if you meet your previous self.
• Sometimes the most fun characters to write are the most awful.
• The smallest things derail or make an entire story: use that to your advantage.
• There's nothing wrong with writing stories that continually focus on the same themes.
• A readership is a remarkable, delicate thing. Treat it with care.
• Social media isn't for sales, it's for strengthening relationships with your readers.
• Life lived through writing books.
• You pour yourself onto the page only to leave so much unsaid...the beauty of subtext.

Found some old notes from an online poetry workshop last year from the Emerging Writers Festival on 6 Sep 2024: Erasure & The Burning Haibun, hosted by Muntia Tafassum Ahmed.

• Erasure attempts to conceal and reveal: a beautiful juxtaposition.
• Erasure is a collaboration/conversation between two texts: one old, one new.
• Erasure doesn't have to be just crossed out newsprint lines, it can be an art form. Fade out the original text so you can still read it, or keep the erased text next to the original.
• Make drawings to mask the erasures for a mixed media effect.
• Create erasure with your writing: cross out words/phrases for two stories in one work.
• What impact do you want it to have on the source text?
• The haibun gained popularity in late 17th century Japan: a prose poem starting with autobiographical or non-fiction prose and closing with a metaphorical haiku.
• The burning haibun is an erasure twist on the original created by Torrin A. Greathouse: it finds the closing haiku in the original opening prose.
• The original haibun focuses on the external world, the burning on the internal.
• Lowercase source text unifies the erasure.
• A fascinating concept to play with for a burning haibun is a memory you have a different opinion of than when it originally happened.

Here's a poem I found when clearing out notes. It's about Xander, from Don't Burn Too Bright.

he wears his scars like he has something to prove

has to declare his battleworthiness to the world

so they don't threaten to shatter him again

he's been torn apart by his nobilty

stitched back together with the ashes of his demise

he's watched the stars fall from their perches, the sun set itself alight and swallow the world he once treasured

created to be a destroyer of worlds

lost loves tattooed across his shoulders

bandages against the universe's battering ram

eyes like the burning volcano where he met his almost end

and still

he smiles