Category: writing

Assembling a collection

~ Meg ~ 23 Comments

It’s been five years since I started putting together the ideas for my first book. That book became a series of five. I haven’t completely ruled out the idea of continuing the series, but for now I want to concentrate on other projects, including my long delayed historical fiction set partly during World War One. [Does that sound familiar? This time I mean it!]

Besides novel writing, over the years, I’ve written a number of short stories. I’m at the point where I think I have enough for a collection. Although, there are no hard and fast rules anymore –you can publish works of any length through Amazon– 40,000 words seems to be the magic number for a collection of short stories. With that in mind, I plan on revisiting my older stories with an eye for revision and expansion. As I work them out, I will likely post them here, so for those of you who’ve been following for a while, some of them might sound familiar.

If the short stories come together, I might do the same thing with my poetry. Since the poems, by nature, are much shorter and the volume would be slim, I thought about pairing them with my own illustrations, photos or other artwork. The idea for these projects arose from the ‘housecleaning’ I’m doing for the move: organizing things to keep and things to discard. The same can be applied to my writing: some of it is ready to go with just a little cleaning up, some of it needs major repairs, and some of it can be trashed. [Not really trashed… I keep everything, even if it’s just to spark a new idea. But you know what I mean]. With polishing, I hope these pieces will shine with new life.

In the coming weeks, my offline world is about to get a little crazy, so I hope you will enjoy these older stories and posts. Interspersed of course, with my adventures in Ireland as I look for a new home.

Blue

~ Meg ~ 14 Comments

On a beautiful day, I am blue
Not like the cloudless, cerulean sky
Where the bright, mocking sun
Unfavorably compares my mood
To her brilliance, warmth and cheer

This blue is the slate
Of the storm-tossed ocean
Heavy seas, deep and dark
Full of sunken ships
And drowned sailors

The dangerous blue
Of exposure
Of lips curled over chattering teeth
Shivering in the cold
Killing frost of November

The kind of blue
That manifests itself as anger
Only because the rage
Feels just a little better
Than the weakness of sorrow

But its a blue that passes quickly
When I raise my head with purpose
It runs away like water
Dribbling through my fingers
And drying in the breeze

Header Image: IKB 79 ~ Yves Klein, 1959

Father to Daughter

~ Meg ~ 43 Comments

I was feeling off the last couple of weeks and I didn’t know why. Yes, there is a massive change on the horizon of my life, but I am processing that methodically. This was something else… Then it hit me when I posted the photo of me with my father for Cee’s Black and White Challenge last week —it’s been ten years since I lost him. It was February of 2009.  

I was blessed to be a beloved daughter, and Papa was my first hero. I called him Papa instead of Dad or Daddy —his choice, he wanted to be different. He was a story-teller, too. I marvel at what a vivid imagination he had.  He made up a whole series of adventures involving our neighbor’s cat:  Mopsy, and another one with a little old man and a cuckoo clock that always saved the day. And most of the time, he made them up on demand: “Tell me a story, Papa!” I remember traveling in Scotland with my parents when I was about six years old and passing a desolate stretch of land with these strange formations: bigger than mounds, smaller than hills. As we drove along, Papa made up a story about how it was a “Giant’s Graveyard” and the events that led to all the giants dying. Alright, that’s pretty morbid, I suppose, but I remember being completely engrossed in the story and begging for more. Oh, how I wish I’d recorded some of those wonderful tales he created for me when I was little.

He didn’t live long enough to see me become a writer. He would have loved knowing that he passed that ‘gift’ on to me. It’s just one of the many ways that I am my father’s daughter.