Neile Graham (neile) wrote,
Neile Graham
neile

Second Week of the Clarion West Write-a-thon

Hello, 2:45 am, my old friend. Yes, that's when I finished this week's write-a-thon commitment. The timing is my own fault, of course. I made my submissions (2 queries for different manuscripts) earlier in the week then I'd started to revise a short story but realized that there was no way I would manage to complete the revision by Sunday night, so I thrashed around for a long time trying to figure out what to do.

But thanks to the commitment I'd made to the write-a-thon, I finally figured out that some notes I'd made for a short story were really for a narrative poem, so last night I pushed through and made myself finish a first draft. (My commitment for the w-a-t is 2 submissions + 1 draft each week.)

I'm really grateful for the w-a-t, because otherwise I would have slept instead, which would have felt briefly rewarding, but nowhere near as rewarding as actually completing something I hadn't expected to. Who knew I wanted to write a fairy tale in the voice of Mother Death? That's weird.

But now I have a new poem. Here's the first stanza (first draft, remember please):

Owl-light

The owl's voice buffets the night with its tumbling roll
and the emptiness between. It sends its call out for me:
red rover red rover, I call him over.

-------

I'm not sure I can bear to do this each week--I guess it depends on the draft--but sponsors and cheerleaders got to see the whole poem.
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