Category — Reading

I’ve felt pretty stuck the last few days. It’s been a big week of transitions with my wife’s work, our son’s preschool and therapies, and several changes in our normal routine. It’s disorienting, and all this and my normal work schedule has left me feeling low on creative energy.

We’re programmed to react to these perceived shortfalls in accomplishments in a given week by working harder to catch up. I clued in enough today to try something a little different. I took a few minutes and browsed through my writing-oriented bookmarks in my browser to see if I could find something to wake up my creative spirit.

The Poetry Foundation’s web site is the Grand Central Station of poetry. Poetry helps me relax and regroup. I love the immediacy of it. I love discovering new poets. I love reading something that makes me say “Yes!” I love reading poetry from writers who speak their own unfiltered truth.

The Poetry Foundation is to me about discovery. The ‘Poetry Tool’ (approximately the middle of the page) lets you look for poems for specific reasons or for no reason at all. It’s a perfect way to re-center yourself after a rough week.

Don’t forget to check out their wealth of articles, audio resources, and podcasts. Just remember to come up for air and do some writing of your own, too!

Connie, Maybe easily is one of the best short stories I’ve heard in a long time. It was featured eons ago on Escape Pod, which is currently one of my favorite podcasts for short stories.

Connie, Maybe by Paul Martens is a story about a man from a rural town claiming to have been kidnapped by aliens, though no one in town believes him. The fear of an alien conspiracy rises as people in town start becoming ‘different’. But which is easier to accept as the reason for these changes – aliens, or that even in small towns people can change just because they want to?

Wichita Rutherford reads the story and gives a beyond-brilliant performance. You have to hear it to believe it. I heard he does an occasional podcast of his own. That’s worth looking up!

Even though there are still 11 or so shopping months until next Christmas/Hanukkah, I figured I’d get a jump on it by releasing the print version of my holiday short story That Day in the Manger (PDF, in a new window), which was broadcast on The Writing Show last month. (Direct link to that show)

I wanted to point people solely to Paula’s site for a while since she was gracious enough to have me on the show. Please do spread a little site traffic love and visit The Writing Show’s web site. Every writer should subscribe to her podcast. I was a long-time listener even before I was on the show, so no bias here!