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National Clerihew Day 2024
Strangely enough, it’s National Clerihew Day, so let’s talk about it…
✍🏻 Poetics 📜
To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears. ~Octavio Paz
I know you were expecting me to wax poetic today, but I simply haven’t got the energy to pull it off. I’m just exhausted.
I have a lot to do by any standard and the longer it takes me to do anything, the farther everything else falls behind it.
I’m working rather hard to get things automated so that the next iteration becomes a button click, but it’s still a lot of work to get there.
I’m going to go ahead and let ChatGPT write me a poem to go here.
In twilight’s grip, I toil ‘neath weary skies,
With tasks amassed, no end within my sight.
The clock’s cruel hands do mock my tired eyes,
As time slips by, I strive through endless night.
My spirit drained, with labors yet to cease,
No respite found, though fervently I try.
Each fleeting breath begs for a moment’s peace,
Yet duty’s weight insists that I comply.
Yeah, see? I’m way too damn tired and worn out to pull that off on my own. I just want to go back to bed…
Cleriwho? Clerihew
Clerihew Poem
Neither do I have the mental bandwidth to pull off a simple little poem like a Clerihew. I’m too flippin’ tired for even a spontaneous limerick or a slightly poetic pun. I just can’t.
| Alexander the Great, Conquered lands at a rapid rate. From Greece to India, his empire grew wide, But his life ended short, with no one to guide. |
Genghis Khan, the Mongol chief, Spread his rule with brutal belief. From the steppes to the east, his legacy spanned, Leaving a vast empire, forged by his hand. |
I asked my virtual assistant to do it for me, so there. Two of my favorite historical figures summed up in Clerihew poems for your entertainment on this scorching 🌞 Summer 🔥 Hump 🐪 Day.
Drafty
Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it. ~Mary Karr
Anything worth doing is worth doing obsessively, over and over again. That’s the whole game with self-editing.
I’ve been listening to my WIP Sentinels novel to listen for missteps, anomalies, weird turns of phrase and overall flow.
Being that it’s at 22½ chapters, it takes a couple hours to get through entirely.
The neat thing is that the more I listen to it, the more I spot opportunities to polish, tweak and correct.
AuthorTube says you absolutely must not do this.
😹
If they say not to, that’s clear indication that I absolutely should. There’s all this talk about how you should just burn through the whole thing, balls to the wall and then stick it in the drawer for a couple months.
Oh, hell no. That absolutely does not work for me. The writer’s break I took in January just about drove me bats.
I’m simply not having it. If that works for them, great. Everybody has their own approach. Everybody has their rituals that work for them but nobody else can jive with.
That’s the whole thing with creativity. Your artistic insights are your own. Bach is not Mozart. Hemmingway is not Tolstoy. DaVinci is not Renoir. It’s individualistic.
Sure, you can paint formulaically in the Bob Ross style or even paint by numbers. If you’re painting straight from your imagination, you’re going to do things that the artist at the next easel won’t do.
As with all things AuthorTube, they’re telling you what works for them. Many have the humility to acknowledge that what works for them might work for you and it’s worth trying out to find out.
Some of them are trying to be “influencers” and will state their suggestions as Thou Shalt‘s. Homey don’t play dat.
Listen and see if it resonates with you. Give it a try. If you find it useful, be grateful. If you don’t, you can still be grateful because now you know what doesn’t work for you.
Either way, you’re making progress and that’s the whole point of drafting.
That’s it for today. Hopefully, the heatwave will break tonight and tomorrow will be slightly more like a temperate 🌞 Summer‘s 🔥 day and less like an El Niño intraglacial anomaly.