Tag Archives: writing life

Writing Life: New Challenges

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Raymond Alexander Kukkee
© 2013  Raymond Alexander Kukkee [caption id="attachment_1494" align="aligncenter" width="584"]Fires of Waterland in Print Fires of Waterland in Print[/caption]   Life is a learning curve. It should be simple, but what fun would that be?  Just  to raise the blood pressure,  make the heart pump harder, sprinkle  the nerves of steel with itching powder and make  life interesting, at times it gets to be a substantially steep learning curve.  We may wail and cringe at the onerous tasks presented to us, but reality calls; life consists of new challenges every day. The writing life is not an exception. One may be able to run, but not hide. Lady Luck teaches us well;  at times, surprisingly with a slap, a sting or a lulu of a comeuppance.  Variable outcomes. The dreaded. The unexpected. You know how it works; great illusions become greater disillusions, hmmffnn.... miss the bus so you can get hit by the train instead. It's always better fishing in the lake farthest away.  Go for a  dream vacation, jump off of that dream water slide  into emerald, bejeweled tropical waters. Yes, the  dream vacation, the ultimate destiny, the dream stream down below, but wait...those are real sharks. Or the ship strikes rocks and falls over a la Costa Concordia. One never knows. Learn to fly, or  swim faster, paddle back up that creek harder, run faster, go, go, and go, or sustain minor life-threatening injuries. It's all a little like writing, isn't it? Write more, write better, write faster, take on new challenges. It is what it is. We write and dream,  dream and write. Short stories, articles, one-liners, commercials, screenplays, novellas, novels, plays, and even poetry. Poetry!   Dreams in prose;  rhythm, rhyme, iambic pentameters to soothe the soul.  Maybe  the joke's on you, it could be a Shakespearean sonnet or a simple limerick. A written trick. A slight of words.  New challenges. A fistful of invisible syllables....maybe a one-time three-liner. Haiku. Make it even more complicated, go for Tanka.  Have you ever tried Tanka?  As an aside, there's an upcoming competition at Mandy'sPages.  Amanda's setting it up, complete with instructions. How to write a five-liner. Tanka is a quintain, it's good to work the writing brain. . See? That rhymed. See how simple poetry  is?   We guess not shall undoubtedly find out otherwise. It's pretty easy to get side-tracked isn't it?  The writing life. Writing more, better, and faster. Creating. There we go. Wow.  A book.   Published. Elation. The Fires of Waterland.  The pages don't even fall out.  Yes, that's  an achievement.  Book signing, publicity, and voila, -- as another local author related to me. "Now you're a book salesman" He smiles knowingly. He's been there, done that.   It's the writing life. New challenges. I'll try Tanka too. It doesn't even have to rhyme. What good fortune. It has to stimulate the senses instead.  Images, even smells. Go figure. New challenges.  I'm up to it. How about you? #   Is that Incoming I hear? +  
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Writing Life: Fame and Fortune, or Foolishness and Failure?

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Raymond Alexander Kukkee
by  Raymond Alexander Kukkee ©2013   [caption id="attachment_834" align="aligncenter" width="333"]Flash in the Pan Flash in the Pan[/caption]  

I Choose, You Choose

As  everyday writers we may eventually  be offered fame or fortune, by chance or  circumstance.  Failing that unlikely scenario, with writing  we can  conjure up our own personal  delusions of fame or fortune which are unrealistic at best considering there are thousands millions of other writers also hard at it.   Articles, novels, fiction, fact.  Tapping away. Creating. Writing. Getting luckier by the minute.  Inventing the better mousetrap in words.  The perpetually worrisome wordathoner, flash-in-the-panner,  Olympian grammarian, secretive scribbler, and perfect poet, or  comatose competitors.  We see them all. They are us. The great majority are out of luck. Promises of fame that never materializes in the first place or is short-lived at best bears an astounding resemblance to prizes never awarded. Ego-stroking.  Failed dreams. Pffffffft-t.   Writing. Does the fuse burn out? Not to be discouraged, if and when  those images are invariably shattered, we the optimistic instantly replace them with new, better ones,  so we remain upbeat, 'encouraged', 'inspired', and encouraged enough to try yet again. It's called optimism. At times it's nice to dream, and let's face it, we dream big-- sky-high in warm, fuzzy clouds, magically  writing million-copy best-sellers, winning the Giller Award, or heaven forbid, big cash, a Nobel prize for literature,  a coveted Pulitzer for fiction, perhaps the meticulous construction of the all-time-greatest Great American Novel  if we happen to be American. Being that successful  would be a bit much for a shy, introverted nose-to-the-keyboard writer, would it not? We walk the thin edge. Are we afraid of success? How about 'fortune' itself?    I know, let's sell a gazillion copies of  eBooks for $0.25  in Mumbai instead, and trundle all of that eMoney money right down to the eBank. That, too isn't quite as simple as it could be.  Are e-Richer people necessarily happier?   Money provides choices and little else. The fact is, it takes work and choices to determine if the writing life will bring us fame and fortune, or leave us with foolishness and failure.    If something doesn't work,  it's back to the keyboard. Success or not,  foolishness or failure-- writers are a hardy breed; we're not quitters. We are what we do.  I choose, you choose. ##   Is that Incoming I hear? .  
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