Reasons Why I Don't Write -- a procrastination poem/a writing poem

This is actually a repost of the very first poem I blogged, just over three years ago. It was (and is!) aimed more at my writer friends, as that pretty much was my entire audience back then (all 11 visitors that day, I believe!), but it still seems accurate to me....


REASONS WHY I DON’T WRITE
by
Gregory K.

Errands
Cooking
Cleaning up

Nothing
In my
Coffee cup

Snail mail
E-mail
Blogging, too

Crosswords
Comics
Sudoku

Phone calls
Lunches
Fear of debt

Daydreams
Nap times
Internet

Laundry
Sunsets
Batting cage

“Research”
iTunes
Empty page



The Poetry Friday roundup is at Mommy's Favorite Children's Books today. Go on over and check it out!

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The Carnival's back! And...

Yes, the February Carnival of Children's Literature is up for your perusal (hosted by Lynn Hazen at her Imaginary Blog which is, of course, a real blog. Whoa! I better have more coffee and think about that...).

And... did I mention that I'm really looking forward to National Poetry Month here at GottaBook this year? I did? Well, I'm saying it again, tease that I am. But I'll make good. I promise.

My blog is mad at me!

I missed my blogoversary. It was Saturday, and GottaBook celebrated its third anniversary. Are there appropriate gifts like there are for people's wedding anniversaries? "Third blogoversary gift is a new template". Anyway, happy belated. I'd note that today is exactly three years since the first poem I posted (which I will do as a re-issue this poetry Friday to celebrate).

My blog and I are actually quite excited these days. You see, it's almost April and National Poetry Month. This year, we're gonna be doing something new here... and I'm incredibly excited. What is it? I'm a tease. You'll know soon enough, but as always, you'll all be a part of it.

Thanks for three great years....

What a character!

OK, that could refer to many people I know, but in this case it was a broader comment. It's a rare thing here at GottaBook, I know, but I wanted to shoot of a link about, gasp, craft!

At the SCBWI Westside Schmooze (which I used to co-coordinate for years but is now in the stupendously-way-beyond-competent hands of Rita and Lee), we recently had a night all about character. It was faboo. And now there's a great blog post up all about what was shared that night.

It's good stuff, I tell ya.

The Cybils!

The winners of the 2009 Cybil awards are up over the Cybils site. Go on over and check out the fabulous blogger-picked goodies.

My Febluaries -- a February poem/a blues poem

MY FEBLUARIES
by
Gregory K.

I’m gloomy, gray.
Don’t want to play.
My Febluaries are bad today.

Outdoors, inside --
No place to hide:
These blues I’ve got won’t be denied.

I’ll give a cheer
When March is here
And February’s gone this year.

But ‘til that day
I’m sad to say
My Febluaries are here to stay.


The Poetry Friday links are collected over here at Big A little a today. Why not go check them out?

And if you want to get all my new poems (and only the poems) emailed to you for freeee as they hit the blog, enter your email address in the box below then click subscribe!

One of those poetic internet mysteries...

For the last week or so, folks have been coming to my blog after searching the net for me and a specific poem I blogged here -- I Lost My Voice. While it's not unusual for me to see folks searching for a specific poem/stanza/turn of phrase (often, I'm convinced it's teachers checking to see if homework turned in was original work or not!), this is different, as it is people clearly searching with my name as well.

So the mystery is... where did this poem appear (obviously credited to me), and why are people coming this way? It's all good, certainly. But I'm curious, I tell ya, and since it's people from all across the U.S. it wasn't just a local thang... which makes it that much more intriguing.

OK, fine. Maybe this isn't a mystery anyone but me wants solved, but if you happen to know the answer, I'd sure love to hear it! So would my mom. So just know you disappoint her if you keep it to yourself :-)

It's everywhere!

Ya just never know where the Fibonacci sequence will pop up and surprise ya. OK, maybe "surprise" isn't exactly right... but how many folks expect to see it in the Sunday comics?

Foxtrot -- 2/8/09

And funny, too, at least to this geeky fellow....

That Friday thang...

Well, I had fully planned to get a post up for Poetry Friday and be in this week's lovely collection of links (gathered by the Wild Rose Reader herself!), but that's surely not how the day turned out. Although at least now I'm linking in....

Next week, an original, I tell ya.

Math. Poetry. And an article...

Yesterday, there was a lovely article by Shirley Dent in the Guardian's Book Blog all about the relationship between math and poetry. I'd tell ya to check it out no matter what, but since it happens to talk of Fibs (and me!), I doubly tell ya!

I'm just saying....

...it's not always a bad thing to live in LA. After hearing Just One More Book's great interview with Neil Gaiman last week, I got a second dose of Gaiman-ness, if such is a word, this week: an invite to a Coraline screening this weekend. Oooooh. I said yes, of course. I shall report back, but thought I'd made at least a few of you a tad jealous beforehand. I know... give, give, give, that's all I do!

Here a link. There a link.

Everywhere a link, link!

It's Poetry Friday, and while I've missed even posting on the last couple, today I can link ya in to the roundup (at Adventures in Daily Living).

And, if that's not enough, the January Carnival of Children's Literature is up at Lisa Chellman's Under the Covers. Get on over and check it out....

A modest proposal...

Ya know, I think I've got a solution for the economic woes of the country, and I suspect many parents of school age children will say "Well, duh! Of course!" when I tell you my idea.

The government should sell wrapping paper as a fundraiser.

Seriously, if we all bought just a couple rolls... well... not only would our money go straight to the federal coffers, but we'd also all need to buy gifts to put inside the wrapping paper! It's a win-win scenario.

I do see one potential problem, though. We'd probably ask other nations to buy wrapping paper from us, but they might be selling it, too... and we'd feel obligated to buy from them. But these are details I'll leave to others to sort out....

That's a lot of things!

Over at Mother Reader, she's celebrating her third blog-o-versary by reprinting her 100 things about me list. Mighty entertaining and a nice way to celebrate. I, on the other hand, have a 3rd anniversary coming up next month where I have no similar plans. But MR has raised the bar again, so I figure I either have to coast in under the radar or do something to celebrate. Hmmmm.... Hmm............

Once again...

... I was not nominated for an Oscar for best actor. This is consistently the case, of course. Perhaps no surprise.

But I'd note that beyond the Oscars, it's awards/best of season elsewhere, including in the Cybils and the upcoming Newbery. I can safely say that I've got no predictions, but I love tooling around and reading all the "mock" awards on the net where people who have read 10 times what I've read predict with, well, usually with more accuracy than me!

But I'm still stinging over my Oscar overlook, so I'll just have to wait a spell before I go mocking....

Poetry in the spotlight

How nice to have (for the fourth time ever) a poem read at the inauguration. I know you're all clever sorts, and I suspect most everyone who ends up here saw or heard Elizabeth Alexander's poem, but just in case and for the record....

Here it is!


And if there's another poem any time soon read before an audience of millions, I'll probably link that, too.

Inkheart, the movie. Seen with my own eyes, I tell ya!

One of the advantages of living in Los Angeles is that every now and then you get to see a movie first... or at least early. So this morning, I got to see Inkheart, based on Cornelia Funke's book of the same name. I'm not a reviewer nor will this be a review, but I will say that more important than my reactions (which were positive, by the way) is that everyone in the target age range seemed to be loving it.

What was particularly fascinating to me was seeing a movie that's all about books and words and writing. There were certainly things that the writer-me laughed at that flew over the heads of... well... perhaps everyone who isn't a writer. But beyond that, the movie is steeped in book references and images and that alone is worthy of celebration, seems to me.

Inauguration read-alouds?

I'm curious if any of y'all have great read-aloud ideas for the Presidential inauguration? I'm thinking that there aren't any inauguration-specific stories ("If You Take a Mouse to an Inauguration" excepted, of course), but I'm open to being proven wrong. Or just to getting good ideas!

Piles. Big piles.

This week I dismantled big piles of books in my office. You know the piles I'm talking about -- books I'd planned to read. I assume I'll still read them, but I needed to redistribute them to shelves and other places so I could start fresh.

It's not that I don't plan to read them all. I do. And it's not that I never made progress on the piles. Instead, they grow faster than I can read. I think this is a good thing, but if you were waiting for me to have a convo with you on any specific book title, you might want to find someone else to chat with!

I expect build new piles, of course, and can only imagine that it'll include books I recently shelved. But for now, I feel like a huge amount of progress has been made!

The Happy New Year Conundrum

No, that's not the title of a lost Robert Ludlum novel (too many words anyway, I think). Rather, it's the question I'd posed on Facebook but seems worthy of blog discussion as well:

When does one stop saying "Happy New Year!"?

There were many thoughts on this, including Mary Hershey's statement that January 26th was the last acceptable date... but she had no proof! Besides, Mary has been known to go for humor....

Still, I know I said "Happy New Year" a lot today, because it was the first time I'd seen many folks this year.

So, have I gone too far? Is it like wearing white pants after Labor Day? Does anyone know????