Requiescat in pace: my hard drive died a painful death on October 27, 2013, aka Hellaween, after I’d tried to install OSX Mavericks. It was a sad, sad day, esp. as my life of late hadn’t permitted any manner of document backup since July 26th. I lost a fair amount of work, but I’ve been able to find consolation in the wisdom of the great Vonnegut.
As a result, I’ve had a hard time getting the chance to work on the e-release of Ministers of Grace in additional formats. I’m hoping to get it up and running on the iBooks store soon, and I’d like for it to be available in other formats as well.
My writing gears are getting rusty, so I decided to work on a number of haikus yesterday courtesy of the prompts provided by #haikuwordgame on Twitter. I was able to come up with a few of them based on those that were suggested over the last month or so, and here are some of the fruits of that labor.
honor destroy feeling
“Alchemist”
Swear, on your honor,
that you won’t be feeling the
need to destroy gold.
chimney voluntary thirteen
Thirteen chimneys all
voluntarily chose to
burn their bricked selves up.
goose graceful grimace This ended up being a tanka.
The transition from
gosling to goose is rarely
graceful, mostly it’s
a grimacing go, getting
to gander at the good life.
show curve manipulate
Show me where the curve—
manipulation of time—
comes ‘round this here place.
torch cricket age
His dying torch made
cricketing sounds as it
aged into ember.
deep blue welkin
‘Welkin’ is a damn
awful word to describe the
deep blue bliss of sky.
wave god airplane
An airplane adrift
on a wave in the air can
make folks pray to god.
It might seem silly to post a smattering of haikus, but I find that working within the structure that is a haiku—something that finite as well as syllabically and rhythmically regular—forces you to adapt your language. My innate preference is always for prose, so my haikus tend to result in a single 17-syllable sentence like that alliteration? that avoids but doesn’t prohibit fragmentation, but it’s nevertheless a good exercise if you’re feeling rusty and in need of greasing the wheels for 20 minutes.
Peace out, and watch this space for when I can offer you the holiday treat hopefully? of ebooks available everywhere.
♥ EAB
PS—If you have read Book 1 of Ministers of Grace, please leave me a review on Amazon, Goodreads or Shelfari!