Stagnation

October 2017 Blog

The year is now three-fourths over and I am dead in the water.

Stagnation: A Haiku

These feet, mired in the

Muddied waters of life, long

To dance on the air.

Stagnation: #WritersBlock and #LifeBlock

Only in forward movement is there life worth living. I should think on this more often. I’m certainly not living it.

It has been a year now since publishing my “Life's Lemons and Lemonade: A Collection of Haiku: Volume One: One for the Book” (http://tinyurl.com/zuayqu8).

I should have another novel out and at least two more Haiku collections. But I don’t.

And there’s no one to blame but me. I have fallen into the rut of living day to day and expecting there to be a tomorrow, even though I know there are no guarantees.

Maybe I’m thinking that if I keep living in expectation of tomorrow, it will always come. Now, I know I’m not that delusional, but it does lend a certain rationality to my behavior (or lack thereof).

Three-fourths of this year gone. One year since my last release date. An actual dead line staring me in the face, and a nap is the best thing each day I can look forward to. I need to find the energy or at least the fortitude to start cranking out some more works I’ve had in progress way too long.

There are three months left in the year.

I’d like to see the sequel to my paranormal western “Black Oak: Town of Joy” (http://tinyurl.com/hohuhce ) on the market.

The sequel is already written. All I have to do is the final edit, format it and hit publish.

I’d also like to see two more Haiku collections hit the market. They will take a little more work. I’ve got three subjects I’m currently gathering material for. One is on writing – hopefully with all kinds of helpful hints to overcome writer’s block or lend inspiration to writers who might need that extra boost I seem to constantly need.

The second one is about our Universe and this planet Earth that we are so badly using. It is to be called “Global Warning” and I hope it serves as such, although I fear it will be but another voice “crying-in-the-wilderness”.

Another is a collection of Haiku and other poetry to be called “Dark Horizons” – a compilation of the darker side of me, the side that is closer to Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf than even I care to admit.

Gee, talking about them almost makes me want to stop writing this and get to work on them, but then, I’ve left writing this blog to the last minute again, so I’d best keep at it. I would like to keep this year’s blog record intact. This will be my tenth month in a row to post it on time.

So I’ll keep writing this while I’m catching glimpses of the latest episode of the Ray Donovan show, which appears to be all about the right-to-die and/or assisted suicide.

I am surprised that they did this so openly. I don’t think it would have been possible to get it aired a few years ago – even on HBO. It is surely a topic that needs to be addressed. As morbid as it may seem, it is an important subject. Something that we need to legitimize along with all the other personal rights that should be a given by now. But these rights, it seems, we have to keep fighting for over and over again.

And while I’ve gotten off topic, why does the greatest nation on Earth still not have Universal Health Care?

Really, it’s one of those things I thought we’d have before I died, along with a woman’s right to choose, racial equality, and justice for all.

I guess some things will have to wait until my next incarnation.

Until then, I welcome your reactions and responses to my current rantings. I love to hear from my readers. Also, here are links to my Twitter and Facebook accounts, if you care to share your thoughts with me there:

https://twitter.com/awlasky

https://www.facebook.com/ann.wilmerlasky

Best Laid Plans

September 2017 Blog

Best Laid Plans: A Tale of Gross Procrastination

Okay, the year is two-thirds over. My only accomplishments so far are my daily Haiku writing and posting my monthly blog. (And that only barely).

Best Laid Plans: A Haiku

Having spent so long

On the dreaming, I must be

About the doing.

Time groweth short, and I’ve not nearly done enough for a person whose life is waning at an ever-more alarming rate with each passing day. Maybe it’s my way of defying the inevitable. If it is, I really don’t think it’s going to work.

Okay, so I haven’t died yet. Truth be told, I’m not even prepared to die. There’s so much more I need to do. My ducks are in total disarray – and that’s all of them – my writing ducks and my life ducks. They are scattered willy-nilly across the surface of an ever-shrinking pond. They aren’t even paddling anymore, they are just floating on the surface.

I have lost sight of the admonition to “Do what you need to do when you need to do it, whether you feel like it or not!” I don’t even remember where I heard that, but it stuck with me. Too bad I haven’t embraced it. I could be a prolific (if not best-selling) author and the person who (if she dies tomorrow) exits this earth leaving a plan behind.

Were I to write an autobiography or a memoir at this stage of life, it would be well-titled: “How Not To Live Your Life.” Maybe it could be a self-help book. I really, really know how not to do it. Not sure at this point I’m ever going to get it right.

I get the feeling that I can’t go on as I have been, knowing that if I do, I will rejoin the stars of the galaxies with my song unsong on this Earth – not even a footnote in the annals of time.

What do I do to recover (if I can)? I need to make lists – a plan for even such a limited future – without making the plan my goal and my only accomplishment. I must plan and I must execute it.

However, I have gone down this road before and gotten lost on it. I could go without the lists, but the older I get, the less that works. I even need lists to do the little things I need to do in a day. I forget a lot, or I get distracted by shiny objects.

The only thing it seems I don’t need a list for is to take a nap. I can do that at the drop of a hat or the sight of a soft place to snuggle up on. I think it’s the fault of my dogs. Seems I’m emulating them. They love to have me take naps with them. Not sure anymore who the bed belongs to. I think it’s theirs – at least I think they think so.

But even here I digress. Back to my lists. I need one to get all my daily, weekly, etc. mundane stuff done and I need one to get my writing, editing, publishing and promoting under control. Maybe a chart that I can check off with dates (if not deadlines) on it. Oh, and I need a decent filing system. Okay, I have one, but it doesn’t help if I say “I’ll file it later” and then never do.

Have I used the “P” word before? Procrastination? I am the High Queen of Procrastination. If there is a deader-than-deadline, I will push it. I’ve always been that way. Not sure I’m going to overcome that in this stage of my life, but I’ve got to find some kind of answer, some kind of work around.

I’m even discouraging myself writing this. I hope I’m not discouraging my readers. Not sure what I’m trying to accomplish here – maybe just think out the situation and see if I can come to some kind of answer. You know, it was a whole lot easier to effect change when I was younger and closer to the sharpest tack in the box.

My points and my will seem to have dulled a little over the years – either from disuse or (probably not) from overuse. So, it seems, I need to find a way to sharpen my wits and plunge ahead.

There’s still one-third of the year to go. Surely I can accomplish something more. Of course, there’s always next year… Wait! That’s not true! There are no more guarantees. Guess I better get that file out and start – like now!

Until then, I welcome your reactions and responses to my current rantings. I love to hear from my readers. Also, here are links to my Twitter and Facebook accounts, if you care to share your thoughts with me there:

https://twitter.com/awlasky

https://www.facebook.com/ann.wilmerlasky

Heatwave Still Goin' Strong

August 2017 Blog

Heatwave Still Goin' Strong

I'm still melting and about to go down the rabbit hole. Before I do, I need to accomplish something, so I've set a concrete goal:

Writer's Prayer: A Haiku

As words may fail me

At the hour of my death, let

Them speak for me now.

I will publish my second collection of Haiku (Life's Lemons and Lemonade: Volume Two: The Write Life) on September 1^st.

That will be followed hard upon by the third volume – Global Warning (not a typo).

I will be spending a lot of time in front of the fan working on the formatting for the print version. Also this time, the Kindle edition will be properly formatted to retain line breaks and actually look like poetry. (I believe form is as important in poetry as content.)

At the same time, I'm still finishing the Sam Rock sequel manuscript, and I'll be editing the 2^nd Black Oak novella.

Hopefully, the weather and my heatlh will cooperate.

It somehow always amazes me at the end of the month, that I have not reached my goals. It's time for that to stop.

Actually, I'm posting this late on the 1^st of August because I almost forgot to write it.

So I guess I'm going to have to make lists and then actually look at them. There's just so much I want to accomplish before I can't accomplish anything anymore.

I frequently lose sight of the fact that I'm on the waning end of my life. The majority of my days are behind me and what days I have left are rushing past me at an alarming rate.

Another problem I face is that I'm not the sharpest tack in the box anymore. Technological advances are impossible for me to keep up with. So I guess I better get things done before I lose any more brain cells or social media passes me by completely.

I love my Facebook friends but I hardly know how to connect with them anymore. I spend way too much time on Twitter, but it is a little easier to work with (although they make changes and upgrades frequently).

I've got Instagram, Pinterest and other social media accounts also, but I have no idea what to do with them.

 In addition, I spend any more time on the computer, I won't have enough time to write. And my computer is already on life support. I have an external fan blowing on it this summer (don't tell me it isn't getting hotter out there).

As I write this, I'm listening to Al Gore on CNN talk about The Climate Crisis. He's much more intelligent and knowledgeable about this stuff than I ever realized.

I write many of my Haiku about climate change. I'm a firm believer, and I'd like to get my third Haiku collection about Global Warming out before the end of the year. I'd love to be able to change some reluctant minds with it. I'll be satisfied to persuade a few more people to entertain the idea that we need to do something about climate change now, before we reach the point of no return.

Haven't written much about the nuts and bolts of writing this month and for that I apologize.  My mind has been wandering in the heat. Hopefully the temperatures will subside so I can feel more like doing things and spend more time outside writing which is my very favorite thing to do in the whole world – that and watch the squirrels and the birds cavort in the trees. Amazing what you can learn about their habits. Squirrels do actually play. Some of them are braver than others. They build nest in trees, too. Almost grown boat-tailed grackles chirp their little heads off and wait to be fed by their daddies, even when they are grown enough to fend for themselves.

What a shame it would be to lose all this nature to climate change disaster.

Better type this up now and get it posted before my midnight. Next month, I plan to post my September blog and announce in it that my new Haiku book has been published.

Until then, I welcome your reactions and responses to my current rantings. I love to hear from my readers. Also, here are links to my Twitter and Facebook accounts, if you care to share your thoughts with me there:

https://twitter.com/awlasky

https://www.facebook.com/ann.wilmerlasky

We're Havin' a Heatwave!

July 2017 Blog

We're Havin' a Heatwave!

No shiny things this month, only dull, tarnished and rapidly deteriorating and draining things to distract me.

Disregard! A Haiku

The populace lights

Another scathing fire; the

World sweats its ice off.

This is the first day of the seventh month of the year. 2017 is already half over, and I am no where near completing my goals. I have been melting all mont.

The title could have easily have been the only line of my blog this month. It is so hot that I have an external fan blowing on my computer to keep it from overheating (which it has done on occasion).

It is so hot that I can't think straight. I'm even walking around the house with a towel on my shoulder so I can wipe away the sweat. We've broken several records – all over 100 degrees so far. May shatter last year's record. We'll see.

Not much has been written this month besides my daily Haiku. Too bad I'm not writing about drifting asea on that ice floe – maybe  that I could concentrate on.

I'd like to have a few words with "Climate Change Deniers" about now:

Are your brains melting? What about this planet Earth are you not understanding? In your heyday (when you lived in caves) the Earth was sparsely populated and the worst man could do was strike a fire and cook his dinner. (Which probably amazed his neighbor – whose basic response was to bop him over the head and enjoy the rest of the meat.

Now I understand the lifetime carbon footprint of one human on Earth is something like 900 tons. https://www.lavc.edu/gogreen/Carbon_Footprint_101.pdf  (Thank you, Bill Maher –  https://twitter.com/billmaher  –  who suggested we might want to reproduce less.) In addition, crime and war are rampant upon the entire planet. There is no innocent little hidey-hole anymore.

We are a hot, unhappy and for the most part hungry world, with no respite in sight.

Why am I even writing inane novels anyway? Why? Because I'm a writer and maybe my writing will bring someone a little joy. Maybe take them out of the real world for awhile and entertain them with some murder and mayhem that at least isn't real.

I've been pondering why I write mostly horror. That may be a big reason. Maybe if I capture it in a story, it will cease to exist in the real world. (Sorry, indulging in a little fantasy there).

Then, there's the idea that life itself is filled with horror, and it's been a long time since I've had a Pollyanna attitude about anything. I have difficulty writing the happy endings that so few of us know in real life.

We start dying from the moment we are born and the path from the cradle to the grave can be a devastating one. It is, I would garner, for over half the population of this Earth, and the rest of us are doing little to make it better for the least of us – which most of us seem to be becoming. (And that is a #Truth Bomb!)

I take issue with the people who say "It's all part of God's plan" and "Let go and let God..." People of Earth, if there is a God, he is either weeping for or laughing at the creatures he set upon this Earth as its stewards. We are not executing our stewardship very well. We have made an angry mess of this planet, and we will pay dearly for that and for our hubris – that we can do whatever we want and the Earth will heal itself.

That's not gonna work, my friends. Like the Wicked Witch of the West, we are melting – the diminishing ice cap is a symptom of our imminent demise. That is our curse, unless of course, we blow ourselves up simply because we can and must prove whose is the biggest.

"The biggest what?" you may ask. Well don't – I might tell you, then this will be an x-rated blog.

Okay, I'm two-thirds of the way through this blog now, and I feel so much better – for the moment. Soon I must get back to real life and shop for this month's supply of medications. It's amazing how, within the last six months, (since Trump took office, I might add) the pharmaceutical companies have raised the prices again and again and again and… It's exhausting, just checking online for the best prices you can find, and some so those are astronomical. By the way- Kudos to GoodRx –   https://www.goodrx.com/ for providing an amazing service to people who can no longer afford to simply go their local pharmacy and expect their meds to be reasonably priced. I hope they are making money for the service they provide (Good RX that is) because they certainly deserve it.

Thank you, my friends – writers and readers – for allowing me this opportunity to share with you some of the trials of life a writer deals with, besides not writing. Not certain what next month's blog will bring. Hopefully, good news of the pending release of my next two Chapbooks of Haiku – on life and on writing .

Until then, I welcome your reactions and responses to my current rantings. I love to hear from my readers. Also, here are links to my Twitter and Facebook accounts, if you care to share your thoughts with me there:

https://twitter.com/awlasky

https://www.facebook.com/ann.wilmerlasky

Distractions!

June 2017 Blog

Almost didn't make my deadline this month. Remember what I said about "shiny things"?

Distractions!

Well, life may not always provide shiny things, but it is always there and the living (or surviving) of it can easily distract us from our intended purpose.

To Purpose! A Haiku

The sharpest pencil

Would rather be dulled by use

Than retain its point.

This is the first day of the sixth month of the year. 2017 is nearly half over, and I am not much closer to my goals than I was when the year started. I have made virtually no progress this last month at all.

I would apologize to myself, but the apology would fall on deaf ears. I must renew my efforts or face accomplishing little this year except treading water, and I'm certain I don't have that many years left to procrastinate.

Now, how does one hold one's self accountable when there are no incentives to do well and nothing to be held back against failure?

One gets to that point when the only thing in life pending or looming is one's own demise and one seems to have a mental block against contemplating it.

True, that should be incentive enough. I must do these things before I can't do them and all is lost. Sad state of affairs, isn't it?

Okay, on a more positive note: I need to be more organized. I used to have a schedule for everything and I pretty much stuck to it (and consequently got things done). It went by the way side sometime around my bout with congestive heart failure and resting –  lots of resting. Then came trying to live life again and then came the elections (but that's a whole different story). Guess, I need to drag the schedule out and rework it – making it relevant to the now.

I do make lists (and my DH makes lists for me), but I frequently neglect to refer to them. I guess I can blame that on age (really, I think I can). The old brain is still a whiz at Sudoku puzzles, but "what was I supposed to de next?" can still be a mystery.

Oh, and distract me from my routine at any time and I'm totally shot for the day. Seems I'd rather nap than jump back into something I was supposed to do, if I remember what it was.

My excuse, if that's what you would call it, is "I can always do it later". Which in itself is a fallacy, and I know it. But at the time, the nap wins out and then later becomes later yet.

I don't suppose anyone else has these problems. In my mind, it seems everyone else has it all together. But then, over the years, I've found "everyone" else to be essentially the same as me. So I'm assuming others out there have performance problems also. (Not that kind!)

I'd be grateful for any hints. While waiting for some, I guess I'll print out my old schedule and work on it.

Shouldn't be too hard, right? All I need to do is remember to do it, may be write myself a note to do it, maybe paste it on my forehead and look in the mirror once in a while.

By the way, as I sit outside and write this, I can see rain clouds rushing my way with actual rain in them. Since I do my best writing outside, guess I had better speed up my pen. The wind is picking up, but I still don't feel like moving this inside.

I've written in the rain before (as well as bitter, freezing cold). Not sure if it's defiance or I really, really, really like to write out here where clocks don't tick and time (if not the storm itself) stands still for a little while.

Back to that unvarnished, un-shiny schedule: It has to include (besides writing) household chores and paying bills as well. The former seem to get done on an "as desperately needed" basis. The latter is done (reluctantly at best) at the last moment because, it seems, there is rarely enough money at the end of the month anymore. (I’m sure it's a situation that many seniors understand as an unfortunate fact of later life.)

Okay, none of that helps my writing, editing, publishing or promoting situation one whit, but now you understand how I am with distractions and shiny things.

Hopefully, next month, I can report on some real progress. At least I can tweet my book promotions like I did earlier this year. Sold a few books that way, too.

That reminds me, I love Twitter ( https://twitter.com/awlasky ). My husband says "way too much", but then he says that about my fan-girling Jimmy Fallon, too.

I will reach 20,000 followers soon (three years worth of work – and it is work). I will celebrate that milestone, maybe with a book sale – that would be appropriate, wouldn't it? J

I'm not on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ann.wilmerlasky ) much, although I repost my Twitter post (Daily Haiku) there everyday. I should learn to make better use of it. (Wow, I've just added another project, haven't I?)

Too bad, so sad – so many projects in my mind, but they can't seem to translate to actions. Maybe I need to post some visual reminders of what I want to do somewhere I will actually see them. Wait! They would obliterate my computer screen, wouldn't they?

Until next month's progress report, remember – a sharp pencil writes nothing. You have to use is to make any progress. It is happiest blunted.

If you have any questions or comments on any promotion platforms or options, please leave a comment and I will get back to you. I love to hear from my readers.