Write to Say It (or to Sing It)

Inner Elves is up and running, my "other voices" blogsite offering about 80 posts so far, although I still have about 35 stories, poems, and miscellaneous items I'll probably post, including some I like the best. I have to do them a few at a time so the servers don't have a hissy fit and make me validate myself with "qzieh" or "foziyuts" in order to publish my own post. Actually, it's a good feature in helping to keep out machine spam.

I want to especially thank Rhononymous for suggesting I indicate when I wrote each piece. I've put the year at the end of each and grouped them above the archives. Good idea, R!

So I've syndicated through all the search engines, who will in time now send their little arachnids to crawl inside my head--they enter through the ear, you know--and index the elves' works. I've chosen a serviceable template for starting up, and configured in some pingers and statkeepers and other feedback widgets, so I am quickly approaching the end of the startup.

Now I just hope somebody reads some of these. In any case, I'm glad I put them out there where anyone who wishes can access them instead of letting them continue languishing unread in computer files and mss on my stack, or stuck away in ringbinders.

Creative writings are meant to be read. Maybe nonfiction thoughts can benefit from being set down in journals and diaries and kept private, or blogged about, if the writer wants to communicate them; but creative writings--stories, poems, sketches and other forms from the imagination--definitely are meant to be read. It's a shame when they are kept hidden, for whatever reason.

So now I have this blog for my rant and the other for my rave. I'm looking forward to writing in each mode, expository and creative, and being able to share on both venues. But I still have my journal, and that's just for talking to myself. Its pages are legion. I'll never stop journaling, above all. It keeps me sane. (?)

One new blog, One refurbished blog, and Two dead blogs

I'm making some big changes in my blogs overall: a new look here, with updated links, and a whole new Blogger blog I'm really excited about: inner elves I call it, and invite everyone to check it out. It's where I've decided to post my more creative fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from most of my manuscripts going back over fifty years but just gathering dust. I decided I never was going to try to market them and they'd just get tossed if I didn't do a vanity collection (which would also gather dust in the copies I would spend a lot to publish and I wouldn't sell anyway). The more I thought about it, putting them out to the world in their own new blog here made a lot of sense. And I'm having a lot of fun putting it together.

Furthermore, it also makes a lot of sense to me that I didn't need two other blogs I've posted to in the past besides this one: nbknotes and nbk2. Those were languishing without new posts for many moons, so I deleted them today. Two blogs will be fine, because I basically have two selves in my writing : my creative side and my expository side, each looking for expression. In the past, I've found they don't mix very well for me in the same venue, so now each has its own.

Good Lord, what have I done! each screams at me. Oh well, too late now. (Besides, I saved all the stuff from the other now-defunct blogs as .xml's and will edit them into the one or the other new ones. There. I think that's going to work just fine.

On the brighter side

I just noticed my recent blogs are pretty intense. Think I got caught up in the war, the shootings, bad student (and other) behavior in the schools, and the horrible things in the news generally and was trying to make sense of them in my mind. But not to be negative, I want to sign on to my blog and see something a little more positive, without being Pollyanna about it.

So here goes. It's a beautiful day, just great. And I just finished classes for the spring semester and have the grades all ready to submit. The students overall did themselves proud on the papers and last test, and for the first semester in a while I was pretty impressed with their efforts. It's good to feel like I made a difference in their lives and learning. I'm teaching summer session and already have nine or ten enrolled, so it will "make," and we'll get a nice start on our vacation budget.

And things seem to be falling into place. Our youngest sons are touring Europe in June, and it looks like Barb will get the foot surgery she needs by early June and be ambulatory by the time we can head out. We've mitigated some of the big doubling of our property insurance by taking higher non-hurricance deductible and getting a very favorable insurance inspection that should bring us closer to a mortgage payment we can live with, and if it doesn't, we've gotten an alternative quote lined up that will.

Everyone is busy and healthy, I already have my classes lined up for fall teaching, and if we can just get some rain to fall down here before we all have to ride camels in the South Florida Desert, we should be in good shape for a rewarding and full summer.