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Tag Archives: goals

Lovesick Girl Puke and Other Wails

06 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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amwriting, brother, chapbook, goals

My brother comes upstairs for a visit with me almost every morning now bearing gifts of coffee from the usual place.  This morning he opened the door and, instead of a good morning, he greeted me with “How do you write?”  It came rather out of nowhere. He had many questions and I don’t know why these thoughts came to him. It doesn’t matter, really.  This is quite an about face from the “why bother journaling” he spat at me many months ago.  He wanted to ask if I have a secret yearning to write a novel.

I explained between sips from my “Witch’s Brew” mug that a phrase will come to me while doing the most mundane things like washing dishes, folding laundry, or driving to work.  And the period I did the most writing was also the most heartbreaking time for me. I confessed that most of those poems can’t compete with what is considered “literature” and I probably shouldn’t submit them for literary chapbooks, but I’m not giving up.  He asked why do I care what “literati” think, suggested that I’m aiming too high.  I don’t expect him to understand the complex voices in my head that fight over what I write, how, and for whom.

I told him this is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and I have no desire to participate in writing a novel at this time. I have a few flash pieces that could be developed into something bigger, but I haven’t chosen to do so. Not a goal right now.  (Well, knowing what’s NOT a goal does help to establish what IS, hmm?)  But just the act of discussing these things with him was stimulating and helpful. And I do believe my next chapbook submission will be called “Lovesick Girl Puke,” will be read by the teenage demographic, and that’s all right with me.  Kidding…not kidding.  

She Awakens

01 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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goals, The Rock

Another day, another realization.  You will wake up and see yourself in the mirror and you will have a choice to make, just as you will sit before an empty notebook or a blank screen with a choice to make. You can know that this is who you have been, an empty notebook, and choose to stay that way or you can pick up the pen and write. Or if you see a face that never smiles you can choose to attempt a little grin and see if it sticks. You can know that where you are right now, in a body that you’ve been neglecting isn’t where you have to be tomorrow.

But you will have to pay.  I have a little post-it note stuck to the monitor just right there that asks me “What will I pay?”  So far, I haven’t paid much. I am ready to take on the challenge now, be brave, tell my little girl self it’s going to be okay. Just because this is where I am today doesn’t mean it will stay this way, not if I can help it.

Be brave. Be strong.  Write the truth, the sad, ugly, mean truth. Pay the price to make the words come, to make them something.  I can do this. I have been for the last 15 minutes, this gentle tapping on keys while the world stands still beneath overcast skies and the littlest bit of rain.

Goals for the week (in general):  read more, write more, salad more, masquerade no more.

Furthermore:  

Start. https://t.co/XdrtrbawM4—
teresa cortez (@tweeter123C) November 01, 2015

Parts and Pieces

18 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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evolving, goals, thoughts

Renderings that come from what’s going on inside.

Goal for the end of the month: Put together poems for chapbook contest. Looking forward to seeing what I can come up with. Reading on the past makes me squeamish, actually. Was I really that person there, in those words, in that moment? And how did I come to be here today, the one who can’t sleep but gets up and drinks lukewarm coffee in the mornings surfing the net for news, for a laugh with Fallon, who watches the clock for the work day to begin, who is afraid to touch South (that is, emotion)  because of everything that lies there? I will have to go back there, to bring these poems to life again, get strong with them, and launch them forward. Otherwise, they lay flat on a page in a dusty file folder.  What else are they there for, why else did I write it? Was it all cathartic, or is there something more there?  That’s the trick, to find out.

I am present, I am here with me in this real, in this quiet house. Only now have I learned how to breathe from a centered place and look forward, actually see it, and although it is scary, I am ready.  What renderings are yet to come, what horrific lonely sunrises will I write about then?  Too soon to say from 9:08 on a September morning, but at least I know I’m in charge of the words I put on that page.

Another goal:  re-do my business cards in 12-point, dammit!

Schwing! Submission!

15 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Bonewitch, Flash fiction, goals, guidelines, submitted

Notes from the desk of Indigo Vales:  Flash fiction piece finished, Flash fiction piece submitted.  The first time it didn’t go through because a certain someone , little Ms. Attention To Details, didn’t notice the file had to be in rich text, not a Word document.  Ahem…   so on my lunch break from work I took a closer look at the GUIDELINES, FOLLOWED THE INSTRUCTIONS, and this time it went through.

I am excited by this process, something I hope to keep doing and with more frequency.

Perhaps my next post will be Schwing!  Accepted!

9/16 update: Got the “received” letter and “do not query before” date.  Yay!

Thoughts On This September Day

11 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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destiny, goals, horoscope, never forget

Good morning.  I sleep better after he leaves for work, so I returned to sweet (illicit) dreams, but then awoke to remembering what today is.  And my exhausted son overslept, but he got himself out the door.   The morning began a little sideways, but perhaps today is the right day to feel sideways. Tilted. On unfirm footing.

Nothing is certain right now, for me anyway, and my Jyotish horoscope certainly agrees with how this feels.   You might say, “What? Oh come on, you don’t believe that crap do you?” And I will say “Yes. I do believe that the carbon-based units (thank you Star Trek) on this planet are influenced by our genes, our ancestors, our birth order, and where this planet is in relation to the rest of the Universe. We are certainly influenced by things outside our control, and I look at horoscopes with interest, but not for hard and fast truths. Sometimes it coincides with my life, sometimes not. In the end, it’s all up to me.”

This September day is overcast.  The sky is not turquoise like it was on that day, fourteen years ago. I remember walking outside to see if there were any planes flying at all, after I heard the news.  We might get more rain today. I sure would like to stay home and write in the pouring rain, but I will probably be at the store slinging auto parts when the rain falls. I shooed away the wee temptation to skip work and stay home to write, but I am closing the store tonight and that means be there, or else.

I am tempted to clean out my closet and office because it will be productive, and yet have nothing to do with writing. I come up with all kinds of things to take me off track and it’s an illness many creatives suffer.  I recognize it, name it, and now I will put a stop to it by saying I have a writing goal for next week, September 22nd, to submit both pieces of recent flash fiction.  I’ve already dealt with a tardy teenager, read the news, journaled, and stated a goal.  And now, we’re off.

Face the morning. Breathe. Reflect. Love. Seek the horizon.

9/14 update:  Submitted piece today.  Yay!

Chapbook Manuscript Blues

07 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

chapbook, Chuck Wendig, goals, poetry

This morning, it’s the kind of feeling you get when you look at the garden you tried to grow and see that it’s quite a mess. I mean, it was half-hearted, really. You meant well, but you didn’t give it everything a garden needs to really look like something that was destined for the cover of Lawn & Garden. But is that what you really wanted? To be on the cover? Or did you just want to spend some time outdoors, away from a computer screen or beneath fluorescent lights, hands covered in earth instead of axle grease? What was the thinking behind tearing open a spot of land on the side of the house that sees a lot of sunlight, making rows and dropping in seeds? What were you thinking when you watched for shoots to rise from the earth, hoping to see tender green, when all that arrived was breathless, pale strangers?  You brought water and weeded intermittently, as you were rather preoccupied. (At least, not as preoccupied as last year, but that’s a tale meant for some other garden.)  So here you are with an ugly tomato and a green pepper that would certainly be finalists for Ugliest Vegetables of the Year.   You wash the dirt off the tomato, sprinkle on a little salt, and take a bite of pulpy seeds and firm skin. The land yielded a veggie good enough for you, but not enough to share with anyone else. Was it worth the effort? Does the land speak to you loudly enough to encourage you to try again?  Will garden and gardener establish a bond and create (a poem) good enough to share?

This morning, it’s how I feel about what my writing life looks like thus far. I look at the pretty box labeled “Poetry” and know deep down I’ve got no business compiling it and sending it off for review.  I feel like a woman at the starting line, waiting for the submission deadline gun to go off knowing I am surrounded by real runners whose heels I am going to study all the way to the finish line, and once I get there I’m going to be drop dead on the line, calling out for my inhaler and a beer, saying “Tell me again why I got into this thing?”

I ask myself, can I create, magically spin a pile of poems that resemble art in time for the deadline? Can a writer “art harder” and win?  How dare I even think about opening that earth and dropping in a seed, or stand on the starting line? I’m going to dare because nothing will grow otherwise.  Wish me luck.  Wish me Truth. Wish me Authenticity. Wish me Art, muthas!  

Darwin’s Moon

27 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Flash fiction, goals, Niko's Boots, progress, prompt

Notes from the desk of Indigo Vales:  I completed (yes? completed?) a flash fiction piece that comes from a photo prompt at my beloved HoW.  I find I do very little writing that isn’t cathartic unless inspired by the prompts found there. I hope that as I increase my reading diet and continue to bend my back to the writing wheel each day, there will be less blogging and more “real” writing.  It is a goal. A vague one.  I haven’t actually created a publishing goal lately.  Am I in a position to create and state one right now?  *Notes empty coffee mug. Distracted. Will come back to that.*

In my excited state I shared the story with my spouse who said (to paraphrase) “Good writing, where’s the rest?”  So now I have to decide what to do with the rest of the piece. Is there enough of a tale to tell about Volusia and her friend Darwin? Does she ever decide to get her passport and travel to Cambodia and see the temples beneath the moon? Will she stay in love with her life, her freedom, or make the biggest mistake of her life and fall in love? What happens when a young woman uproots herself from her lavish family to see what happens when she throws herself at the footsteps of the world?  Um, looks like there’s a rest of the story there…  But I wanted to write about Niko, who is still stuck at the bottom of a crater, grievously wounded! How will he get out?  Does anything interesting happen to him if he makes it back to his village?  Less of a story there, no matter how much I enjoyed writing about his dilemma.

All I know is, it’s going to be a busy day here for my family. Some life-changing times going on. I believe there’s going to be some river-sitting and beer drinking in my future this afternoon, and tonight, and tomorrow, and I shall bring the laptop along with me and see if I can coax any words to come along.

August 26

26 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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covenant, goals, progress, thoughts

Notes from the desk of Indigo Vales:   The business cards are here. (Notice that sentence not written in italics, all caps, ending without exclamation?)  I watched their progress as they made their way across the country, leaping from post office to post office, to finally here in my fingers. They’re shiny smooth and blue, quite pretty.  But the print was much bigger on the screen, and I have to squint to read the address.  It appears I am going to need make the typeface bigger and re-order them.  BUMMER!

No writing to speak of lately, but the clock says there is still time to make progress before heading out to the “day job.” As I tried to drift off last night, Darwin explained some things about the moon to Volusia, so I am looking forward to writing that (scene? dialogue?)  I was afraid I would forget as I usually do when ideas come during the night, but this one stuck. (Along with some disturbing dreams which I have no interest in trying to decipher.)

Goals:  Write To-Do list, work on story, try not to get distracted.

Thoughts for the day: If your boat is leaky and you’ve been reading your charts upside down, who’s fault is that?  How long you gonna stand there, ankle-deep in it trying to figure out which way you’re gonna go?

The other thought is this: Keep the promise to your story.

Thin Hours

21 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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goals

Heavy rain in the morning dark woke me.  A little bit of lightning and thunder. Old coffee in my cup and the hours are too thin to hold everything I need them to.

Today is a work day. I open the store which means I would have had to have gotten up at 4AM to get any kind of writing done before heading in, but I did not. I am thinking about the last two days, drinking old coffee and watching the time. I made a promise in my personal journal to bring my best mind and focus and self to the job today. I will have a chiropractic visit afterwards because I haven’t seen him in weeks. I will come home and make dinner and leave what’s left for the rest of the people in this house who also live here.  And then I am going to close the door and come back to the little story that wants me to finish. I want to see how it ends. If she will stay with Mr. Darwin or if her dreams will carry her out the front door with a smile because she was hungry enough to find the rest of the world.  State a goal for the story, then? Finish the first rough draft. I think there’s enough now to do so.

Till then…  cardinals are pipping outside the window. Trucks roll by loudly on damp asphalt.  And this wasn’t such a bad way to begin a morning, looking forward to a writing night instead of a writing day.  Maybe another storm will roll through while I’m at the store so I can watch it wide awake instead of barely conscious.

Here comes 2016

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

goals, not writing, thoughts

Is it too soon to make plans for next year?  There are good plans (like writing and submitting work) and plans for things that I know must come, the saddest of all which I do not want to explore here at the moment.  Some plans have to be put off for now, but they hover in the distance like a storm cloud we can’t tell which way its going.  These are the thoughts I had while holding a 16-month planner while browsing at the bookstore.  “Words To Live By,” featuring the box designs called Primitives By Kathy.  As I held the book, my Inner asked “What’s to come? What’s to come by my own hand and by all those things outside of my control?  And what are all those things within my control that I can note in this planner, set goals, make things happen?”  I put the book down (as is my habit when confronted with anything I have to get deep with, but I’m learning to overturn that habit quicker.) I went back to the planner for another glance at the pages, interested to see that the New moon and Full moon are still an important part of our dates and planning.

So the house is quiet now. The menfolk are down for the night.  My office is trashed because I did not put any effort here today, and my Inner is muttering about the mess.  I think I’m going to be up for a while…

Today’s reading haul:  “The Sun” and “Harper’s” magazine.

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