Peering Through the Knothole

Peering through the knothole

I see the light of day

Shining silver along

Bright vertical lines

To crease the grains

From black to grey.

Peering through the knothole

I see the world outside

In the circle of a pinpoint

That illuminates

And brings new life

To the vacant darkness

Of my small and lowly cave.

My Thoughts on "The Casual Vacancy" by J. K. Rowling

After much anticipation, I finally acquired a copy of “The Casual Vacancy” by J. K.Rowling.  During my wait, I avoided reading any reviews or comments about the book, as I did not want to have any outside influence cloud my view or spoil my reading. Having read Rowling’s Harry Potter series, I expected to get lost in the story and to meet and connect to new characters.  However, that was not the case. This is not to say that the book was not good, rather it was not what I expected.

I would not label it as an epic novel, per-say.  Instead, I would label this book more as a social/political view of a small community, which falls into social and political chaos after the sudden death of Councillor Barry Fairbrother. At first, it is difficult to keep the characters in the story straight as to who’s who. In fact, I was tempted to make a list of the characters with notes as to how each relates to the other. As well, I found it difficult to connect to the characters as I would in most novels, as there is no real individual background story told for any of them. All of the characters are depicted within the context of a short time period, beginning with the death of Barry Fairbrother and ending with the election of a new Councillor. However, that is not to say that the characters are not brutally realistic in their actions and the outcomes of their actions.

Overall, this book is an intelligent, artful, creative, and sometimes comical read. I would expect to see it listed academically as assigned reading, particularly in a class dealing with the Social Sciences.  Now that I have read the novel once through, I know what to expect.   It is worth reading, and worth reading again.

Thanks for stopping by. ~Yvonne~

Restoration

I come to sit

            In the Sacred Circle.

In solitude

            I seek, I meditate,

I explore my Soul

            To eradicate

The structures within

            That seek to restrict

The path set before me.

In my mind’s eye I wander

Through the past

Of vast wastelands

To seek the old bones

That feel smooth to the touch,

Yet, are solid as stone.

Though bleached white with time,

They send shadowed reflection,

Like faint ripples that shimmer

To seem silver in sand.

I set to the task

            To gather together

Each piece important

            To the whole.

I lay them bare before me

            Building from the beginning

To complete the circle,

            To restore the old life

To regain the new.

            For in the continuing circle

There is no end.

Living with Word Addiction

I freely admit it: I am addicted to words.  I think most of us who write have the same addiction to one extent or another. Words have power and the more words we know, then the more power we have as writers. The two most important references in my writer’s toolbox are a dictionary and a thesaurus.  I could not write without them. However, my addiction to words goes beyond the norm.

My infatuation with words started early in life and began with my learning to read. I read everything I found that had words, from books to magazines to comic books. It is true that I did not understand all I read, and there were many times when I came across words that I could not readily sound out to pronounce. My parents, whom I suspect were weary of my spelling out words for them to pronounce and give definitions, added a dictionary to my bookshelf when I was around six years-old. It was not a child’s dictionary; rather it was a regular grown-up Webster’s Dictionary. After bestowing me with this fascinating tome of words, if I attempted to spell out a word for their appraisal, their answer to me was, “Go and look it up in your dictionary.”

Eventually, I began to keep notebooks of words and their definitions, and later, when I discovered the thesaurus, I added their synonyms. Eventually, I transferred the words in the notebooks to index cards, with words on one side and their definitions and synonyms listed on the other side. I still do this, and yes, I admit that hoarding words is a weird obsession. However, I find that as a writer it is an obsession with an advantage as words inspire more words, which eventually lead to prose and verse and before you know it, you are writing essays, articles, poems and even novels.  

And so, dear friends, I do not apologize for my word addiction, and I do not foresee a rehabilitation program in my future. However, I feel that you, my readers, should have forewarning that anyone could acquire this obsession.  There are millions of words out there in the open just waiting to drag you into their world and there is no escape…

Keep on reading; keep on writing and thanks for stopping by. ~Yvonne~ 

Writer’s Overload

It was a week of essay ideas, (too many to count), and I cannot seem to focus on any one subject to complete one satisfactorily.  So, I am writing this blurb just to let you know I am still here in spirit, even though I don’t have anything written to post of much interest that is complete.

This is not exactly writer’s block; it is more like writer’s overload. In some ways, I would rather experience the block, but then again… Currently my notebook is overflowing with scribbled notes of words, lines, and vague ideas that pop into my head in random order. I am not sure where any of these are going but I am confident they will all come together, if not separately, in the end.  

I think that writer’s overload might stem from media overload. As I had the flu for a couple of weeks, I spent much of my time reading and listening to audio books, watching a few television series and movies on Netflix, and surfing the internet. All of these activities cause me to have deep thoughts on all sorts of subjects ranging from emotional and psychological conflict (not necessarily my own) to the state of the world and the environment. As if this were not enough to keep my mind in a whirlwind, I then begin worrying over catching up on housework and the home repairs that I will have to work on when spring comes. Yes, all these thoughts together are an excessive amount of subjects for one writer to have dancing through his or her mind.

For now, my only cure is to remove myself from the influx of media and concentrate on an artistic project or begin a major housecleaning project. Between these two, not much to anyone’s surprise, I am leaning more towards the artistic avenue. Anyway, either one of these activities will organize the mass of thoughts that are a disorganized jumble in my head. Before long, every idea, thought, word and line will find its own cubby file. I won’t have to work on it, it will just happen on its own. Writing is not always easy, but it is good to know that the clean up of writer’s overload is a just a matter of alternate focus.

Thanks for stopping by… ~Yvonne~