Menodizzikul; "mah brain's fallin' oot!"

This post comes with a warning of the potential for boredom... unless you are actually interested in personal process and the writing bug - but I need to 'process aloud'!

In a recent post, I mentioned 'avoidance behaviour', taking the form of gluttonous viewing of series and movies online. The avoidance, one admits, was concerning writing.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Most of you here are aware that I have a penchant for the written word, be it poetry or prose. There is some ambition - a slow-burning,  one might say smouldering, desire - to finally get at least one of the books within me to the without of me. Last year, some inroads were made and, this year, Grammarly tells me that I have produced over 1.4 million words. (Am guessing that's since I took the thing on two years ago, 'coz I know that's not this year... this year's production has, I fear, been dismal.)

Elsewhere, others have spoken about their 'screen time' and wishing to cut it down. In terms of movie-watching, bloggerating, bookphizzing, instythinging and all such 'engagement' processes, this is quite understandable. It is all too easy to keep following one's nose to things of distractive interest.

However, I am kind of tied to the screen insofar as I do a lot of research not related to the above. Firstly, there is the teaching bloggy, for which it is necessary to review my own study notes, read further, ruminate then flourish posts with insights and guidance. There is my personal continuing study, not just in Advaita Vedanta, but in general philosophy, comparative analysis, as well as keeping tabs on contra-arguments and apologetics. I hold professional standing in this, despite not earning from it.

Then there are my key interests - could they be called hobbies? Well, yes, as they are neither paying nor, strictly speaking, professional. Art and Photography, Space Science/physics (in which mostly now I read, the days of belonging to societies long passed)... and anything to do with words.

Words. WORDS. Words. 
W.O.R.D.S.
Yes, I am in love with words.

I was a precocious reader and was writing my first short story by the age of ten - a tale of Martians descended from Humans if you must know, and it got an A-minus mark. It was that which encouraged me to dream of becoming a full-time writer.

Fifty years later... the dream still thrives. However, in recent times it has been growing ever more real. This blog and AV-bloggy have honed some of my writing skills, helped to develop 'voice' (a term I struggle with but cannot come up with better) and aided the move from 'nobody wants to read my stuff' to 'oh, they liked that, maybe I can do more'. You, dear readers, have helped me to overcome some of the feelings of shyness and low-confidence at having anything I write on show. For which I thank you. The thing is, though, I have not been getting beyond this point. Despite my mind being stuffed with WORDS, and a lot of them landing on the screen and into computer files, they are not getting any further.

Soooo, after all that avoidance viewing, I knew it was time to get stuck in once more, to find some homes for those words. There are a great many pages and platforms and workshop places for budding writers, and it is mind-boggling. Curiosity led me in a scattergun mode to begin with, but after a couple of days of going cross-eyed, I knew I had to firm up my requirements and look for specific things.

• concentrate on poetry at first; it is the thing which comes most naturally to me in short amounts of time; given a challenge, I can produce the goods in fifteen minutes flat.
• factor in any competitions which might be manageable and are of the appropriate date.
• perhaps include short/flash fiction. These usually come with a deadline and sometimes a prompt and I respond well to such.
• there should be a peer quality to the community which demonstrates welcome and warmth, even when in critical and analytical mode.

Once I settled on this starter list, the research became much more focused and - as often happens, I find - I come upon things almost without effort. 

Suffice to say, I now have a number of bookmarked sites with which I need to be disciplined and check-in at least twice weekly. A prominent one is Submittable. This appears to be a high-end platform used by a large number of the writing community at all stages of their 'careers'. THEN, I came upon Medium. It is a ginormous platform which incorporates a variety of 'magazines/publications' (mostly e-based, but a few are also published to hardcopy). Once I disappeared down that rabbit hole last Wednesday evening, I didn't re-emerge until Saturday morning. Somewhere in there, I managed a couple of hours of sleep, but it was completely absorbing! Hhhyyooojjj learning curve. That 'challenge' link above takes you to one of the poems written and submitted on the spot. There is so much reading and my eyes were gritty and veined by the time I decided I needed to get back to actually producing words again. I felt like mah brain wuz falling oot. 

There is more I will need to share with you as I become more settled and prolific on Medium (having been accepted for publication in the section called Chalkboard already and seeking others). It is definitely a great place to move along to as I seek to go beyond blogging. 

Don't fret, I will not disappear from here; but I am hoping if I get well set up over there, that some of you will be willing to come with me. I'll keep ya posted!!!