Hello readers,
I have been asked by my friend Amy Miller to participate in
something called “My Writing Process Blog Tour,” or as I will now refer to it,
MWPBT, because that rolls off the tongue. MWPBT has been making its way around
the blogging world for some time now.
It’s a slo-mo relay race of blogger after blogger navel-gazing, writing
about it, and handing off the navel-gazing baton to the next blogger. I am supposed to answer four questions about my (finger quotes) writing
process. My last post was on July 21; what kind of process could I possibly
have? But Amy has faith in me and I have
faith in Amy. She, unlike yours truly, has fully formed thoughts in her brain,
and her blog has actual serious writing. http://writers-island.blogspot.com/
Here I go with the four questions.
What am I working on? Many of you don’t know that besides
the blog, I write poetry. And I must say that if this blog was all I ever
wrote, that would be a sad state of affairs. (See above: last post July
21.) I have a poetry
manuscript that has been going door to door on the publication circuit, trying its
darnedest to look cute and forlorn and like it needs a good home. So far about
thirty publishers (who looked like such nice people!) held it at arm’s length
like it had fleas and tossed it out the door. Two or three said it had nice
eyes and one declared it a finalist, so I try to have hope, but I am starting
to think that origami may be a better use of the paper.
How does my work differ from others of its genre? Oh, I’ve got
this one! This is easy: because I’m me! Picture a toddler on top of a picnic
table, hands on hips. No one else has my
sense of humor, makes the same spelling and usage mistakes over and over again,
has the same take on this odd, wonderful, wacky, pathetic world we live in.
Blog or poetry, it’s all me, all the time.
Me, me, me. Me.
Why do I write what I do and how does my writing process
work? (Did you see what I did there…rolled
two questions into one?) In the blog, I write what I
do because I’m pissed off. Like today, I am out of town with my husband,
staying in a bed and breakfast. The
photos on the web looked so lovely. The
rooms were spacious and modern and well lit, the beds huge. Well, I’d like to stay at that bed and
breakfast, because our room is small and dark and the faucet in the tub
drips. And did you know that queen size
beds are only sixty inches wide? I obviously did not, because my husband and I
are now sharing what is only enough room for me and a newt and he’s much bigger
than a newt.
At home we have a bed the size of Kansas, big enough for me
to sleep on my stomach with my knee sticking out in his direction and there is
still room for the body pillow I must have.
Do you hear me? I need it! I
can’t sleep without it, despite the fact that I abandon it as soon as I fall
asleep. And the fact that it’s the equivalent of a third human in the bed
doesn’t matter at all because we’re talking Kansas. There’s room for everyone. But this morning, not believing that the B
and B’s inadequate bed-like structure could possibly be a queen, I Googled bed
sizes and, in fact, queens are a mere sixty inches wide. I laid sideways to
measure, using my 64-inch body, since I don’t carry a tape measure with me. Toes at one side, nose at the other. Yep, it’s a queen. Never again.
And, if we’re talking about my poetry process, well, that’s
much more mysterious, and organic, and a bit magical, as poetry tends to
be. Who knows where that stuff comes
from? I don’t.
Now I pass the baton to…Jennifer Swanton Brown. Jennifer
Swanton Brown published her first poem in the Palo Alto Times when she
was in the fifth grade. She has degrees in Linguistics and Nursing, and
completed her Master of Liberal Arts at Stanford University in 2012, with a
thesis on the domestic poetry of Eavan Boland. Jennifer has been a poet/teacher
with California Poets in the Schools since 2001 and joined their Board of
Directors in March 2013. Her poems have been published in multiple local
journals, including The Sand Hill Review, Caesura and The DQM
Review. In October 2013, Jennifer became the second Poet Laureate of the
City of Cupertino. You can follow her Poem-A-Day project "A Lane of
Yellow" and other Cupertino Poet Laureate news at http://cupertinopoetlaureate.org. Jennifer
also manages regulatory education for clinical researchers at the Stanford
School of Medicine. Her personal blog is
"A Twirly Life" http://twirlyword.wordpress.com/
