August 10, 2018 at 5:00 am (Poetry)
It’s been an interesting week. Still battling the evil bronchitis but it was pretty cool to see my book on display at the local book store, facing out, and it’s positively mind boggling to have people say, “I love the book” or “I want a copy” and willingly hand me money for it. Here’s a Friday Poem for you!
A Sanctuary Built of Words: Poems of Peace, Grief, and Passion is available through Amazon and other online booksellers.
August 3, 2018 at 10:08 am (Poetry)
A Friday poem . . .
A Sanctuary Built of Words: Poems of Peace Grief and Passion can be purchased through Amazon.com and other online booksellers.
July 27, 2018 at 6:41 am (Poetry)
I’ve been slowed down this week by a touch of bronchitis but I still figured out the design for my author business card and am ready to have them printed up to put out with my books in local stores. Here’s a Friday poem!
July 20, 2018 at 5:00 am (Poetry)
A Sanctuary Built of Words: Poems of Peace, Grief, and Passion by Melora Johnson – available through Amazon and other book sellers.
July 13, 2018 at 5:00 am (Poetry)
A new poem for Friday! Not remotely creepy for the 13th, sorry.
July 6, 2018 at 5:00 am (Poetry)
Yesterday was a bit surreal. My book went up for sale on Amazon. After all the work – compiling, editing, formatting, proofs, and tweaking – there it was.
I still need to finish the Kindle file and I’ll eventually be recording an audio version but, for now, the print version is available.
“What if sanctuary isn’t always a physical place?
Sometimes it’s located in our heads, and sometimes . . .
sanctuary can be found in the stories we share.
Whether our own or the ones we create, they say –
you are not alone – in how you think, in how you feel . . .”
You can click on the image below to order a copy!
July 3, 2018 at 9:00 am (Editing, Marketing, Poetry)
June 29, 2018 at 10:27 am (Poetry)
The book is almost ready! Here’s a little Friday poem, written some time ago but it will also be in the book, appropriate for the upcoming holiday.
June 22, 2018 at 5:55 pm (Poetry)
I was inspired by a poetry workshop recently at The ARTS of the Southern Finger Lakes with poet Mong Lan. We read a poem that played with space and it reminded me of improvisational jazz. I wrote this poem that plays with spacing, line breaks, tab stops, subscripts, and superscripts. What do you think? Is it playful for you or just weird? Do you like it? Not like it? Why?
June 19, 2018 at 9:31 am (Editing, Poetry)
Punctuation in Poetry
Over the past few months I’ve ramped up my scrutiny and editing of my poetry, trying to get it ready for publication. I’ve learned a few new things about what I like in poetry and I’ve found I like playing with space and punctuation.
We’ve long debated capitalization and punctuation in my writer’s group. I’m of the mind that you punctuate and capitalize as you would any sentence, even though it is broken up by the end of a line.
Now, we know periods create a full stop so that’s a fairly long pause. Commas cause a shorter pause. I believe line breaks create a pause in our brain even if we continue reading. I learned recently that our brains treat written language as a physical terrain, so I liken that line break to stepping over something in your way. You may not be stopping but it slows you up just a little.
At one point I thought to myself, “Oh, I don’t like those short dashes Word is putting in. I think I’d like all long dashes.” Then I tried it and realized, “Oh, all long dashes is no good either.” It was just too much. So I learned more about hyphens (-), En dashes (–) and Em dashes (—) than I thought possible but I also learned how to make them in Word.
And now, it ‘feels’ right, because I was able to use the right punctuation.
