Just Another Cottage in Blogville

Airport lounge

Sitting in an airport lounge with a cup of hot chocolate. Currently avoiding it for two reasons - don't want to burn my tongue AND I've already had sufficient caffeine (morning espresso and motion sickness pill). Trembling as I type this from the surplus of energy; being nervous for the long flight probably doesn't help either. My insides are overtaken with the uncomfortable sensation that some kind of swarm of critters are trying to escape. That's the worst part about having too much caffeine this early in the morning.

Debating whether or not to review a lot of the poetry on this site. Some of it is good; the trouble is, I was in a workshop and learned to critique each line - heck, each word - with a scrutinizing eye, which does not translate gently online. The poem I'm debating to review uses more words than necessary, and is really just prose broken into lines, but holds a story with a lot of potential. She's a teenager, and as I'm one week and two days away from departing those dreadful years myself, I understand that it's hard to get used to criticism. College writing courses do that to you. This is not to say that I'm a superior poet, because I'm not; it's just a habit of mutual learning through critiques.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to handle this?

One of the happiest times of my life was when I took that workshop course in my first semester freshman year. Everyone had to write - lots. What we had to do even more was critique each of the other students' work, analyzing various aspects of the medium, whether poetry, fiction or nonfiction. By the end of the semester, we realized that we learned more from critiquing each other than being critiqued ourselves, because it helps one to examine one's own work and seek the same flaws. It isn't the blind leading the blind, but rather a group of colorblind people helping the others see alternative shades of the rainbow.

This past month+ has provided fodder for stories and poetry. Part of me wonders if I'm better off turning my experiences into poetry or fiction rather than blogging and writing point-blank descriptions. At the same time, it's helpful to have something to work from when you've got the basics outlined.

Although I'm supercharged with energy, it's less of a refreshed energy that supports creativity and more of a jittery jog-in-place energy. I'll have to wait til I get on the plane to revise an essay that I'm hoping to have published. Maybe I'll write some junkie poetry fodder that will lead to publishable material.

Peace love and bellbottoms x