Storytime

December 14, 2019December 15, 2019 / frankregan17 / 2 Comments

photo credit: The Abbey via photopin (license)

A crackling fire, a comfy chair?
It may be warm outside
But I know a story that will take you there.
To a castle on the edge of the Fall
Within a dragon’s wingbeat
Of the end of the world.
To the first meeting
With the love of your life,
Who becomes vivid and real
As you read the words in the story.
To a bloody dagger, a world-weary hero,
A femme fatale, a smoking gun.
A passport to any place or time,
Far into any future
Or plumbing the gories of Ancient Rome.
Leave behind your cares, escape your worries.
Wherever you want to roam
I know a story that will take you there.

I Can’t Write Anymore

October 20, 2019 / frankregan17 / 5 Comments

The title of this post may sound brutal but, then, the title isn’t exactly true either. Yet it is what I have been telling myself pretty frequently over the last couple of months.
Usually, it involves looking at an empty page, flinging my arms skyward, cursing, before exclaiming “I can’t write anymore”, “I’ve lost the words” or something similar.
During this time I’ve only written two poems and I wrote hardly anything poetic during September. Well, I wrote one poem during the month but at most no matter how many times I read it I could only categorise it as inoffensive. I can’t feel any more enthusiastic about the words than that. My response to my own work is lukewarm. I apocalyptically opine that I have been deserted by my Muse. Though I occasionally think I can hear her laughing behind my back as I stare at the flashing cursor on the naked flesh of the computer screen.
But then this is what I do. I always used to resent the time I spent writing poetry while I was trying to keep up my daily word count in my fiction writing. It took me a while to accept that I needed to have the creative escape hatch of writing a poem unconnected to the story universe I was writing in while I figured out the problems within the fiction. Sometimes though I used to write a poem connected to the fiction, cementing the atmosphere of a story location in my mind or allowing a character a chance to express themselves outside the restrictive form of sentences, paragraphs and chapters.
But still, in my mind, it was only sentences, paragraphs and chapters that mattered when it came to word count. And a lack of word count was one of my favourite things to beat myself up with as a writer.
To that end can writers not share on social media messages such as “… written 5k words today, best day ever whoop, whoop… ” or complaining “… 11 am and have only written three chapters so far today… ”. Because I can’t relate with that, the more relatable message for me would be “… really pleased, with today’s score Chocolate Biscuits eaten 7, Words Written 8 …”. That’s the sort of message that resonates with me.
Yes, I’m very happy with the chapters that I have managed to write during September and October. I’m especially pleased with the opening sentence of one particular chapter …

… yet I stress myself over my lack of output when I need to look at my creativity more holistically.
I know I need to be kind to myself, yes quite a lot of the time my creativity, the poetry especially, comes out of the stresses and anxieties within my life. But if I focus too much on the negatives I risk shutting out all the other avenues of creativity for occasionally I write about sunlight and warm feelings. Too much darkness will only lead me into a dead-end of zero creation. Word-count is not my friend because I know I need time away from one creative coal-face occasionally to recharge my batteries. And finally if I wake up in the morning and write five-hundred words relating to a completely separate project in a storm of creativity that is because that is the strand of my subconscious that wants to communicate at that moment, I shouldn’t try to silence it and having ideas on one topic can lead to more ideas in time on other projects as long as I am patient with myself, because I need to make-believe. And I need chocolate biscuits too but that is a separate story.

In Time and Space

November 28, 2018November 28, 2018 / frankregan17 / Leave a comment

For Day 28 a little time travel …

Made of sticks and stones

photo credit: torbakhopper detail from toulouse lautrec : san francisco (2013) via photopin (license)

As I watch the world pass by

While I sit here at this pavement cafe,

It is hard to believe

The universe does not rotate about me.

For I could imagine

That this could be anywhere,

Montmartre at the dawning of the Belle Époque

Or a Martian thoroughfare in twenty-nine fifty-three.

For as I sit here a cup of coffee

Cradled gently in my hands

Snatches of human drama

Are carried to me on the breeze.

While I contemplate what comes next

I realise I’m like the wise man

That sits under the tree,

While I cannot see it all from here

I understand what I need from the universe will come to me.

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In Time and Space

September 5, 2018September 5, 2018 / frankregan17 / 1 Comment

photo credit: torbakhopper detail from toulouse lautrec : san francisco (2013) via photopin (license)

As I watch the world pass by

While I sit here at this pavement cafe,

It is hard to believe

The universe does not rotate about me.

For I could imagine

That this could be anywhere,

Montmartre at the dawning of the Belle Époque

Or a Martian thoroughfare in twenty-nine fifty-three.

For as I sit here a cup of coffee

Cradled gently in my hands

Snatches of human drama

Are carried to me on the breeze.

While I contemplate what comes next

I realise I’m like the wise man

That sits under the tree,

While I cannot see it all from here

I understand what I need from the universe will come to me.

Sky Writing

December 5, 2017 / frankregan17 / Leave a comment

photo credit: Natalia Medd Pacific HighWave 🙂 via photopin (license)

Grey-skied days

Circumscribe my monochrome horizon

And hem my thoughts in.

Barriers of humdrum reality,

But I long to be beyond

And blue-skied thinking.

Free again!

All is Well

November 14, 2017November 14, 2017 / frankregan17 / Leave a comment

Day 14 and a contribution from my storytelling blog. That particular blog On The Broken Road has been rather quiet over the last year as most of my story rather than poetry efforts have been focused on a larger fiction project. This is in addition to battling to complete my poetry collection Wreckage and my academic endeavours. This is why I really admire all of you attempting NaPoWriMo (and succeeding I hope) for not only having the belief in your ability to write that number of words but also sticking to the one project. Because while I am getting much better at completing drafts of stories and poems, I can never guarantee I’ll be working on the same thing two days in a row. To prove it here is a poem based on a character and location from a story.

On the Broken Road

photo credit: Michelle Hebert | Art & Fashion 2008. Menacing Garden via photopin (license)

I’m a coffee addict and a guilty pleasure for me is to sit in a coffee shop relaxing. I usually try to justify this downtime by doing some work while I’m there.

Today I was actually meant to be revising for an exam though (which is another story). I could not settle though, perhaps I was too much on tenterhooks waiting for an expected phone call to concentrate but the study juices were not flowing. So I put down my text book and picked up the story that began here as Watchers. I have written before about the combination of caffeine and creativity (Misbehaving) but today for some reason I could not seem to get up and running.

When Watchers first started it came over to me at least that the writing was direct and…

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Make-Believers

March 29, 2017 / frankregan17 / 4 Comments

photo credit: donnierayjones Thinking Inside the Box via photopin (license)

To the pretenders,
The make-believers,
The dresser-uppers,
The dreamers,
This goes out to you.
The singers,
The poets,
The actors,
The writers,
For making dreams come true.
Those artists
And dancers
Making it up,
Making believe it’s come true.
To everyone out there, thank you.

© 2017 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.