Tag Archives: april poem a day

April PAD, Books, Editing, Goals, Hollow, NaNoWriMo, Niteblade, Personal, Poetry

2015 Goals

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All rights reserved by Rhonda Parrish

I don’t really make New Year’s Resolutions, because I’m crap at keeping them, but I do enjoy setting goals for the coming year each January. I find them super helpful staying focused and find the accountability which comes from sharing them publicly really helps as well. This year I’m a wee bit late on getting this blog post done, so it may be slightly less chatty than in years past, but without further ado, here are some of my work-related goals for the coming year (and health counts because you can’t work if you’re not at least a certain degree of healthy).

Health

  • Weigh less at the end of the year than I do at the start
  • Run 5k
  • No working on weekends and minimal working on evenings.

Editing / Publishing

  • Publish the final three issues of Niteblade and then close down that aspect of the magazine
  • Complete Corvidae and market it to the best of my ability
  • Complete Scarecrow and market it to the best of my ability
  • Publish B is for Broken and market it to the best of my ability
  • When Shadows is published market it to the best of my ability
  • Have the manuscript for C is for… polished and ready for publication
  • Have the manuscript for D is for… polished and ready for publication
  • Come up with a way to set actual concrete goals for promotion.
  • Make progress on sekkrit collab with CJD
  • Open to submissions for Sirens

Writing

  • Write and submit at least one new short story a month*
    • The ‘submit’ part of this is important. I can’t just write a first draft and leave it to moulder indefinitely. The story needs to be ready for submission and, in fact, submitted, within the month to count.
  • Begin querying agents about Hollow
  • Self-publish at least one collection of reprints
  • Complete work on collaborative project with Marge
  • Successfully participate in April Poem-A-Day
    • This means actually writing a poem a day or at least having thirty poems written by the end of the month
  • Participate in NaNoWriMo*
  • Either complete the first draft of a new novel, or revise one of the novel first drafts I’ve already written (this can be completed in conjunction with NaNoWriMo or separate from it)

Reading

  • Read at least 50 books
    • Slush doesn’t count, nor do books by friends I read to critique.
    • Have at least 20% be non-fiction

Misc

  • Create a website at poiseandpen.com
  • Attend When Words Collide and Pure Spec
  • Blog at least once a week
  • When someone visits this blog and leaves a comment — reciprocate.

Kobo

As of New Year’s Eve of 2014 I’d sold a total of one book via Kobo**. One. For a whopping $0.45 in royalties. One of my goals in 2015 is to improve that. I don’t have a super firm goal in mind but it shouldn’t be too difficult to top one sale and less than fifty cents in royalties, right?

I’ll probably tweak this list as the year goes on, but for now I think it’s a very good jumping-off point 🙂

*under this name or as a pen name project. Either counts.
**this doesn’t count books I didn’t self-publish like Fae, Metastasis etc.

April PAD, Published

Published: Their Closet Existence

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I felt like I should go take a photograph of my closet to go with the announcement but after about half a second of thought I dismissed that idea LoL

My poem, “Their Closet Existence” was published today on Every Day Poets. On its surface this is a poem about mine and Jo’s closet, but on a deeper level I think it’s about who we are. Deep or shallow, I am really proud of this poem and I hope you’ll take a look and give it a read.

April PAD, Sale

Sale: Their Closet Existence

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Every Day Poets Logo

My poem, “Their Closet Existence” has been accepted for publication at Every Day Poets. This poem was based on a prompt from my 2013 April Poem-a-Day challenge. Because of how I work it took me a long time to get around to revising it, but happily not very long to find it a new home. It’s always a pleasure to be published at Every Day Poets and I will be sure and let everyone know when this piece goes live. 🙂

April PAD, Poetry, Published

Published: Hold This Camel

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Tombstone - Photograph by Rhonda ParrishMy poem, “Hold This Camel” has been published in Volume 1, Issue 3 of The Germ.

Hold this Camel came to be when I was looking at a poetry prompt from the April poem a day challenge which said to make the title of the poem ‘Hold that ____’ and the first word that popped into my head to fill in the blank, was camel. Not ‘thought’ or anything which made sort of obvious sense right away, but ‘Hold that camel’. I really, really, really wanted to write that poem. And I did. I had to change the that in the title to a this, but I pulled it off and I’m pretty pleased with that.

Issue 3 went on sale recently and puts me in some pretty good company with other writers, poets and artists. I can’t wait for my contributor copies to arrive 🙂

April PAD, Poetry

Fuck It

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I’m revising and transcribing poems from my April Poem a Day notebook onto my computer to send out. The prompt for Day Fourteen was “A Sonnet”.

I don’t love sonnets, I find iambic pentameter awkward and just not my favourite. That being said, I’ve written a couple I was pretty pleased with… but not this April. The top of my page for that day says “Day Fourteen — A Sonnet” It is then followed by two and a half pages of things that have been written and then scribbled out. And then, finally, the poem I ended up with this:

Fuck It

I’m supposed to write a sonnet
but my pen doesn’t know how.
It keeps inking haiku,
limericks and jokes (low-brow).

I’m supposed to write a sonnet,
that is fourteen lines long
but all of my rhymes
are far too sing-song.

I’m supposed to write a sonnet
minding rhythm and feet
but it’s not going to happen
so I might as well cheat.

I’m supposed to write a sonnet,
but I wrote this instead.

It made me lawl so I thought I’d share it. I hope no one was offended by the profanity.

Ya know, one day I’m going to self-pub a book full of my bad poetry and give it away. Just for the hell of it.

April PAD, Poetry

Sale: The Day After

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Napalm&Novocain

My poem, The Day After, has been accepted for inclusion at Napalm and Novocain — a webzine which features poetry with a theme of romance’s aftermath. I don’t often write things which would fall into that category but in going through some of my old poems on Monday I discovered one which did.

I’m pleased to know it has found a home outside of my computer. And so quickly too. Talk about a fantastic response time LOL

April PAD, Poetry

Zombie Poem (and an exceptionally bad limerick)

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I write a lot of zombie poems. In fact, I’m planning to self-publish a collection of zombie poems later this year. I was just going through some of my April Poem a Day poems from last year to see if there were any I hadn’t transcribed but should when I found this one. I’m going to share it here because I like it and thought you might too 🙂

I look at my meds and know
if walkers don’t kill me
lack of pharmaceuticals will

ETA: I found another one! I think I’ve mentioned before that for every publishable poem I write probably five which are not. They serve their purposes though, whether they are personal and cathartic or just straight-up silly and helping me to just get something on the page. I think you can guess which category this one falls into 🙂

There once was an old man named Hugh
who owned a hound dog he called Blue
Blue’s collar was perfumed and florid
to cover his breath which was horrid
because he loved eating cat poo

Whee!

 

A to Z Challenge, April PAD, Books, Editing, Goals, NaNoWriMo, Niteblade, NovPad, W1S1, Writing

Goals for 2013

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W1S1 Year 3 GraphicEach year I like to set myself some concrete goals and share them publicly on my blog. Not only does this give me some sort of vision of what I want to accomplish over the year, it adds a feeling of accountability to help keep me motivated and on track. My goals for 2013 are:

Health

  • Lose 25lbs
  • Successfully complete the P90x program (I’m giving myself permission to swap Cardio X workouts in for Plyometric ones because I worry about my ankle and also, I’m a bit of a wussy)
  • No energy drinks
  • Significantly cut the amount of sugar in my diet. I have a complicated set of rules for this for myself, but I don’t want to bore everyone with sharing them.

School

  • Begin another course (or two) toward my degree no later than April 1st and complete it/them successfully.

Editing/Publishing

  • Sell my cancer anthology idea to a publisher.*
  • Edit the cancer anthology, making sure the end result is something I am proud of.
  • Promote the hell out of the anthology, ensuring that there actually are royalties to donate to charity.
  • Continue to pursue my sekkrit projeckt with CJD
  • Increase Niteblade’s readership and distribution
  • Begin offering Niteblade in more file formats
  • Hold a successful fundraiser for Niteblade
  • Produce a NaNoLJers anthology if sufficient interest exists

Writing

  • Participate in The Whittaker Prize
  • Successfully complete the weekly version of Write 1 Sub 1. For the ‘Write’ portion of this challenge I will count completed short stories or poems as well as individual scenes from longer works. By allowing myself to count individual scenes I will be able to work on longer works and still participate in W1S1
  • Participate in Writo De Mayo
  • NaNoWriMo and both camp NaNoWriMos are all optional
  • Finish writing poems for all the 2012 NovPad prompts
  • Actually successfully complete the AprilPad or NovPad properly, without having to make up prompts after the month has passed
  • Self-publish “Aphanasian Stories”
  • Look into the practicality of bundling and re-releasing some of my previously published short stories as ebooks
  • Follow through on my 2012 plans for my zombie poetry

Reading

  • Read at least 30 books

Misc

  • Participate in A Month of Letters
  • Do the Blogging from A to Z Challenge (bonus points if I come up with a theme this year)
  • Blog at least once a week
  • Take a social media retreat for one week a month all year
  • Attend WorldCon 2012 in Texas
  • Post writing prompts/exercises in NaNoLJers on odd numbered Mondays
  • Run and participate in the writing bingo in NaNoLJers
  • Don’t forget that life is for living, not leveling

Phew! I’m kinda exhausted even just looking at that list, exhausted and excited. I’ve set up some real challenges for myself, but if I manage to pull them off imagine how fantastic a year that will be!

*I know I’ve already accomplished this goal, but I hadn’t when I started mentally composing this list and since I achieved this goal in 2013 I’m still putting it on the list. This is not me putting things on here just so I can cross them off.