The Future of A Hopelessly Wandering Mind. Possible Creation of Blogging Challenges.

I’ve come a long way in six months, and I would like to take a time out from my ventures into the literary at this moment to thank each and every one of my followers that have taken this journey with me. It’s been a rough ride from the uneasy, ranty beginnings, slowly progressing to what I hope is now a slightly more polished and focussed site consisting of the creative side of my work, and gradually finding my own voice. For reference, the more news-orientated articles which I used to write have been transposed to another platform, www.tremr.com/benedict-nicholson, so if you’re interested in reading that stuff again, do feel free to check it out and follow me there.

In terms of the development of this blog, I am now working at least part time for the foreseeable future and as such may not have the time I would like to devote to the project to write the amount of posts that I want to write, at least at the length I would like to write. With that in mind, I will probably be posting a lot of shorter stuff,  maybe one poem and one short story a week, but nothing too long too frequently. I will also be looking at doing some six word stories, so look out for those coming your way in the near future.

And now to the exciting bit, I’m also thinking about organising some blogging challenges, probably a poetry one but maybe also a very short flash fiction one. I would only do this if I could garner enough people’s interest in doing it though, so in order to gauge whether or not this is worth doing, if you would think about taking part  something like that, would you mind awfully commenting below stating your interest and saying if you would prefer poetry or fiction? This is just so I can hopefully think about what form it would take in the future. I’ve participated in these in the past, and am currently enjoying a couple of them immensely, but I can never find enough of them to satisfy the amount I want to write, so I think it can’t hurt to get another one or two out there.

To sign off on a soppy note, my time on WordPress has been an absolute blast so far, and I’ve loved every minute of my interaction with the site, and everyone who reads and comments is a part of that, so, once more, sincerely, thank you.

Ben

No: Poetry 101 Rehab

Written in response to Mara Eastern’s Poetry 101: Rehab

NO

no job
no prospects
no money
no plans
no matter,
as long as you’re here.

Home: Poetry 101 Rehab

This poem is a response to Mara Eastern’s Poetry 101 Rehab prompt Home.

Home

Walking around this empty place,
The one I called my home.
It somehow doesn’t feel the same,
This house I used to know.

These walls that used to keep us safe,
Right now they look so weak,
Crumbling away to nothingness,
As floorboards snap and creak.

This house I used to call my own,
That made me who I am today.
Now it serves no purpose here,
Just sits and waits as it decays.

The Letter

I love you,
But you loved me.
How crucial
One letter can be.

Where did it go,
that love we shared?
You lost it
Somewhere
Along the way.

Perhaps one day,
I’ll lose it too,
But that day won’t be
Today.

Poetry 101 Rehab: Thaw

Again this poem is part of Mara Eastern’s Poetry 101 Rehab, which you can find here. I actually wrote this before seeing her prompt, but it fit so well that I decided to just submit it anyway. Hope you enjoy it.

The First Day of Spring

Just as in Winter
Even the prettiest flowers whither
And die,
Longing for the summer sun
That makes them whole.

As they wait,
So I wait for
Your return.

Knowing that until that
Beautiful, joyous first day
Of Spring,
I will never more
Be all that I can be.

Poetry 101 Rehab: Right

Shoutout once more to Mara Eastern and her Poetry 101 Rehab section, which you can find here http://maraeastern.com/2015/03/16/poetry-101-rehab-right/. This week’s theme is ‘Right’, and you can find my effort below.

Right

Their words washed over me,
Ever since I first understood them.
Almost everything I have heard
Optimistic, supportive, loving.

‘Life is what you make of it.
And you, little one,
You can be anything
You want to be’.

Now me, I’m not so sure.
I don’t know if I believe in
Their loving deception,
Their little white lies.

But there is one thing
I do know.

For the very first time
In my limited life,
I am utterly terrified
That they are wrong,
And I am
Right.

As The Smoke Clears

The memory of you lingers
On my mind
As the fleeting kiss
Of smoke
On my lips.

Persistent, untouchable,
Inerasable.
The faint stench of a beautiful memory
Becomes bitter
In your absence.

Second: Poetry 101 Rehab Challenge

This post is a response to the wonderful Mara Eastern’s Poetry 101 Rehab class, which you can check out here: http://maraeastern.com/2015/03/09/poetry-101-rehab-second/

The theme this week is Second, and here is my effort.

Second

Tick, Tick, Tick

Since you left
No-one has bothered to fix
That clock, the one that hangs
On our kitchen wall.

Tick, Tick

The valiant second hand struggles in vain
To move on,
Repeating the same mistake,
Striving, but never quite making
That vital step forward.

Tick

A constant reminder,
Every second without you
A courageous failure.
Why does it even bother?

Tick
Click
Silence

A First Attempt at Poetry: Diavoli

DIAVOLI

Sometimes, just lately,
Everything turns to black.
Right when you think you’ve made it out,
They reach out and claw you back in.

Demons cackle as you struggle
Against the tide.
They know all your insecurities,
Hell, they know you
Better than your best friends do.

Not that you can tell anyone.
None can find out.
But they know.

They pick just the right words
To make those doubts scream
You’re not good enough.
A discordant choir of disapproval;
Howling,
Who told you you could do this?

Gorging themselves on your panic-stricken thoughts,
They watch, amused, as you struggle to spur yourself on.

Cackling demons; screaming doubts.
What kind of confidants are these?
And how long have I been letting them live
In my head?

So that’s that, my first ever attempt at a published poem. Please do feel free to leave feedback, whether it be positive or negative I’d love to hear from you.

A Letter To Myself: A Reminder of Why I Write

Lately I feel as if I have just been going through the motions. I’ve been writing for the sake of writing, and deriving no joy from it. I’ve put pressure on myself to publish a set amount of blog posts per week, even if I haven’t felt like it.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with this, it helps me hone my writing style and practise creating even when I don’t feel inspired. That’s a useful trait to have, particularly for someone who wants to write for a living. However, it brings with it a strange sadness.

Before I started forcing myself to write X number of words a month, I could never imagine a world where I didn’t want to write every minute of every day. Now I am living in it. It is as if I have forgotten why I started writing in the first place, what it is that drew me to the keyboard and whispered to me that I should let the words flow. This is my attempt to recapture that, by reminding myself of why exactly I started doing this.

First, I write because there is still injustice in the world. People may say that one voice does not matter, but that one voice is infinitely louder than the silence that stems from ignorance of issues. And so I have, usefully or otherwise, taken it upon myself to highlight events that I think err on the side of the morally wrong, or the morally dubious. I try to find causes that I really care about and bring them forward into the eyes of you, my audience, who are kind enough to read my musings.

But there is so much more to it than that. What I have just said may seem very noble, but the reason I write is the opposite of selfless. I write for the same reason that so many people love to read. When I am doing it, nothing else matters. I can escape from the horrors or injustices I am writing about by pouring myself onto the paper upon which I am analysing them. In that moment, the outside world becomes irrelevant and I can say what I like in the knowledge that, at the end, I will have reached some form of closure with myself.

I write when I struggle to express myself, when I know that I have an opinion but I can’t pin it down. That’s when I open my computer and let my thoughts bleed onto it. It’s a way for me to debate my ideas with the privilege of being allowed to find out what I think as I go along.

Most of all, however, I write because it is a reminder that I am not defined by who I am, or what I do, or the mistakes I have made in my life. Some might say that you can tell the most from someone by the way they speak when you meet them. I disagree. Any piece of writing is a beautiful window into someone’s personality. It is like a self-portrait, or a photograph, from which you can begin to discern the psyche of the author at that particular moment in their life. It is very difficult to hide or conceal when you write, and that is why I adore it as an art form. Emotions come in their purest state, and are laid bare for all to see who care to do so.

Everyone has a reason for writing, but personally I love the idea of words cascading from my head onto the paper, and making a permanent mark, an indelible reminder of how I was feeling at the moment I produced that piece. My writings are insights into my innermost thoughts, things I might never dare to say out loud if I hadn’t written them down first, and I am thrilled that I can share that with the world.

Ultimately writing is something that allows me to express myself when otherwise I might not be able to do so. It is a way for me to combat what I find unjust about the world, and add my voice to the choir of authors singing disharmoniously on this beautiful invention that is the Internet.

Writing permits my thoughts to transmit themselves to something more tangible, if only I can restrain them and force them to stand together in something approaching a consolidated process. It is my mouth when I cannot speak and my eyes when I cannot see. It is me, distilled into a more concentrated form, and put out for all to view, something I would never dare to do without the protection of a pen and paper to guard what I have exposed.

So there we have it. That’s why I write. Please, please comment and let me know what inspires you to write. I know writer’s block is something we all go through and this has been my way of dealing with it. I would love to hear thoughts on the piece and if anyone else has other reasons for writing, I’m always interested.