Unintentional spaces

I have lots of spaces. In my notebooks. I buy them, start them and then when I have sullied the first few pages with my scrawls I start a new one. I always have plenty of new ones because I buy so many. I tend not to buy expensive ones, I've done that before and they stay completely empty. I am not one of those people I envy who can calculate what they need to say and then scribe it on to their sheets of paper in perfect handwriting. My handwriting looks like it's been done by two different people, with their feet. I constantly self edit too, so my scratchings are then scribbled out, with lots of little arrows and random word choices to insert teetering above others. I then start the whole paragraph again underneath and try to make it look neat but do the same again.I envy neat people who have lovely notebooks.

 I do like to write on my laptop as this makes it look presentable as I can just delete things. I find I get into a state of flow better with a notebook though,  while I'm pottering about or watching the arguing couples and awkward first dates in Costa. As I have mentioned in previous posts I don't have the longest of attention spans anyway so when I see a new notebook I convince myself that it simply isn't necessary to fill up the others. I justify this by only buying cheap notebooks anyway, so I'm drowning in books full of spaces. But it's ok. This means when I need to write something down quickly I dig up something I wrote two years ago and think to myself, "Did I write that?" it's quite a nice feeling really. I always know it was me that wrote it, there's no way anyone else is that messy. I want neat writing in lovely notebooks, but it's never going to happen.  The disappointment in my own penmanship means there will always be spaces.

Notebooks that I found on my desk space. I didn't dare get the others.

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I’ve got a little list

By Ashley Lister

To my understanding, resolutions fall mainly into two categories: stopping the bad stuff and starting the good stuff.

On New Year’s Day many people will resolve to stop smoking or stop eating chocolate or stop drinking alcohol. On New Year’s Day many others will resolve to start exercising, or start maintaining a healthier lifestyle or start doing things to benefit themselves, society or the world in general.

Personally, my resolutions for 2012 are going to be different from the stopping and starting lists. My resolutions are going to be a promise to carry on doing stuff that I enjoy.

1) I’m going to carry on being brilliant.

2) I’m going to carry on being talented.

3) I’m going to carry on being modest about these traits.

4) I’m going to carry on writing.

5) I’m going to carry on blogging.

The regular contributors to the dead good blog started the pages you’re currently reading back in July of 2011. Shaun posted our inaugural entry on July 4^th. Since then we’ve been posting for twenty-six uninterrupted weeks, touching on subjects as diverse as dragons and dogs and as broad as catharsis and Christmas.

There’s been poetry, prose, pathos, poignancy and plenty of other things beginning with the letter p. 2012 will be even more exciting.

Which is why I’ve made two additional resolutions for 2012:

6) I’m going to write more poetry.

7) I’m going to encourage other people to write more poetry.

How am I going to do the seventh item on my list? Simple. I have four dead good notebooks to give away.

If you want one of these notebooks you only need to do two things:

1) Become a new follower of this blog.

2) Leave a comment below.

If you don’t want to say too much in the comment box, simply wish us (or our readers) a happy New Year. If you want to share your personal goals or resolutions or a piece of poetry you’ve written, I’d urge you to go for it. The team on this blog are nothing if not supportive.

All commentors and new followers will be entered into the draw to stand a chance of being selected to receive one of these notebooks. These dead good notebooks are ideal for storing ideas for poetry and prose and perfect for putting down the beginnings of your next scintillating stanza. The draw will be open until January 15^th 2012, so you have plenty of time to leave a comment.

And, whether you comment or not, on behalf of all the regular bloggers here at the Dead Good Blog, I’d like to wish you a happy and prosperous and poetry-filled New Year.

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Still but Stardust.

Morning all. The theme this week is 'The 1980s' which initially posed a problem for me.

I'm 25. I'm 25 and a quarter actually, give or take a week. I was born in 1986 and so, putting the initial horror thought aside, I must have been created some time around now. I decided that whilst this was a slightly worrying concept to run with for a piece of writing, it could lead on to something and so, I took Tuesday's blogger, the lovely Lara out for a bit of a drive.

Ponder, ponder, ponder then click- it dropped in. I wanted to reflect us- then. Before I was a thought, before the cogs had begun to turn on my own life, the period in the mid-80s when my parents must have been dating. Anyway, I've written it straight in to my notebook (which I have finally started to fill with poems) so will probably be reading it at an event sometime. Once again, it has been a pleasure, I hope you like it.

Still but Stardust.

Was it a night like this

A night somewhere deep in the mid 1980s

The stars as bright as Blackpool lights

to mark, there, the moment.

I imagine myself- shaggy hair,

jumper just like in the photo,

falling in love. I wonder- to look

through the window of time, if it was

like this. On one night

just like this.

Catch you next week,

S.

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A notebook of 'forgotten' ideas.

Like many writers I own a notebook (in fact several notebooks), and it’s between these pages that my ideas our placed, kept and subsequently forgotten about. Blank pages are filled in with thoughts, jottings and initial drafts; causing the ideas I had months ago to creep further into middle page mediocrity. Generally I don’t look back; I don’t revisit ideas unless my mind chooses to remember – which perhaps seems odd as the notebook offers the luxury of an extended memory, preserving what might otherwise slip from mind. However, my ideas are ideas for a reason: they have gaps, missing elements, question marks instead of full stops. They are titles without an ensuing first line. They are a combination of lexemes that seemed (at the time) important enough to write down, but which have since been cast with insignificance. They gather dust; their cursive form is draped with cobwebs and I’m never sure when (or even if) they’ll be picked from the lined page, dusted off and transformed into something more substantial.

Despite the notebook, I still believe memory to be an invaluable tool. It offers a type of filtration system: allowing ideas with potential to pass through the lattice structure – to be recalled, while unpromising ideas fail to be recollected. Personally, I like the ideas that bother me, that won’t leave me alone, that haunt my thoughts, that develop as much off the paper as on it. Therefore, I don’t like looking back. I don’t like looking back at ideas that haven’t been poking, prodding, pestering – refusing to be forgotten. I don’t like looking back at ideas that have allowed themselves to move from an active state to one of dormancy. However, having said this, I’ve decided to look through my recent notebook and list all the ideas that never made it into poetic form; the ideas that have been sitting on the back-burner with the gas turned off.

Provisional Titles (and their missing poems)

Bird nest (?)
Stickmen (?)
Lamb’s wool (?)
Tomato soup (?)
Most wanted (?)
The left behind (?)
Seafood garden (?)
Walking over me (?)
Pensioner’s boots (?)
Seventy one steps (?)
Allotment Etiquette (?)
Curiosity finds water (?)
Sarracenia ‘Johnny Marr’ (?)

Maybe one of these ideas will find the importance that first marked its existence. Maybe one of these ideas will start to harass my thoughts. Maybe one of these dormant ideas will become a poem – or maybe they’ll all be forgotten (again)?

Thank you for reading,
Lar

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