seeing you again

looking at you
now, i see only

the faint ruddy specks
of past blushes

roars from car
radios speeding by

as we stood on the
sidewalk, wondering

if hope would come
to fullness

and the night's memory would
drown in a moment

or two, so now, when
hearts no longer thunder

my eyes still gleam
with a certain haze

a foggy understanding
of where we are

or when we stood, when is
it all?  i've forgotten, its all

muddled in the strange
sting of looking at

you now, all that
was, and is, are you still

here, or do i see a dream?

--Matthew Stalbaum, date written=???

NaNoWriMo - Success!

So, earlier tonight I finished what I thought would be a grueling, painful, miserable experience - I wrote at least 50,000 words in the month of November, thus accomplishing NaNoWriMo!  WOO HOO!

And yet this post breaking my hiatus must be delivered with some bittersweetness, since, though I've won NaNoWriMo, my novel remains unfinished!  And by a good 10,000 words probably, if not 15,000.  So, why am I not rushing through those last 10-15,000 words at this very moment?  To put it simply: homework!  I was able to stay on top of work, do papers, stay on top of reading, and everything else while writing the novel, but the end of my Thanksgiving break will be met with a short presentation (for which I only just now finished the reading necessary to start it) and having read Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf, neither of which I'm close to done, and which will have to find a way to be done in between hanging out with friends epically from Friday to Saturday night.  Let's just say Sunday won't be much fun.

I'm going to go more into the experience of NaNoWriMo on my other writing blog, Wordswords, but I will say that going through it has really given me a taste of what it means to be a writer, in the sense of knowing that you have to write everyday, preferably at the same time, urged on only by the blind faith that whatever you're writing will, by some miracle, make enough sense in the end for you to edit it into something coherent - not necessarily good, just readable.

As for the future of this blog, I do want to keep my NaNoWriMo writing habits up, as I've written approximately 137 pages of a story in 25 days, while it's taken me, in the past, two weeks to write 10 pages. In my defense, those 10 pages are edited while written, and therefore much more readable than what I just produced, but still.  So I plan on, by the end of December, having a fully edited short story to post here, and will put out a short story every month from now on.  If I have the time, I'll try to write some poetry to post here by the halfway point of the month too, I have had a few ideas for poems lately that I just need to sit down and write, perhaps this'll be my motivation for that.  As for my NaNoWriMo novel, I'll try my best to finish up this rough rough rough draft during December, but I doubt editing for that will start for years, and my God does it need work.  But, as a sort of future promise, I do want to edit it, so perhaps sometime in the not too distant future some chapters might get put up here, just not anytime soon.

It's glad to be back though, and to my fellow NaNoWriMo-ers who have yet to make it to the 50,000 word-count, keep going!  You can't be far from the mark, and I'm sure that you can do it.  Au revoir!

NaNoWriMo Hiatus/I Dropped the Ball

As you can very well see, this isn't a short story - that's right, I lied.  While fiction writing classes keep you very well-honed in terms of writing new material, it does get difficult to find time to edit other things.  I imagined I'd have hours and hours of time left to me for both writing and editing, but 21st birthdays get in the way unfortunately.  But there will be a short story here by the end of December at the latest, that I will guarantee!  

Why not November?  Well, for those who remember my latest postings, I am doing NaNoWriMo during the month of November, and I highly doubt that I'll have time to edit another short story while writing this novel, along with school papers/presentations.  But all of my energies after this novel is written will be devoted to editing like a mad man - not this novel of course, that won't be edited for a good half a year.  But I'll try to have a damn fine short story by the end of December, two if I can work fast enough, but don't get your hopes up.  

Anyways, that's my story right now.  I'll try to write some poetry to post here sometime though.  Wish me luck for NaNoWriMo!  

NaNoWriMo - Do It!

I didn't expect to write anything here so soon, at least not until the end of the month, but I seem to have gotten myself wrapped into something insane and awesome, exciting and terrifying, and I thought all of my millions of billions of non-existent readers should try this too.

A friend of mine just introduced me to NaNoWriMo, which I had seen mentioned by some other friends of mine but had no idea what it was.  Basically, you write at least 50,000 words of a novel in the span of November 1st to November 30th, which comes out to around 1,667 words a day, or about 5 pages double-spaced I'd estimate, 2-3 single-spaced (if you're into that).  There isn't much of a catch - it can be any genre, including Novel-Poems, meta-fiction, and even fan-fiction, just as long as it's a novel.  You can plan it out before hand as much as you want, just as long as all the actual writing takes place in November.

Two friends and I talked about it, and we decided, yeah, why the fuck not!  The way we all figure, this will undoubtedly be a terrible, terrible first draft of things, but it'll be there to be edited or revised, probably rewritten in my case.  And if it sucks, hey, how many people can say they've written a novel!  I've actually been doing some planning for novels I figured I wouldn't do until far into the future, including some graphic novel ideas I have.  Maybe I'll use one of those, maybe some idea I haven't thought about for years, maybe something completely and utterly new I think up an hour before the clock strikes November.  It'll be a terrifying experience I'm sure - I tend to self-edit while writing, which I just won't be able to do if I hope to write 5 pages a day.  But it'll be a great experience too - one of the things that prevents us from writing, I think, is just a lack of motivation.  I could write an extra hour today, but I'll be able to write tomorrow too, so no big deal.  Except now, every day I don't write is another day I literally have to write more - shit's gonna be crazy man.

And I implore anyone and everyone to try it too!  Worst case scenario, you don't make it, but you try damn hard.  Personally, I don't think anything is lost by failing to make the 50,000 words.  A friend tells me that only one novel has been published out of all the ones written for this, and I'm probably going along genre-lines that'll make a publisher's head spin Exorcist-style, so seeing the story I wrote next month in a book jacket is not exactly one of my expectations in life.  So you really don't lose anything by trying, and you can only gain, even if you somehow only get 48,000 words, or some painful amount like that.  You've still got 48,000 words to edit into a novel!

I've actually been planning on writing one novel idea I've had, but that's not the novel I'm gonna write.  For one thing, I technically already started writing that, and for another thing, I feel like this is an opportunity to just kick back and let go - why do an idea I've been entertaining seriously when I can invent an idea as it goes along and see where it takes me!  It's been long time since I've written a complete mystery story.  In high school when I'd write, I'd start with a basic premise and just let things go from there.  Even now I hardly ever know the endings of my stories when I start writing.  It'll be a thrill to barely know the middle as well!

I'll still post something here at the end of October and November short story-wise, possibly with an excerpt of this "novel" if anything is reading-worthy, but definitely no guarantees on that.  The hardest part will definitely be writing consistently everyday, while also keeping up with school reading and assignments, and staying on top of short stories I have due for my Advanced Fiction class.  So I'll be writing a novel, a short story, and at least 2 presentations during November, not to mention reading out of Ulysses and reading a Virginia Woolf novel a week.  I might go insane.  But you gotta be a little insane to write a novel really, so why not give it a shot?  You can't even lose your sanity, I probably never even had it to begin with.

We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties (Not A Poem)

So yeah, I haven't posted here in a while!  I've written a few poems since the last one I had here, but nothing I'm really happy with, and to be honest, few of the poems I've been posting here have been all that good too.  My idea when it came to posting here once a week at least was that it would keep me writing, and I planned on having more of a variety of things, or at least more variation between short stories and poems.  I have been writing short stories, though not as efficiently as I could be, and the poems I've been writing have been less out of a true feeling for the topic/subject and more as just something to show here for the weekly post, which really just makes a bigger backlog of poems that need serious revising.

It's funny that I wrote a blog recently about the myth of inspiration at my new writing blog: Wordswords (a place where I write about writing, no actual fiction or poetry there).  I agree whole-heartedly about the myth of inspiration when it comes to fiction writing and prose, you need to write everyday if you really want to get better at writing, regardless of whether you feel like writing or not.  I suppose the same goes with poetry - you need to keep writing it if you want to keep improving at it - but right now I don't have the time to think about poetry that much.  I don't want to write a poem down in 10 minutes, then have to finish the reading I'm doing, and then haphazardly edit it later when I post it here.  You get a shitty poem, and I get something that I won't even be able to revise again for weeks or months.

So I've come up with a new posting schedule for this blog: monthly stories, possibly bi-weekly poetry.  I'm not happy with how slow it takes me to write a short story, and most of the stories I end up writing I become unhappy with anyway.  Deadlines have always helped me, strangely enough, so I'm giving myself a monthly deadline for each story I work on.  By the end of October, I plan on having an at least semi-polished short story to post here.  Obviously it won't be perfect, but it'll be at the stage where it's ready for outside criticism anyways.  Ray Bradbury could write a short story a week - sadly, I'm not him.  But I want to be!  So I figure if I keep up this pace, I'll slowly get better and more in-tuned with writing fiction prose, and maybe someday I'll crank out stories at that speed.

As for poetry, I will try to post every other week.  I say try because, honestly, if I don't have anything good, I might not post.  But for the most part I want to keep my poetic sensibilities active, so I will take my hand at writing poetry as much as possible, and I will read poetry more, and if I have multiple poems that I'm proud of, I will post them all.  Also, if I have any poems written around the time I'm posting a short story, I will post them then too probably.  Either way, I will try to keep things moving.

So yes, that's the story of this blog right now!  Fret not you faithful readers (all none of you), I'm still posting weekly at Wordswords and Nobody's Rambler, so you can always get a consistent helping of my thoughts on whatever it is I'm rambling about each week.  With all of that being explained, and a new goal in mind, I bid you adieu, perhaps to see you in 2 weeks, for sure to see you by Halloween!

A Room of None's Own (A Poem)

I wrote this poem last night actually, in honor of my empty suite-mate's room.  My roommate had gone to bed, so I went out into the common room to do a little reading and writing.  I saw that my suite-mate's door was wide open and no one was there.  I went to close the door and just noticed how sad the room looked without anyone there - you could see all of my suite-mate's belongings, evidence of his life there, but in the dark it all looked so lonely, like it had been abandoned or something.  So I decided to write this poem about empty rooms.  I'm not unhappy with this poem, so that's good.  My only issue with it is the ending; I edited it just now to where it is, better than the first draft, which was probably more unfinished than anything, but I'm not sure it's exactly what I want, and it'll need some revisions in the future.  Still, it's a nice little poem.


So yeah, nothing else more to say really.  Feel free to leave comments and criticisms!  Every bit of feedback helps really.  I'll see you again next week, internet!
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A Room of None's Own
by Matthew Stalbaum

how sad is the empty room
filled with one's belongings, one's
life in fact, but empty

of the heart, the steady beating
against drawers & drawings, practicalities
& eccentricities;

a room empty
of coughing, late night snoring, dreams
wheezing out of contracting throats,

without the sparkling of bleary eyes
in the open light - moonlight & lamplight
transformed by a face, pale in its absense;

a breath, a blink, a beat:
the room pulses to life - a shut door
seals the soul in the body,
and the room is colored again.

Waking (A Poem)

I feel the pain of all those poor souls who had brilliant, amazing, intriguing vampire stories just before Twilight came out, and who now could care less about them thanks to over-saturation.  That's me for dreams and Inception.  Seriously, I came up with a few story ideas involving dreams, and then Inception came out, and now all I can think of when I write about dreams is "we have to go deeper."  But I wrote this poem anyways.  The original idea of it actually stems from Neil Gaiman's Sandman series: at one point, the character Delirium tells her brother, Dream, that she thinks everyone already knows everything about everything, but we make ourselves forget because that's the only way to deal with it.  I came up with this poem specifically while I was vacationing in Virginia recently.  I can't remember the dream that made me think of it, but I suddenly found it odd that so many dreams never end.  Obviously that's mostly a matter of timing: you're in the middle of a dream, your alarm clock rings, you wake up.  But I've had countless nightmares in my time, with their fair share of horrifying creatures coming for me, about to be revealed as they come through the door or the shadows - and then I wake up.  So of course I couldn't help but wonder what the terror just beyond the end of my dreams was.  Maybe it's a monster of some sort, or maybe it's just some form of knowledge that terrifies me. 

It's not my best poem, but it was interesting to write - it's mostly an idea I had that I just wanted to express in some form, and a poem seemed the easiest way.  Leave me comments if you like/hate it!  Criticism really is always appreciated.  I guess my next post will be from New York, so we'll see what the city inspires me to write.  Au revoir!

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Waking
by Matthew Stalbaum

we wake before our dreams
end, before the shadows
are revealed, our secrets
waiting behind the black

--from there it dissolves,
  memory too, into smoke
  but I wonder

over that last moment, lingering
another second past our eyelids
fluttering open:

perhaps nothing, the edge
of imagination, that which
goes beyond what your mind
can dream, or

perhaps everything there is
to know, we have known all
along, held behind the shadows
beyond dreams, waiting


for us to be ready (or not);
to see it all, and finally
have no need to wake again--

perhaps that is my greatest
nightmare.

I'm Gonna Be a New Man, Girl (A Blues Song)

Behold, internet, my first blues song, or song in general for that matter!  You have no idea how insanely happy I am that I could write this, and that it came out as well as it did.  I've been playing a lot of guitar this summer, recording some songs with some friends of mine (just on his Macbook with Garage Band, no recording studios yet), and have had this weird obsession with the blues for a while now.  I don't know why, it's just the kind of music my soul's been craving lately.  I've been listening to a lot of blues-rock though - The Black Keys, The White Stripes, Jimi Hendrix, some Janis Joplin.  I've wanted to take my hand at writing a song for a few months now, and it seemed like a blues would be easiest to write, since the chords kinda write themselves, and I can just make up a riff over top of them.  Well, voi la - my blues song!

I definitely had The White Stripes in mind while writing this, specifically the song Ball and Biscuit, hence why it has a sort of dirty southern feel to it.  The idea for the song itself came from my feelings over a girl I like, a girl who I can't be with (what blues song isn't inspired by some heartbreak?).  I had the thought of really focusing on my writing and my reading, and becoming a successful writer sooner rather than later, only so I could maybe have a shot of being with her before she finds someone else.  The original thought for the song is actually the start of the last stanza: "I ain't the man you love yet/but I'm gonna be."  I'm not the man who can love her yet, so I wanna become that man, make myself into something worth loving.  The darker bend to the lyrics came from my thoughts on identity - what would it really take to change who you are, in order for someone to love you? 

The funny thing is, I definitely thought this song was gonna have more repeated lines than it does - I had no original intention for the rhymes, those were just accidental in the 1st verse, and I decided to keep them up for the rest of the song.  I'm surprised the rhymes work so well too, I haven't written anything with a rhyme scheme since high school, and those are poems I wanna put far behind me.  The chords for each line of the verses goes E7/E7/A7/E7/B7/A7-E7.  The 3rd verse/stanza is actually the bridge, which also wasn't intended, and I somehow was thinking of the bridge to The Seeker by The Who when writing it, so the chords for that go something like A7/A7/E7/B7/B7/C7.  The musical part of this is still a work in progress, I'm mostly just happy I was able to come up with lyrics!

So yeah, let me know your thoughts on anything - are the lyrics good, do those chords make sense, have any suggestions for chord progressions or riffs?  It's my first song, but feel free to butcher it if you think it's necessary, it'll just let me know to start from scratch.  Thanks for putting up with my rambling too, I figured I'd splurge on words as a little bit in celebration of my 1st song.  Hope you enjoyed reading these lyrics, I don't have any immediate way of recording this song but maybe I'll put up a recording of it someday, who knows!  Until next time, my faithful bloggers.
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I'm Gonna Be a New Man, Girl
by Matthew Stalbaum

I ain't the kind of man you'd love
But I'm gonna be
I know you ain't lovin me now
But you're gonna be
I'm gonna be a new man, girl
And you'll see, you'll be lovin me.

Bought myself new clothes
You won't even remember who I was before
I done changed my talk
You won't recognize that old voice no more
I'm gonna be a new man, girl, you'll see,
I'll be the one you're comin back for.

I painted the walls of my mind
To all the colors you like
Drowned my old self in used paint cans.
I sold out my hands and my feet
To make the things that you like
I sold my soul just to be your kind of man.

I ain't the man you love yet,
But I'm gonna be
The man you walked past yesterday
You ain't never gonna see
I'm gonna be a new man, just you wait,
Then you'll be lovin me.

her pillow (A Poem)

In Elementary School, on field trips that required long bus rides, kids would always sleep on my shoulder as we returned to school.  For some reason, it would always be a kid whose parent was chaperoning for the trip that day, and they'd always thank me for letting their child rest on my shoulder.  I never thought of it as something for commending - they fell asleep, I was there to catch them.  What was I gonna do, push them onto the floor?  They were tired.  Those instances always resonated with me though, into Middle School and High School.  I guess as I got to grow more jaded with the world, I realized I really could have just pushed their heads off of me, woken them up and made fun of them.  But that was never in me, and that's what this poem's about.

It was actually inspired by a guy friend of mine sleeping on my shoulder this past week, as we were returning from a day at Six Flags, but the gender doesn't matter.  I think a good deal of love is involved in something so simple as letting someone sleep on your shoulder.  In case you faithful readers of mine (all the thousands and millions of you!) haven't noticed, I enjoy simplicity, and the beauty that comes with those things we don't bother noticing because of it.  Letting someone rest their head on your shoulder says so much without saying anything at all - what it says, I'll leave to your discretion, but at least I think it's beautiful.  As for this poem, yeah, it's not perfect, and I'll probably mess with the form more sometime soon, but it gets the idea across. 

I've been pretty lazy with writing lately, so those short stories I promised probably won't be coming any time soon.  It doesn't help that summer's coming to a close, and I'm swamped with plans for hanging out with all my friends and doing all the things we didn't do earlier in the summer.  But short stories are still being worked on, so hopefully some time soon I can post another one.  God, how many times have I said that now.  I at least hope you liked this poem, and there'll probably be another one that only takes 15 seconds to read next week, so I'll see you again then!
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her pillow
by Matthew Stalbaum

Her head on my shoulder:
I've done all I need to
In life, all I'll ever do (vast
Dreams created, and the truth
Written into pretty sonnets & scenes)

will pale
compared to letting
her head rest
letting time go
its way as she
breathes easy I
smile having done
what I can
to let her
sleep.

I Would Love You, But Not Now (A Poem)

 This poem is far from being perfect, but it's what came out now, which is significant only in that I've been trying to write this poem since yesterday early afternoon.  I also wanted to post it because it matches my Nobody's Rambler post for this week, which is about some past relationships of mine and what I've learned from them.  A week or two ago I was talking about Christina Hendrix (who is undeniably the most beautiful woman alive), and I jokingly said I wouldn't want to date her because she's such an amazing woman, I'm not good enough for her.  That's the idea behind that prose post and this poem.  I'm also a little in love with someone right now, someone who probably doesn't love me back (I talk about it in Nobody's Rambler), but my love is such that I wouldn't want to blindly rush into a relationship.  All love takes a certain wisdom from each partner for it to thrive and grow, and this person is so special to me that I'd only want to be with them if I could be with them the right way, in a way where I can be open with her and she could be open with me (I should mention I started this summer off by reading Love in the Time of Cholera).  That's not to say things would be perfect and would go on forever, but whatever lasted would be more satisfying and memorable then if I didn't understand even the basics of love, those tiny nuances that people might take for granted sometimes.

So anyways, that was all my inspiration for this.  Unfortunately my inspiration wasn't exactly the most...well, poetic, so I'll need to edit and revise this pretty heavily sometime.  Plus I've been in a down mood all day, and while writing this poem actually cheered me up, I'll admit the blues I've been feeling distracted me a little.  But hopefully you enjoy reading it anyways!  I'm gonna be pretty busy this next week, so who knows how good of a poem I'll have the next time I'm here, but it'll be something at least.  Well, until next time blog-readers!
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I Would Love You, But Not Now
by Matthew Stalbaum

I would love you, but not now,
not as we are, so young, so sure
to mistake the desire for a kiss as true
love, a moment's glance as eternity,
the friction of touch as electricity,
and love means only pretty words,
cliches and roses,
and you means all I want you to be.

I would love you in some time yet,
as you are, beyond utterance or comprehension,
when there is no mistake of what we want (how
I want you, how you want me) and what we can't
have (all those tiny pieces smaller than sight,
yet guide our motions like stars): all of you,
all of me, shadows and the secret of a gleam,
time enough for the past and future - none of this
but we are not lost, and beyond
immortality and perfection

there is the beauty of a smile, treasuring a laugh,
the simplest declarations that can't come out right,
but how they are said, that they are said
accounts for lost words, and as I open myself
as far as I can, as you do to, we find all we can't see,
marveling in the wonders of darkness and secrets,
following the little light we have, of a smile
and the smallest I Love You, said so often,
somehow says it all.