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Amanda M. Blake

~ Of fairy tales and tentacles

Amanda M. Blake

Tag Archives: Writing

Resolute (4)

01 Saturday Jan 2022

Posted by amandamblake in Writing

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2021, family, gothic, niece, Poetry, published, resolutions, short stories, the thorns series, Writing

Photo by freestocks.org on Pexels.com

I concluded 2021 with one of the worst work weeks in a bad year and started 2022 with period cramps—like, right after midnight. It’s a good thing I’m not superstitious, otherwise I’d consider it a bad omen. I think most of us agree that 2021 was the last in a trilogy of terrible years that I hope doesn’t have more in its series, but it’s hard to hold out hope these days. I just try to take it a week at a time. Looking too far ahead leads directly to despair, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

However, in spite of the tint of my pessimism glasses, I do have to admit that even a year that tipped toward the bad side of the scale doesn’t necessary have nothing on the good side.

My niece was born at the end of 2020, so we spent 2021 watching her grow. I’m neither maternal nor particularly nurturing, so there aren’t going to be children from my line, but I love that little girl, and getting to see her in person and in pictures and video was the main highlight of my year.

On the writing side, the highlight was publishing the third book in the Thorns series, BLUEBIRDS, although that series is still under most people’s radar. I keep at it in case it crops up later and because I don’t like unfinished things, plus I like this universe. I did my first editing pass of PUPPETEER (T4), cutting the bloated 219K words down to 183K. I’m on the second editing pass now and shooting for under 170K words, if possible, before sending it out to editors and beta readers.

The rest of the writing side was a bit shaky. I tried to write the DRACULA reimagining scheduled in the spring, but I made it about 75K words before I realized it was Not Working. Instead of finishing it and hoping to clean it up later, I wrote myself so deep into Not Working that I had to just stop. When I try again this year, I’m going into it with an outline and an adjusted style for the video epistolary, so we’ll see whether that works.

With the failure of the reimagining attempt, I was a bit at odds with my writing, so I decided to take on a novella—something shorter that wouldn’t hurt as badly if I had to stop. I finished writing creature feature short novel THE VERY HUNGRY at the end of May. I’d originally conceived of it as a short story, so I decided to see if I could recreate that feeling in my head. I came to the conclusion after several starts and stops that some things that play as a movie in one’s head doesn’t always translate to the page, because movies can show rather than tell in such a unique way not available to written narrative. However, after the fourth try, I managed to write a short version, although it’s too long for most anthology calls. I’ll see what I can do with it in the future.

Trying to write the short story version of THE VERY HUNGRY, however, triggered something that I hadn’t planned on for my year. After years of assuming that I wasn’t a short-form writer, I actually ended up writing for a number of short story anthology calls. I do have more stop-restarts than I do for novels, which is frustrating, but at least you don’t lose as much time when you stop-restart after 6K than 75K words. Not counting a few pieces of flash fiction, I wrote 15 stories of 1-15K words. Some of them were too long for the calls and had to be put to the side for now. Of the ones I submitted, some received personalized rejections (which is a good thing), and one of them was accepted! “Resin,” my queer horror-tragedy short story, will be published Feb 2022 in Ghost Orchid Press’ BEYOND THE VEIL.

In addition to short stories this year, I tried my hand at poetry. I’ve always tagged my song lyrics as ‘not a poet,’ because I always felt pretentious as hell writing poetry before, although I’d done a few pieces over the years. I didn’t feel I deserved to call it poetry, much less call myself a poet. But the gothic/horror prompts from Quill & Crow Publishing House inspired me, so about mid-July, I took the plunge. Ever since, I’ve been posting flash poetry daily on my Twitter feed, and I found my voice in it so that I don’t feel pretentious anymore (most of the time). It’s a lot of fun, just trying to create a feeling or image and play and paint with words on a micro scale, and two were published in Quill & Crow’s Volume 3 of CROW CALLS.

Writing both short stories and poetry was a bit like learning a new language, and for a few months after starting each, my brain lit up from all the new imaginative muscles flexing. They’ve since settled, but it was still quite a creative high.

For NaNoWriMo, I planned to take a break from editing PUPPETEER to write a few long short stories or novelettes. I had a list of about three or four I intended to finish during the month. Little did I know that the first one, HOSTILE TERRITORY, would turn into another short novel. So that happened. It needs some work and will probably be a novella by the time it’s trimmed down, and I still have some things I’m not sure about with it. But at least I don’t need to scrap it like the DRACULA reimagining. Just another story to store in the trunk until I can tackle it again.

On a personal level, I didn’t lose any more weight. In fact, I gained a little during the holidays. However, I did get off of my insulin-resistance and cholesterol medications, and the holidays are almost over, so hopefully I’ll be able to get back down to a more manageable level. I’ve come to accept that I am fat and will always be fat at every size, and nothing short of devastating illness or cosmetic surgery is going to change that, so I have to focus on my health rather than my size to avoid disappointment.

I don’t really have personal goals for the year. Like I said, if I try to look much farther than a week, it’s not the greatest feeling. I’ll stick with writing goals, although even that hasn’t been without its frustrations.

In 2022, I’ll finish editing PUPPETEER (T4) and send it out. I hope to self-publish it by the end of the year, although I feel on shakier ground with it than the other four I’ve written. When that’s done, I’ll probably edit short novel THE VERY HUNGRY to prep for submission, although I don’t know where yet. Then I’d like to tackle WILDWORLD (T5), although there are still elements I’m unsure about, so I might need to do some basic outlining to figure it out. After that, I think I’ll block out some months for short story anthology calls and some of the shorts/novelettes on my list. Then I hope to revisit the DRACULA reimagining with a tight outline and see if that helps. For NaNoWriMo 2022, I’d like to start the sequel to UNDEAD ANONYMOUS, which was NaNo 2020’s project, but although I know how it starts, I still don’t know where it’s going, so we’ll see. There’s always something else to work on. My project list doesn’t really get shorter.

Here’s hoping 2022 has more grains of rice on the good side of the scale.

BLUEBIRDS (Thorns 3) now available

27 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by amandamblake in Novels, Series, Thorns

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beauty and the beast, bluebirds, book release, fairy tale mashup, novel, rose princess, scavenger hunt quest, sleeping beauty, the thorns series, Writing

Bring elements three to me, bluebirds,
My sweet blue witch and rose,
And I shall set them free,
As the story always goes.

With everything that’s happened to her over the last year, Olivia is taking a well-deserved break from all things fairy tale. If she goes a whole day without thinking about rats, princesses, and hearts being ripped out of chests, she counts that as a success.

Then someone kidnaps Caspar and Tobin and enlists Adelaide and Olivia to rescue them in exchange for collecting a few magical items with no help from the Hunter Brotherhood.

A rhyming ransom note is bad enough, but Olivia hadn’t exactly planned on any quests, and a scavenger hunt for a manticore tail, faerie fruit, and burned wood from a lost city promises to be as simple as it sounds.

Kindle e-book
Trade paperback
Universal link to all other vendors

It’s the conclusion to the unofficial Rose Princess trilogy part of the series. I have book 4 and 5 written, and I plan to write book 6 next year, so it is a series in serious progress.

DRIFT available!

15 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by amandamblake in Novels

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american gothic, drift, fairy tale, fantasy, folktale, novel, self-publishing, selkie, Writing

“Her husband was a pious man, a man who had not desired to become a monster. He had simply desired her, and what he had done to have her had made him monstrous.”

Kindle/Paperback (FREE in KU): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08J1SK7LJ

After her mother’s funeral, Dani nearly drowns at the lake where she’s lived her entire life. She learned to swim before she could walk, but the water tingles and prickles over her skin, drawing her under.

She’s saved by a stranger who claims that the rains follow him, who sees when her father treats her the way a father shouldn’t.

Her mother left behind more than just memories and an empty lake house. And if Dani can’t find it, she’ll never break free from the shackles that her mother couldn’t escape.

“I have so much to tell you, my love. I can only hope that you heard me.”

COMING SOON – DRIFT

12 Wednesday Aug 2020

Posted by amandamblake in Novels, Poetry

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drift, fairy tale, fantasy, novel, sea, self-publishing, selkie, water, Writing

CBC Drift partialThe water calls, my dear, my love,
So dive into the deep,
Where fish will feed and nourish you
And whales sing you to sleep.

The water calls, my dear, my love,
As moon calls to the shore.
From cracking ice and rising seas,
We’ve come this way before.

The water calls, my dear, my love,
Against your thicker skin.
Hide it when it sheds away
To protect the one within.

The water calls, my dear, my love.
Beware the hearts of men,
For they will tempt with hollow words
And steal from you your skin.

The water calls, my dear, my love,
So dive into the deep,
Where fish will feed and nourish you
And whales sing you to sleep.

DEEP DOWN Available

03 Friday Apr 2020

Posted by amandamblake in Novels

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apocalypse, cave, deep down, horror, novel, self-publishing, short, Writing

Edge smDeep Down is available as a 99c e-book at Amazon! I still need to proof and publish the paperback, but here’s the link to the ebooks:

Amazon
All other vendors

If you’re not a fan of horror, it’s not your thing, and that’s okay. Just putting it out there for those who might.


The world is ending. His family is dead. And it’s all the man’s fault.

There’s no reason for him to go on.

But he promised his eldest son that they’d explore the mountain cave near their home. They never got around to it, never enough time, always something in the way—work, school, other responsibilities, things that don’t matter anymore. Now the man has all the time in the world, because everyone’s out of time.

Of all the broken promises, this is the one he is determined to keep.

Along with the family dog, who he can’t bear to leave behind, the man ventures into the cave.

Though he doesn’t expect or plan for either of them to live very long, the man still struggles to keep himself and the dog alive, struggles to survive one more day, just one more day. Yet the deeper into the mountain they go, the stranger and more dangerous the cave becomes.

But that’s the only thing left to do—go deeper.

Resolute (2)

01 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by amandamblake in A Few Thoughts, Writing

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health, nanowrimo, novel, resolutions, self-publishing, the thorns series, Writing

abstract art blur bokeh

Photo by freestocks.org on Pexels.com

On a personal level, not much happened to me in 2019. I gained a lot more responsibility at my job with changes at the company. And the biggest life event was the death of our sixteen-year-old cat, Sasha, whom I loved very much and continue to miss. Her death wasn’t unexpected, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

44911861_10158359259102228_8582831832783912960_o

We are now a catless household, and our lives are poorer for it, but we have an unpredictable dog, so I’m not sure whether cats are in the foreseeable future. You’d think that would be enough for me to move into an apartment, but I’m prohibitively resistant to change.

Sharing what you’ve accomplished during the year is less fun when you haven’t met a lot of the goals that you set for yourself. It’s okay that I didn’t, because writing takes up most of my time, and what isn’t taken up by that, I added regular cardio workouts, which take good chunks out of most of my week. Any hope I had to do much more creatively than writing died with my attempts to improve my blood test numbers. And I did. Some with the help of medication, but my triglycerides went way down on the last blood test, which was all me. So go me on that. So I need to adjust my expectations, as long as I continue to prioritize writing and my health. Good priorities to have, generally.

I did lose a significant amount of weight from the addition of exercise, but despite that, it didn’t make a significant change in my wardrobe, which kind of sucks, so it’s a good thing I’m doing it for my heart health and not my reflection – although it would be nice if my reflection could improve. I’m hoping that if I can’t improve my reflection in the coming year, at least I can lessen or eliminate one of my prescription medications.

I was supposed to reboot my jewelry-making, but that’s simply not going to happen until 2021 at the earliest, because this year’s writing schedule is really tight. And unfortunately, horror movie reviewing didn’t go very far at all, because last year’s writing schedule was so tight. I’m going to try again to do a dozen reviews in 2020. I’ve written several in my head. Just haven’t had a good moment to sit down and get them out.

I wrote ten original song lyrics, which is two short of my goal, but I also wrote three for one of my novels, so that balances it out and then some.

“All Thumbs”
“House of Windows”
“Trouble”
“How to Love”
“Dead Ends”
“The Smiling Man”
“What Are You Wearing to the End of the World?”
“The Long Walk”
“Pretty”
“Storm the Castle”

As far as my writing goes, I’m behind on my schedule by about a half a month to a month, and I didn’t get to rewrite WAR HOUSE, but I did finish three novels of quite varying lengths.

DEEP DOWN (pure horror): 60,480 words in about a month
DRIFT (modern gothic folk tale): 88,918 words in a little over a month
PUPPETEER (fairy tale remix, Thorns Series 4): a staggering 222,215 words in a little more than two and a half months (I started mid-September, but there was a two-week break in October when I had to proofread and prepare ROSE RED). I wrote 102,119 words in November for NaNoWriMo. It’s my longest first draft ever, and I’m going to have to cut at least 50K of it over the course of the next five rounds of edits, but I finished it before Christmas, so at least I got it done.

All of that for a total of 371,613 words this year. Technically, about 10K of DEEP DOWN was written in 2018, but I didn’t count it last year, and those handwritten words were transcribed this year, so let’s just go with it.

Rose Red E CoverIn addition, I went through all the motions to publish the second book in the Thorns series, ROSE RED. I’m not sure whether anyone but a handful of people I know actually read my books, which brings up the question of whether the sheer time and expense of publishing is worth it. But since I can’t stop writing, I might as well continue the vanity publishing and support the indie publishing industry while I’m at it, especially since I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to justify it.

Definitely going to be supporting the industry this coming year, since I hope to self-publish DEEP DOWN, DRIFT, and BLUEBIRDS (Thorns 3), which is…ambitious with the intensive process I’ve given myself. I finished the last personal edit for DEEP DOWN last night, so, pending my beta reader’s suggestions, it’s ready to send to my editors. I was also really pleased with the first draft of DRIFT, so I don’t anticipate tremendous changes during the double-edit.

Unfortunately, my last read of BLUEBIRDS felt…off. I think it’s a pacing and conviction issue. So I’ll need to give it another intensive edit before attempting the last double-edit and sending it to my editors. I’m also really not sure about PUPPETEER. It’s one of those things where it’s either quite good or quite terrible, and I just can’t tell. I’d send it to my alpha reader (she reads my stuff before I edit to make sure I edit in the right direction), but I don’t want to hand her such a bloated manuscript.

In addition to all the edits needed to publish – and the time required to accomplish them, especially for BLUEBIRDS – I’ve scheduled the re-write of WAR HOUSE, a few short stories, and two additional novels, including CROOKED HOUSE (Thorns 5). I’m guessing that if I don’t have the time, the short stories and WAR HOUSE might be pushed into 2021. My priorities are the publications, CROOKED HOUSE (T5), and the zombie novel I have planned for next NaNoWriMo. 2020 is going to be plenty busy, but it’s worth noting that 2021 isn’t going to be nearly as full, so I can afford to push WAR HOUSE off another year if I have to.

So that’s it – 2019 in the rearview, 2020 through the windshield. Here’s hoping that this year can be just as personally productive, even if I don’t accomplish much else.

Fear

09 Sunday Jun 2019

Posted by amandamblake in Writing

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fear, Writing

1159420_96550296I’m always afraid when I start something new. There is comfort in working on old projects, whether editing, proofreading, or even continuing an old story through a new book. In editing and proofreading, the work is already there. I just have to move it around, spruce it up, make it pretty. When continuing an established work, like the Thorns series, my characters, my backstories, my world-building, my tone and style, they’ve already been established. I have more springboards to work from, even when I’m creating new canon. That’s also what’s nice about fanfiction (and the Thorns series could be considered fanfiction, of a kind, given it’s a fairy tale mash-up).

But when I start from scratch on a completely new, standalone story, I always start afraid. I was afraid when I started horror story DEEP DOWN earlier this year (technically continued it from what I’d put down a year before, but still kind of terrified). And I’m afraid now that I’m starting American gothic fairy tale DRIFT.

Everything I write sounds like it comes from me – at least, to me it does – but the styles still shift from one kind of story to the next, because to a certain degree, form follows function. Think of it as the filter of the story. You can have the same director of photography and notice the trends, but the filter changes the impressions and moods. And it’s so important to how the story is felt and received.

New characters. People who have populated my head like ghosts quietly solidify and come to life, and they never end up quite the way I imagined them. New settings. New themes. New endings. New problems.

I’m afraid to start because I’m afraid it’s all going to come out wrong. I’m not going to get the tone right. The style won’t work with me. The ending will be weak. I’m not going to be able to get from point A to point B.

This fear is not irrational. I’ve failed before.

I succeed more often than not these days, and a lot of the problems can be fixed in editing. But NOCTURNE needed several complete rewrites, not just edits, although I salvaged much from the original drafts. The beginning of THORNS was reworked multiple times because it never felt quite right. I’m going to have to rewrite WAR HOUSE (I was actually going to do that this summer, but DRIFT felt more solid to me). I have a trilogy that I tried ten years ago that never got off the ground, and though I love the concept, I’m still not sure how to salvage it.

I really could get this wrong. And if I do, it might feel like writing the first draft was a waste of my time, since I would either have to let it go or try again later. I already feel like my writing time is strained as it is without having to write things more than once.

But God, it might go right. Or right enough. And even if it goes wrong and I have to rewrite, that’s still a solution. Not my favorite solution, but it’s something.

That’s why, no matter how scared I am to begin, I just do it. I just write the words, day after terrifying day, until I’m finished.

Until I determine it’s ready to prepare for publication, I remind myself that everything I write is just for me. No one has to see it. No one can judge it. I don’t even edit until everything’s finished, because I can’t assess details until I understand the larger picture. It’s all about getting the words down. Fear is an empty page, and as Jodi Picoult says, “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

I can either work with what I have – which I think I’m actually quite good at doing – or I don’t work with anything at all. The story remains in my head instead of getting exorcised, and no one can judge it, but also, no one can read it. And that doesn’t serve anyone.

So yeah, I’m afraid of writing. I’m also afraid of what happens when I don’t. So I sit down in front of my fear, and I start writing anyway.

Am I ill?

09 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by amandamblake in Writing

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deep down, horror, novel, novella, process, Writing

1159420_96550296

I started a pure horror story near the end of February (I classify NOCTURNE as horror, but it has a serious supernatural fantasy vibe in addition to the horror elements). I wrote the first ten thousand words last year, back when I had downtime at work to longhand (what is downtime?). I started out last month with transcription, then tackled new words. That’s difficult for me to do, come back to an old project, but this one hasn’t been hard to sink into. I guess it’s stayed on my mind all this time.

Any problems I’ve had have been because dayjob has been going through a months-long transition, and that’s required a near manic level of energy from me, but also more time than I like giving. I’m a perfectionist and pathologically terrified of disapproval, so I do what I do and don’t have enough time or energy to write as much as I’d like. Still doing it, though. Because when I don’t, my mental health plummets to dangerous places.

How strange that such a dark, bleak, sad story that I developed during the surfacing  fatalism after the last election would become a haven of sorts. So it’s moving more slowly than I’d like, but it’s moving.

I’ve hit roughly twenty-eight thousand words on the manuscript so far. And based on my outline and rough word goal of sixty thousand words, I’m about halfway through. Now, usually I give myself a word goal, then end up twenty thousand words or more above it. I’m notoriously terrible at figuring out how long things take or, in the case of novels, how long they’re going to be, even when I adjust for knowing how terrible I am at it.

But for DEEP DOWN (working title), I’m looking at fifty to sixty thousand words of a novel. As planned. Before edits. I’m actually writing a short novel, possibly a *gasp* novella.

You have to understand, in addition to being terrible at gauging how long things take, I really tend toward longer novels. I think I average around 120,000 words. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, and I’m really good at cutting my starting word count, paring a novel to its necessary words. That 120K novel was probably 140-150K to start out with. THORNS started out at a whopping 195K and ended up 155K.

A fifty-thousand-word novel is unthinkable to me. I’m literally looking at that word count and wondering whether something’s wrong with me. Or the story.

But I think it’s because it’s a single story line, no subplots, and a spare cast. I’m usually working with a more complex plot and multiple characters whose arcs need tending. DEEP DOWN has a very simple premise. A lot of good horror is minimalistic, and that’s what I wanted to try here.

I guess it’s working.

It’s still weird.

 

Resolute

01 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by amandamblake in A Few Thoughts, Writing

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Tags

art, creativity, editing, resolutions, the thorns series, Thorns, Writing

abstract art blur bokeh

Photo by freestocks.org on Pexels.com

Looking back on 2018, I managed to reach several, if not all creative goals. I didn’t get to write my short horror novels. I made that resolution when work had a lot more downtime, but around May, that downtime disappeared, so they didn’t happen. I also didn’t manage to reboot my jewelry-making. When I had breaks at home, I generally wanted to rest rather than work.

But I did write an average of one horror review a month. Got the last one in just under the wire:

1. “The Lazarus Effect”
2. “Would You Rather”
3. “Gothika”
4. “Teeth”
5. “The Awakening”
6. “Contracted”
7. “Starry Eyes”
8. “As Above, So Below”
9. “Slender Man”
10. “The ReZort”
11. “Silent Hill”
12. “The Wolfman”

And I did write an average of one song a month. Almost an average of two:

1. “Vultures”
2. “Anything but a Diamond”
3. “Standing Water”
4. “Fools”
5. “The Valley of the Shadow”
6. “City on the Hill”
7. “Plenty of Fish”
8. “Devil in the Details”
9. “Trypophobia”
10. “Without You”
11. “Svrcina”
12. “My Captain”
13. “Sleepwalker (Anthony’s Song)”
14. “Music Box”
15. “Rest of Your Life”
16. “Red”
17. “The Rose Less Traveled”
18. “Tattoo”
19. “What Happened”
20. “For the Last Time”
21. “Floodwaters”
22. “Choice”
23. “Would You Rather”

Most importantly, I managed to publish THORNS, the first book in the series of the same name. I’d done edits in previous years and made a number of changes then, but this required an intensive double edit (with the help of my beta readers), then doing the two indie pro edits in tandem, then proofreading. It basically took all year, piece by piece. But I’m really happy with the end product, and I hope you are as well.

I plan for the same marathon in 2019 with ROSE RED, the second book in the Thorns series, to be published around the same time. Hopefully in October, because doing anything other than NaNoWriMo in November is hellish. I’ll also do a single pass through BLUEBIRDS, the third book, though it’ll go through the more intensive phase of preparation in 2020.

I don’t really do resolutions. I have goals, and most of them are ambitious but doable, and I don’t hate myself for not accomplishing them. I focus on the creative, because that’s the meaning of life to me. My writing schedule for 2019 is all set up, and while I foresee some changes, it would be awesome if I could keep to it. 2020 will have a lot more room for writing new things, but I want to get a good set done this year, too.

In addition to ROSE RED, I’m putting those two short novels back on the docket, and I hope to do a rewrite of WAR HOUSE, because it’s also a fairly short (for me) novel, but odds are that these will be the first to be sacrificed if time becomes an issue.

What’s not optional is the fourth Thorns book, PUPPETEER. I haven’t written a new Thorns novel since 2015, and I really want to get the next three tackled. But considering their lengths, that can sometimes be like climbing Everest. I enjoy it, but it’s a lot of time required. I predict three months, but it may end up being three and a half or four. Yikes.

I really would like to reboot my jewelry making. I have pendant components ready to be put together, but I just need to commit to the time to create and take pictures (because I have an actual camera, not a smartphone, it’s a longer process.

This year I’m not going to be as focused on writing songs, but I’d still like to write an average of one a month. I may or may not try to write the music to one.

I’m also continuing my goal of an average of one full horror review a month. It’s a good amount to commit to.

I’d also like to engage in one new creative thing. I keep going from calligraphy to sketching to painting. I’ve done all at one time, calligraphy least of all, but they all intimidate me.

On the non-creative side of life, a few things changed in 2018. I took on more responsibility at work, which filled up that time I used to have too much of. Of course, the business itself had major changes as well that challenged my writing schedule mightily, but I don’t like talking about dayjob work.

Our house underwent drastic renovation, and I basically got rid of my old bedroom and replaced it with furniture fully of my choosing and funding. It was the first time I really got to do that. My old furniture was perfectly respectable and not young-looking or anything (antiques and a sweet daybed), but it was the same furniture I’d had all my life, and it wasn’t stuff I chose. I’m really happy with the furniture I chose, built around a completely awesome drawer unit. And I and the cat love my new bed (I think she’s convinced it’s the best cat bed in the world). I’m still in the process of making my room my own, and for all the clutter I cleared out, there’s more left to get rid of.

I also started improving my diet, although I still have an unhealthy attachment to bottled Frappuccinos and tortillas. I’ve lost some weight and hope to lose some more, but I don’t expect too much.

The real accomplishments are in the realm of my writing. That’s the life I chose, and I’m mostly happy with that. It’s my favorite thing to do, spending time with all these amazing people and having adventures with them. Looking forward to doing so much more of that in 2019, even if the rest of the world seems to be falling apart. This much I can do.

Voice

18 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by amandamblake in Poetry, Writing

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Tags

not a poet, poem, singing, voice, Writing

abstract black and white blur book

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I pick up a book and read the first lines.
I listen to new music all the time.
And I think, I want to sound like that.
Why can’t my cords vibrate like that?
Why can’t my brain string words like that?
Why can’t I be louder, lovelier, stronger, better, best?
Why am I trapped sounding like this?

I wish I could sound like them, but I can’t.
Because I’m not them.
My voice is my voice,
And imitation only gets so far.
Always pale and weak,
Nowhere near where they are.

My voice is my own.
And maybe someday someone will say,
I wish I could sound like you.
But they can’t.
Because my voice is my own,
And there will never be another one like it.
Like it or not, my voice is my own.

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