Still Thinking About This Blog

Last June, when I started up my writer's website and included a blog with it, I decided to keep An Arrow Through the Air, but to try to change the focus. The blog at davidatodd.com would be about my writing in a way that fans would care about, while this blog would be more about my writing journey. And I'd throw in a few other things, such as book and movie reviews.

Since the title of the blog is a great metaphor from the writing of John Wesley, I thought I could make this blog about metaphors of life. The problem is, metaphors of life just haven't been coming to me. Possibly it's the engineer in me, and all the straight-forward technical stuff I do that keeps me from thinking metaphorically. That's a problem with my poetry. I tend to tell stories without putting in many metaphors. Or if I do use a metaphor, it's master metaphor, more allegory-like than a small metaphor to make a point. A chink in my poetic armor, you could say.

I'm at my office today, a Sunday, having come here after a great worship service and Life Group class. I have some things going on the end of next week and the week following, and I wanted to get ahead of the curve a little. I found I did all the things I wanted to do within a half hour, which gave me some time, if I wanted to take it, to finish some research for The Candy Store Generation, to clean up some stuff that wasn't on the to do list, to send out notices about our writers group meeting tomorrow night, and to come to this blog. Now that I'm here, I can't think of a single metaphor of life to write about.

Perhaps something will come to me at a time when I least expect it, and I'll be at a point where I can capture it and put it in tangible form for later development. Perhaps I need to quit trying so hard to come up with metaphors, and let them come naturally. If they don't come that may be an indication that I'm not supposed to be a poet.

This week I spent more time in my current reading book, War Letters. These are letter from Americans during our various wars, from the Civil War, World War 1, World War 2, Korean War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and Bosnia/Kosovo. I still have 120 pages to finish the book. I keep looking in these letters for things that can become metaphors. Instead, in the Korean War letters, I found fodder for The Candy Store Generation. That's a good thing, but it doesn't help me with my other writing goal.

Maybe I need to get back to critiquing poetry. I haven't critiqued a poem at the Absolute Write forums in around six months. I think when I get home I will critique a poem there first, before I work a little on TCSG and reading. We'll see how it goes.

All of which probably does little to enlighten my few readers, and probably explains whey I don't have many people following my blog.