Category: Life

Weekly Round-up, November 23, 2024

John Winkelman

A golden cord, in a pile, to which is attached a gold medallion, on which is inscribed the words "Poetry Advocate".

[ A medallion, awarded by the Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids. ]

This past Sunday I visited the main branch of the Grand Rapids Public Library to attend Grand Rapids: A Poetry City, an event created by Grand Rapids Poet Laureate Christine Stephens-Krieger. At the end of the event Christine called up a few people from the audience and presented them with medallions. Much to my surprise, one of those people was me!

Stephens-Krieger has many plans for the three years of her term, including a couple in which I am involved. I have talked previously about the Grand River Poetry Collective and An Oral History of Poetry in Grand Rapids. The Poetry Collective has several books in progress, and another Oral History project is underway, which might even be completed by the end of 2025. So, exciting times.

Reading

I finished Somebody Loves You, and have started on William Gibson’s excellent Spook Country. Somehow the Blue Ant books seem appropriate, here in late 2024.

Writing

A pass at the first couple of paragraphs of the re-write of Cacophonous. Nothing much else.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Environment, Super Powers
Setting: Small Town
Genre: Horror

Weekly Round-up, November 16, 2024

John Winkelman

Well my head is in a slightly better place this week than it was last week. Not that things are good. No, things are not good at all. Trump was re-elected, despite being a close personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein. Or really, because he is a Friend of Epstein. After all, he is very popular with conservative Christians. Its re-election was no real surprise; this type of outcome has been inevitable since Reagan’s second term, and accelerated by Citizen’s United.

Reading

Reading went a little better this week than last week. I finished Elvira Navarro’s A Working Woman, which was beautiful and strange. Now I am reading Mona Arshi’s Somebody Loves You, which sits in the boundary between novel and prose poem.

Writing

I have put some more thought into The Book, and taken down some notes around setting and character traits, but the story itself still eludes me. I suspect that what was originally intended as a re-write will instead be a re-draft.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Politics, Death
Setting: Subterranean
Genre: Literary Fiction

Listening

Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, “Something About John Coltrane”, from the album Journey in Satchidananda.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, November 2, 2024

John Winkelman

Looking north along the Grand River.

[ The view north along the Grand River. ]

What would have been a productive week turned out not to be after I had an attack of what felt like bad allergies, after the outside temperature here hit 80 degrees earlier this week. Now that more seasonable weather is back I feel better, but have no energy or drive to do anything.

Reading

Slowly working my way through Elvira Navarro‘s A Working Woman. Not making much progress because my brain is mush.

Writing

No writing this week. Barely even any journaling. Between the looming election and the illness my brain is mush.

And I find myself remarkably unmotivated for the Month of Writing. I certainly am not going to hit 50,000 words. I made a goal of a completed first draft of a book I started two years ago, but I don’t think I will even have the focus to complete the ~20,000 words necessary to do so.

Maybe I just need to take this year off.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Evolution, Artificial Intelligence
Setting: Ship
Genre: Science Fiction

Listening

The Gyuto Monks, Freedom Chants From the Roof of the World. I have listened to the album possibly more than any other.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, October 26, 2024

John Winkelman

Dawn over Michigan Street

[ Just before sunrise, facing east down Michigan Street at the Union Avenue intersection. ]

This past week was one of the busiest and most hectic weeks of my year, so I didn’t accomplish much that wasn’t work or class or home maintenance.

Reading

Currently reading Norah Lange‘s Notes From Childhood, and it is gorgeous!

Writing

I have changed the name of the MC in my WIP to Thomas, because “Cacophonous Thomas” rolls off the tongue so nicely. Bob, as a protagonist name, is just a little too generic.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Empire, Politics
Setting: Labyrinth
Genre: Literary Fiction

Listening

This year I created a playlist for my novel, and the soundtrack to The Naked Lunch was the first addition.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, October 19, 2024

John Winkelman

Painted stones fond beside the Dragon Trail at Hardy Dam.

[Painted stones found beside the Dragon Trail at Hardy Dam.]

This past week was hectic. Far more hectic than I would have expected on a week off. But my week off coincided with the kickoff of a new project, which I am leading, so I had to pop in to a couple of meetings when I would much rather have been walking in the woods or otherwise not staring at a computer screen or listening to other people talk.

But I did manage to accomplish some of the things I set out to work on for the week. My house is slightly improved. Our cats are verified healthy. I am too, as of my first physical in over a decade.

Reading

I finished the Borges interviews, and for a change of pace picked up Runes of Engagement by Dave Klecha and Tobias S. Buckell. I know Klecha from the ConFusion science fiction convention, where we are both volunteers and occasional members of the ConCom, and he has been most helpful as I learn the ins and outs of helping to manage a science fiction convention. I met Buckell at ConFusion several years ago. He is a Righteous Dude.

Runes of Engagement was a fun read, and light, and I finished it in a couple of days. Next I read Jack Ridl’s new poetry collection All At Once, which was absolutely beautiful. Some of the poems moved me to tears, which almost never happens. Ridl is a treasure.

Now I am reading Norah Lange‘s Notes from Childhood, which I acquired several years ago from my subscription to And Other Stories. I might have missed this one, except that Lange is mentioned more than once in the Borges interview collection, and so was floating near the surface of my subconscious.

Writing

With my little extra free time I began organizing my notes for the upcoming Month of Writing. Since I am no longer participating in National Novel Writing Month, I am instead participating in “That November Thing”, an event coordinated by the West Michigan Author Alliance, that which used to be the Ottawa County/Grand Rapids region for NaNoWriMo.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Apocalypse, Precursors
Setting: Battlefield
Genre: Lovecraftian

Listening

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, October 12, 2024

John Winkelman

Poe and Pepper, living their best life.

[Lazy Cats]

Once again I was cruelly and unjustly snubbed for both a MacArthur Genius Grant and the Nobel Prize for Literature. The fact that I have done nothing noteworthy should not disqualify me from the selection process.

Reading

I just finished the collection of interviews with Jorge Luis Borges, and will likely soon start browsing my collections of his fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. So many brilliant ideas. So much brilliant writing.

I am now reading All At Once, Jack Ridl‘s new collection of poetry which was just published by CavanKerry Press.

Writing

I am ramping up my note-taking and world-building for the November Project. Since I am not officially participating in NaNoWriMo until they de-shittify the organization, I am instead working with

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Robots, Death
Setting: Bar
Genre: Cyberpunk

Listening

A little something different here.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, October 5, 2024

John Winkelman

Poe, woozy from the drugs.

[Poe, woozy from the drugs.]

This past week was hectic. We had to take our cat Poe to the vet to have three of her teeth extracted. She is recuperating nicely, but caring for her as she recovers has thrown off the daily and weekly routine. Therefore I didn’t manage to accomplish as much as I had hoped.

Reading

I am still reading through the collected interviews of Jorge Luis Borges. He is currently at the top of my list of “If you could spend a day talking to one author, living or dead.” The interviews are all excellent, but there is a notable difference the interviews where the interviewer is almost as smart as Borges, and the ones where the interviewer is nowhere near as smart as Borges. Actually, “smart” isn’t the right phrasing. “Well read” and “erudite” work better.

Writing

I am still planning what I will tackle in November, since NaNoWriMo, having both become enshittified and having shit the bed, is off the table. Probably a re-write of my novel-in-progress Cacophonous.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Colonization, Economics
Setting: Boardroom
Genre: Mystery

Listening

Kris Kristofferson died a few days ago. I am posting this video because “Casey’s Last Ride” appeared in an intense scene in the first season of True Detective.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, September 28, 2024

John Winkelman

Hot peppers, tomatoes, a large pile of string beans, and many acorn squash, displayed on a small table.

[The latest, and possibly the last, harvest from our small garden this year.]

Suddenly here we are in the last week of September and the first week of Autumn. We finally have something approaching seasonal weather, though the weather we are having now would have been considered unusually hot only a decade ago. So it goes.

Reading

I have set all of my other reading aside so that I may focus on reading the collection of interviews with Jorge Luis Borges. I picked this book up back in June 2016 and it has been gathering dust for the past eight years.

Writing

Thought it isn’t necessarily creative writing, I did stay up late a few nights ago and write a long blog post for the monthly Insecure Writer’s Support Group blog hop. The post will go live on Wednesday, October 2. The question for the month was about our favorite classic ghost stories. I chose “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce. For why this was the story which most affected Young Me, check back in a couple of days.

Reading the interviews with Borges has helped me sort out a few problems in one of my longer (and older) works-in-progress. I am taking notes and rearranging a few things, noting where I can remove characters who are now extraneous and adding one or two who will be central to the revised work. Though I will not be officially participating in NaNoWriMo this year I do plan to spend much of November (and October, and December) writing, and perhaps complete a first draft by the end of the year. This will only be possible because I will be able to use more than half of the previous version essentially unchanged, or only lightly edited. And if I can’t complete a draft by December 31, I would like to have it done by the end of the Year of the Dragon.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Revenge, Music
Setting: Boardroom
Genre: Mystery

Listening

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, September 21, 2024

John Winkelman

Early evening sun shining down an alley.

[The early evening sun, shining down our alley.]

This past week was my last week of work for the fiscal year, which ends at the end of the months. I am taking next week off in order to burn some unused vacation days and also to just…not work. I have taken some days off here and there over the preceding twelve months, but those days were filled with chores, errands, travel, and the ten thousand other things which tend to fill in the days, hours, minutes, and seconds of a day when we allow them to. Or rather, when we don’t take sufficient care to guard our down time.

Reading

For the past two weeks I have been working my way through my back issues of DreamForge magazine, to which I have had a subscription since 2019. Unfortunately I was so inundated with reading material at the time that I never got around to browsing more than a handful of stories out of any of the issues. So I am making up for lost time.

I also, on a whim, pulled down Jorge Luis Borges: Conversations, and am slowly working my way through an assortment of interviews with Borges, which start in 1965 and run through 1985, the year before Borges died. I think this will lead to me pulling my down my Borges collections and reading them through the rest of the year.

Writing

Not much this week. Brain was full of mush.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Precursors, Super Powers
Setting: Labyrinth
Genre: Technothriller

Listening

Miami Vice premiered 40 years ago this past week. I can’t overstate the impact it had on my rural outsider psyche, sitting in front of the television on Friday nights all through high school.

Interesting Links

  • “The Subprime AI Crisis” (Ed Zitron, Where’s Your Ed At) – It’s time to start shorting OpenAI stock.