Word Play . . .

1: Spring Haiku

Plump blossoms hide bark.
Tiny leaves sprout umbrellas.
Spring: forget-me-not.

2: Spring Haiku

Plump blossoms hide winter's bark.
Green leaves sprout tiny umbrellas.
Spring rains, first flowers, forget-me-not.


This morning I mapped out the current tough chapter. Mac and Fadge are now 300 feet deep in a 19th Century coal mine. Bits of dialogue come first, then a description, and conflict. It sounds so flaky but now that my characters are 'in place,' they will show me their reactions. Trust the process.

Now, tonight, inspired by those lovely spring blossoms that fade so quickly, I'm playing with words. The first poem follows the traditional haiku format of 5-7-5 syllables. The second has 5-7-5 words.

Today, from the Internet Writer's Workshop forum on writing, comes Michele Riccio's suggestion to try Wordle, a free app that generates an image based on the frequency certain words appear. The more repetitions, the larger the word!

I copied some 20,000 words in from Section 2 of Years of Stone (draft in progress) to find my characters -- Mac, Deidre, and Mary most prominent. That's fine with me. Now I'll do a search and replace to see if I've used 'back' appropriately. An interesting play on words.

Today's post continues my May challenge: to write something every day, inspired by what someone else has written. The haiku (one form of word play) comes from Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides (Writer's Digest March/April 2012) prompt to write a haiku.