Where has the time gone?

A summary of recent blog posts, with links.

A Long-Awaited Date with a Volcano This may have been the only thing on my “bucket list,” and it’s been there since I was nine. My husband was able to make my childhood dreams come true. I cannot imagine a better way to start the new year!

Peace, Fragile as a Seashell I’m not usually fond of writing to prompts, but I am fond of my friend Vinitha and I admire her consistency in offering two hundred and seventy-eight weeks of Fiction Monday And you never know, given a sufficiently open-ended prompt and a little quiet time just to write, exactly what will spill from your pen.

Scala Decima Inversa (reversal of the New Poetry Form: The Scala Decima I invented last year). And here the form is, introduced with fine examples by friends of mine in Verse-Virtual: Vince Gotera and RJ Clarken. These two encouraged me - I might even say that Vince gave me a healthy shove - to submit work to Verse-Virtual, so here is my debut in this marvelous publication edited by Jim Lewis.

(Inter)national Delurking Week! A grand tradition begun in 2006 - I only wish it also encouraged commenters to delurk. That’s a hint, if you didn’t know. <toes the hint over towards you and hopes you’ll pick it up>

I don’t really believe in “writers block.” But Poetic Inspiration or Lack Thereof was the subject of a discussion among a group of poets. I brainstormed some ideas, and this is what I came up with.

I have also decided to do another forms challenge for myself, and invite you to come play. That’s what writing is - I mean, it’s work, too, but at its absolute best, it feels like play.

Poetry Forms Challenge 2026: "Found Poems" If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. I “found” the inspiration for a poem in the spam bucket. And not long after that, I found Another Poem Fished Out of the Moat.

Poetry Forms Challenge 2026: “Quadrille”

Poetry Forms Challenge 2026: "Pirouette"

And finally, there’s this. Not the way I want to spend my time, but maybe it’s a way to sharpen my claws when I feel like the world’s spinning out of control. Better the bots than real people, I guess. Bitching at Bots discusses some of the new-ish features on Facebook affecting private groups. If you’re not already aware, you may want to take a look.

Till the next adventure!

Holly