Tag Archives: book

Confessions of a coffeehouse junkie, revisited

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1.

The genre of blog writing is nearly obsolete. As far as I can tell. This is based on a conversation I had a couple months ago.


“You’re son told me you have a blog,” she said.

“Huh?” I replied.

My family was invited to a small, casual dinner party.

“Yeah, he also said you’re an artist and poet,” she said. “I used to have a blog. I mean. That was years ago. I’m not really a writer, but I blogged.”

She continued to tell me what she blogged about and where. We were both active around the same time period (by active I mean posting writings nearly daily). That was before the rise of the major social media platforms. I shared that part of what I enjoyed about the genre was the interaction with people. The exchange of ideas. The sense of being part of a greater community.

“I mostly just write on Facebook now,” she confessed. “Remember, back when, you could only leave a comment on a blog post?”

“That’s right,” I recalled out loud. “There were no like buttons or social media share icons.”

After that dinner party, I updated the art page of my blog. And planned to contribute more time and resources to blogging again.

2.

I composed a post about the value of journaling with plan to publish it the first week of March. But it ended up in the draft folder.

Mid-March I wrote another post. This one was about discovering a collection of my old art work. But it too is in the draft folder. Well. Actually. I eventually posted it near the end of April.

But the genre of blog writing is passé. Outdated. Why do I still do this?

Then I remembered rule number eight: “Every word on your blog is a word not in your book.”

3.

Shifting focus, I started work on a book. Or rather a series of books. Inspired by August Derleth’s Sac Prairie books, like Walden West and Countryman’s Journey. I set to work on the first manuscript.

Derleth presented a non-linear collection vignettes and entries about his home town. I moved in the direction of a daybook, or journal. Instead of spending a year at Walden Pond, or Sac Prairie, I collected entries and stories of a year in the life of a cultural creative edging toward a digital nomad.

Thoreau and Derleth drew from nature, whether from a pond or prairie. I discovered the ubiquitous screen became the prominent pool of inspiration for the first manuscript. One book manuscript became two and three. The metaphor of the glowing computer laptop screen began to crack and shatter by the fourth book manuscript.

The book series is part confession and part cautionary tale.

4.

I deleted the blog. The only thing that remains of that original blog is the screen shot featured in this post.

In truth, I deleted all blogs I maintained. Except this one.

Collision of jazz and Chinese poetry

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The train was late. Or rather, I was late for the train. Work ran later than expected. Missed the 5:45. The street car was running. No mechanical problems like Monday. But a few minutes behind schedule due to a presidential rally.

I decided to skip the street car and walk to the station in order to catch the last train home. There is almost two hours between one train and the other. Walking gave me a chance to find a coffee shop and some time to catch up on reading. The Public Market was on the way, but it tends be loud. And crowded.

Stone Creek Coffee is nice and near the train station. And open until 7 p.m. It displays a nice interior design. But sometimes the atmosphere feels a bit too mod. The baristas are often impertinent. And I feel inelegant when I visit. Maybe I am getting too old to haunt swanky coffee shops. Stone Creek coffee is luxurious. In spite of pretentious barista I bought a cup and then walked to the train station to wait and read a book. It is an autobiography of the Chinese poet Tu Fu. The fact that a book published in the 1930s is still in circulation at a public library is impressive. Also interesting are the translator notes. A few weeks ago I finished reading a recent translation of Li Po poetry. The translator, Seaton, made observations similar to those made nearly 100 years ago by Ayscough and Lowell.

I struggled with one passage in the book as the train station grew loud with passengers arriving from one train and departing on a Greyhound bus. Pulling a mobile device out of my pocket I placed in ear buds and cued up episode 88 of the Discovering Jazz podcast. As I listened I read that one Chinese ideogram may require more than one word to transliterate. Sometimes an entire phrase is used to convey the idea of a single Chinese character. The last train arrived. I boarded. Found a seat. Continued reading. And listening.

The jazz podcast explored absolute pitch. The show host mentioned that Asian languages are tonal. Pronouncing a vowel with one pitch may mean one thing while pronouncing the same vowel with a different pitch provides a different meaning. I experienced that when I visited Japan. But I did not have the knowledge to appreciate it then as I do now.

Reading a dozen pages was all I managed to accomplish before the train stopped at the home station. Thankful to be homeward. Grateful for the travel disruption that mingled American jazz and Chinese poetry into one commute.

Poem Fifteen: Late Night Writing

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Title poem by Matthew Mulder from the book Late Night Writing.

Title poem by Matthew Mulder from the book Late Night Writing.

Poem Nine: Always Departing

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An excerpt of

An excerpt of “Always Departing” by Matthew Mulder from the anthology Rooftop Poets.

Poem Six: Prairie Constellations

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“Prairie Constellations” by Matthew Mulder from the book Late Night Writing.

Poem 7: Always Departing

Poem 7: Always Departing

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Poem 5: Prairie Constellations

Poem 5: Prairie Constellations

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Template layout for a children’s book

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This crude sketch is quite popular. A reader commented recently how the layout template helped his poetry book project.[1] The web site Moving Writers[2] posted “A Collaborative Writing Study That Will Rock Your Students’ World: Children’s Literature”[3] and linked to my rough layout template.

The origin of the drawing began at a local meet-up of illustrators and artists. The topic of children’s books came up. Several of the artists felt intimidated by the idea of creating a children’s book. As well they should. But it is not a path of labyrinthian impossibility. The big question is how to do it. At the time, I was a creative director for an international publishing company and had designed children’s books — specifically, picture books.

To encourage these artists and writers, here is a general anatomy of a children’s book:

  • 22 illustrations (five spreads)
  • 18 pages of text (51 lines to be specific) and
  • 32 pages (including title pages, front matter and back matter)
  • intro story and character on page four
  • intro dilemma on page 14
  • how to solve problem (pages 15 to 23)
  • problem solved on page 24 and
  • resolution on page 28

Several artists that night asked to take a photo of this sketch of an anatomy of a children’s book with their smart phones. Since then, several readers have expressed similar interest. So, I share this sketch again.

Like all recipes, what you do with the ingredients (i.e. text, words and pages) is up to the artist and writer. And, like any good disclaimer, results do very.

NOTES:
[1] “Anatomy of a children’s book,” coffeehousejunkie.net, December 10, 2012, accessed June 20, 2016 https://coffeehousejunkie.net/2012/12/10/anatomy-of-a-childrens-book/
[2] Moving Writers, accessed June 20, 2016 https://movingwriters.org/.
[3] Allison Marchetti, “A Collaborative Writing Study That Will Rock Your Students’ World: Children’s Literature,” movingwriters.org, May 30, 2016, accessed June 20, 2016 https://movingwriters.org/2016/05/30/a-collaborative-writing-study-that-will-rock-your-students-world-childrens-literature/.

Bonus Poem: Late Night Writing

Bonus Poem: Late Night Writing

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Poem 12: Prairie Constellations

Poem 12: Prairie Constellations

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