I Didn’t Like Reading Prose Poetry. Then I Wrote One of My Own.

Poetry has always played an important role in my life. I have read poetry for decades, devouring anything and everything that resembled a poem.

 

Except for prose poems.

 

The first time I saw a prose poem, I made a look of disgust and said, “That’s not a poem! It’s a story!” This judgment made, I avoided reading that poem – and every single one after it!

 

Then the day came that I wrote one of my own prose poems. I had no control over how I constructed this poem; the words just came out through my fingers and, before I knew it, I had a paragraph.

 

One very LONG paragraph!

 

A thing I don’t like about prose poems is when a giant paragraph of words makes up the poem. I would get a headache just trying to read all of those lines so close together! I prefer my paragraphs short and spaced out.

 

That said, I didn’t like what I saw with my poem, either. So, when I revised it later, I broke those lines up. Anything to make those paragraphs shorter and manageable!

 

And less headache-inducing.

 

But something interesting happened after I wrote that prose poem. I started reading other ones, too!

 

Somehow, I no longer disliked prose poetry! I was now interested in reading them!

 

And now I am reading even more of them!

 

So, not only did I manage to write a prose poem, but I am now reading them, too.

 

They say our tastes in reading change as we grow older. I guess now my taste in reading is more welcoming towards prose poetry. I want to read them! I NEED to read them!

 

As long as they are not presented as One. Giant. Paragraph. Of words.

How Writing One Novella Helped Me to Explore New Avenues as a Writer

 

On Monday, March 10, I have a new book coming out. Curse of the Blood Witch is a vampire horror novella. When I wrote this book for NaNoWriMo many years ago, I did not get it to 50,000 words. However, I spent a long time taking it through several revisions, and when I was done with it, the final word count was at   46, 860 words. Still not 50K but still a good enough length to be called a novel.

 

Thing of it is, though, this book almost didn’t end up with a publisher.

 

After years of rejections, I gave up on trying to find a publisher or agent interested in it. I put it away and moved on to other books.

 

Then, one evening, a flock of bats flew over my house. After I posted about this on Facebook, I joked that perhaps they are vampire bats trying to convince me to submit my vampire horror novel once again. One of my friends (an actual friend who is no longer a Facebook friend) jumped on this and encouraged me to do just that. It was as though the bats had spoken! I grudgingly agreed to try to find a home for this book again, not holding out much hope.

 

This was hammered home after I received yet another rejection from a publisher.

 

Frustrated, I threw the manuscript to my beta readers, who dutifully responded with tons of suggestions and help in tweaking the manuscript. I took what advice I felt was helpful, cut gigantic chunks from what I had as a novel, and submitted the now novella-length manuscript off to a publisher. That publisher accepted the manuscript and I was thrilled it finally found a home!

 

But it’s not just this experience with writing a book that I am surprised about.

 

There are a few things, too…

 

I never thought I would write a vampire novel or novella. I love reading these kinds of books, but writing vampire fiction has not exactly been my strength. Ever since I started writing it, however, I have experimented with writing vampire short stories. I feel this is helping me to improve my ability to write vampire fiction.

 

I never thought I would write a story based on an historical figure. The main vampire in my novella is bitten by a vampire who carried the power of Elizabeth Bathory. Several years ago, my oldest created a Halloween costume dubbed a “blood witch.” At that time, I was reading about the life of Elizabeth Bathory. In my reading, I learned that she was exposed to the occult, as her family dabbled in black magic and the supernatural. This coupled with all of the legends of vampirism surrounding Elizabeth Bathory made me come up with a creation of her as a blood witch.

 

I never thought I would write an Alternate Universe (AU) story. Everything in the novella about Elizabeth Bathory is pure fabrication created to make my story work. You could say it’s an AU story, because in this story, Bathory escaped from her imprisonment and she had been an actual vampire. Everything that happens in the story follows what would have happened had she escaped. However, my own fictional version of Bathory is portrayed only in the Prologue. (And, yes, I kept the prologue. I let my publisher decide whether or not to leave it in the story and she said to leave it in.)

 

With this over and done with, I can’t help but think if I might ever end up writing another AU story based on a person in history. Anything is possible, and if this does happen again, maybe I will once again try my hand at writing another type of fiction I hadn’t tried writing before.