Press pause. Freeze your palms
on the source of my demise.
My island is pressed in roses.

In the mourning, I
learned deserts cry
under gentle peeling of grain.

Write Queeners,

I am stubborn. I know people who are perfectly capable of designing logos, but being the do-it-myself type of gal, I had to make one myself. Which means a couple of years without a logo. I wanted something simple, yet funky. I have a million ideas and not enough time (or expert skill, I'll admit!) to play on Photoshop. But I finally found time today! After waking up at 6AM to find myself shivering, yet sweating after a night with a terrible headache, I had to call out of work. The extra few hours of sleep did help sort out things and I had at least enough brain power to go on Photoshop (if you knew my occupation, you would see why Photoshop is considered kids play).

Well after hours of frustrating myself with my own logo and a friend's logo, I finally finished my own with the help of my boyfriend (the best cure all after feeling under the weather). Now the final result is on top of my page, but I figured that a larger version was in order:

What do you think guys? Yay or Nay? I can always make (or have someone) make another. For now, after not having one, I think this is pretty dandy. But wait, there is more! I actually made another logo! Check this out:

Eh, that's nothing crazy, but I do think it's cute. What do you think? Hmm, maybe we should do a poll! Yes...we will do a poll. Check out the contenders side by side and tell me what you think.

If you want to skip the poll, you can always leave a comment on the posts!

This sickster must get to bed, but I hope that I might get to wake up to some poll results to make my day.

Good night ya'll!

Scriptures brushed
against my cheek, reverence
in his slight stubble.

Blue collar soul 
bereft of time calls 
911 during lunch hour.

I can't believe it will be a year since I've started this journey in less than 90 days! I feel like I have not done much, but at the same time, I've done a lot.

I am still in the submission stage. Between money and time, the progress of submitting the manuscript to contests and presses has been slow. Like turtle slow. Submitting to one or two contests is one thing. Submitting to several at once is costly. 

The one thing that has helped me compile a list of where to submit is The Poet's Market 2013. When going through listings on websites like pw.org and duotroupe.com were becoming more time consuming than anything else, I bought the Poet's Market on my Kindle. Being able to highlight the names of presses or contests and being able to come back to them later in the Notes section is awesome. Being able to do that on the train with my Kindle is even better. Not only does The Poet's Market 2013 have listings for contests and such, it also has essays on a few topics in the poetry world such as Poetic Form. You should go grab a copy (Amazon has the best price!) and see for yourself.

So let's see, I've been researching, slowly submitting, and....creating query letters! Now being a journalist, you would think a query letter would be easy. It's not in the creative writing world because you are offering something for people to react and critique on, you are giving a piece of yourself to whom ever is alive on the other end of that letter or e-mail. In the next post or so, I'll post a sample of what a query letter looks like for creative writing. I will also talk about this wonderful thing called compromise and why I don't want to in the next post. 

But for now, good night Write Queeners. Don't let your Late Night Feelings get in the way.

Someday, Sunday
won't be a battle. 
Mirrors tear-streaked today.

Plowed through a yes as
flakes stuck on the wind
shield. Doubts iced through.

Just going to jump right in and join this month's writing challenge. No fancy intros or promises I may not keep.

Undercurrents bossed
through veins, pass bridges.
Vacation day useless.