My nephew-in-law Aaron gave each of the ladies today a rose, which was sweet of him and which is gracing my dresser tonight, safely out of reach of curious cats. Thanks Aaron!

The first of April, a month of travels
a month full of poems, from start to finish,
the daily stacks up, the month unravels,
the pages and words shall not diminish.
To speak of the small things, to sing for you,
to show you the things that fill everyday.
The highway and trees and clouds in the blue
the breezes that make April’s flowers sway.
Where will we go then? Where haven’t we been?
Just to see each day with eyes new and clear
so to see each day what has been most seen
we will look and write what we find most dear.
Fear in the starting but joy to come home
the road ahead paved with thirty new poems.

I think I’ve pretty much drawn a circle around my theme for NaPoWriMo this year. I found it helpful last year to have a theme. Sometimes the words went outside it too, but I tried to keep something within it each day. Last year the theme was related to my somewhat-stuck NaNoWriMo story and it did help me get a sense of a mindset and an idea for nudging it ahead. Hopefully, this year’s theme will be my personal nudge when prompts and things don’t light up my brain. As always, the secondary goal will be to share publicly each day and haiku will be scattered throughout as needed.

Lest you think that these are small pockets of people, keep your eyes open on the web and you’ll see hints and allegations that there are many people scribbling and typing away a month at a time. April is also the first round of Camp NaNoWriMo which is a little more free-form version of the November event. Here you can set your own genre, your own word count goal and still have the fun of beating the clock.

And on that note, I saw this from Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother and more:

doctorow: Here’s the four pieces of flash fiction I wrote in 5 mins. each at #Eastercon http://t.co/UqyUx652tr

this followed close behind from Paul Cornell:

Paul_Cornell: At noon I’ll be playing competitive flash fiction against @RozKaveney @EmApocalyptic and @Doctorow! Hoping to score a point. At some point.

and then:

Paul_Cornell: I scored a point at the flash fiction! First time ever! @EmApocalyptic won, the rest of us came second.

Which just goes to show you that sometimes word geeks just wanna have fun and do it doing what they love.

Two friends and I were just chatting about sweet potatoes and such and it came to a small wager on the point of whether peeps melt in the oven or not. Marshmallows melt, of course but would the favorite little spring confection?

Suddenly I was charged with settling the question. A few minutes preheat and then it was all over in nine minutes…

And then I watched the new Dr Who. Because who wouldn’t. Seriously.

It was bright and beautiful and warm(ish) outside today. I sort of puttered around. Did some wash, puttered around just a little, bothered the cats a little. Looked at the watercolor stuff but somehow the collage part just wasn’t calling me. If I were more disciplined I would have done just practice stuff anyway.

Last night I did work on a sonnet, which I described as one of the world’s worst sonnets:

Dear people whose iphones are full of stuff
who now get messages most confusing
Those of you who gird with cases tough
all the while insurance you’re refusing
You claim that clouds are too far above you.
Your computer died while on vacation?
But now your iPhone’s lost or broken too
and you’d like the grace of restoration.
A genius of technology beseech?
Or carrier, you call them to implore?
Oh precious contacts just beyond your reach!
Oh calendars for home and school and more!
Where is the data that you seek most pained?
A woeful lack of backup now explained.

I’m not sure I’m quite ready for Poetry Month…