Category: A. G. Moore

I’ve Been Writing a Lot…

 

 

mach writing Josef_Löwy_Handstudie_vor1872
Josef Löwy: “Handstudie” 1872.  Public domain

 

 

I’ve been writing quite a lot for several years now.  At first I wrote a book about personal experience.  Many people begin with the personal when they first write. After I finished that book, I cast my eyes out, and saw a universe of interesting subjects.

A blog followed–on Godaddy.  Then I opened a Twitter account. A few children’s books followed.  As the years passed, I wrote more books and found more mediums on which to feature my writing.

WordPress offered a convenient platform…and so here I am.  It may be my temperament that leads me down different paths.  Or it may be a symptom of the times. So many opportunities exist for people who want to write.  There’s no such thing as a closed door anymore.  We all have a key and an invitation to enter.

I’m blogging today about two lovely opportunities for writing, besides this one, that I explored this week.  Both of them are on Steemit and both are extraordinarily accessible to just about anyone.

The first I’ll mention is dedicated to haiku writing.  This has turned into a weekly exercise for me.  This is supposed to be a contest, but I don’t write to win.  I write because the community and the exercise are enjoyable.  Each week we are offered a picture and are asked to write a haiku in response.  This is a link to the contest.  My haiku is on the bottom, in the Comment section (under @agmoore).

Another exercise I’ve engaged in this week is a short story contest, Tell A Story to Me.  Contests abound on Steemit. I rarely win, but I do have fun writing for them.  Tell a Story to Me really captured my imagination in this round.  The prompt was the Golden Record.  My story is done, and I’ll post it on Monday.  The theme is so rich I can see this story developing into a book.  I’ll let you know how that works out 🙂

One thing you’ll notice, as you navigate around the creative writing blogs on Steemit, is that a lot of names reappear on different blogs.  There is a true creative writing community and after a while you get to recognize different writers and their styles.  You also appreciate how writers grow as they practice their craft.

And I don’t know much about cryptocurrency.  Steemit pays rewards in cryptocurrency.  But that is not the attraction for me or for a lot of people who blog there.  Maybe we’ll make money and maybe we won’t.  But in the meantime, we’re having a very rich experience.

I think I’ll try my hand at a haiku here.  This is in response to the picture featured in the contest.  Can’t show it…might be considered plagiarism.  When you read my haiku, you’ll see why I don’t win the contest 🙂

accent accent

Sunlight warms the pier

Wisp of a brown leaf withers

Atop its shadow

by Categories: A. G. Moore, Cryptocurrency, Poetry, Steemit, Writing, Writing expressivelyTags: , , , , Leave a comment

A New Short Story to Check Out

emergency2-1137137_1920

I just published another story on my blog at Steemit.  The story refers to my brother’s brush with death when he was nine years old.  He had severe heart disease. One hospital refused to treat him.  St. Francis Hospital, in Roslyn, New York accepted him as a transfer patient.  The physicians at St. Francis saved his life.

I think my story is a commentary on the fragility of life and on the importance of seeking care at a topnotch medical facility.

I was five when my brother had his crisis.  Everything was clear to me as it unfolded back then.  All of us knew, my siblings and I, that my brother might die.  Although he came out of his acute crisis that first night, he struggled for months to overcome the heart disease that had plagued him for years.

My brother’s struggle became part of my developing psyche.  I don’t think I would be the person I am today without having gone through that early trauma.  While I was just a witness to my brother’s struggle, in a family there is no such thing.  Each person is part of the event.

If you feel like checking out my story on Steemit, please do.  The story doesn’t talk about my brother so much.  It deflects the panic of the moment onto an attending physician, who goes through a life-altering crisis of his own.

Thanks for reading my blog.

 

by Categories: A. G. Moore, Creative Writing, Health, Short Story, Steemit, WritingTags: , , , , Leave a comment

The Shack

the shack masks blog 2018
I created this digital sketch for my book, “Arrows Axes and Scythes”. Although the skills displayed are crude, the picture helps to tell my story and conveys the mood of the day.

I’ve been working on and off on a memoir, “Arrows Axes and Scythes”.  It’s an odd book.  Because it is about my early childhood, many memories are vague, but impressions are not.  As a consequence, I created pictures, using “Paint” and “Gimp”, to help recreate the scenes I recall.  The narrative below explains what is happening in the picture.  My book, in yet again under revision. I hope to be publishing it…soon.

 

As I explained earlier in this book, my first years in school were not successful. Everyone believed I was slow. This assessment persisted into at least November of the third grade, when my teacher wrote a sympathetic note to my mother and lamented my poor performance. Between November and the end of the year something remarkable happened. I learned to read. By June, I had become one of the most advanced readers in the grade.

With this improvement in skills came an insatiable appetite for reading material. There was none at home, until we discovered the shack. This humble building, shown above, was concealed by thick overgrowth in the forest. When we investigated, we found that comic books covered the floor of the ramshackle shelter. We helped ourselves to these, though we did not know who might have proper rights to them.

The shack was my library.

Reading was one of the great gifts of my life. Socially I remained awkward, but peers and teachers showed new respect simply because I seemed to be talented. The conversion from being a dolt to being an excellent student taught me an important lesson. I was the same person before and after my transformation, but people around me changed. Previously, they had punished me for being dull, a circumstance over which I had no control. And then they rewarded me for being bright, a gift I’d done nothing to earn. The folly, the sheer cruelty, of their early behavior enlightened me. It taught me to place little value on the judgment of others. And it allowed me, for the rest of my life, to see worth in people whom others disregard.

by Categories: A. G. Moore, Art, Autobiography, Book Writing, Family Legacy, Memoir, Publishing, Reading, Reading DevelopmentTags: , , , , , 2 Comments