Time to Master Creative Writing

On By NahumIn Creative WritingLeave a comment

It has been some time since I have written here on this blog about my personal circumstances in the last couple of years.  Firstly, I moved from the manic city of Sydney to a place near the sleepy Victorian town of Myrtleford.  It has been a timely change of pace for my family and I, as it allows us to enjoy the outdoors sans crowded streets and heavy traffic.  These days I work as a forklift driver, which I enjoy since it’s a job that doesn’t require much thinking.  (Thinking, I find, is over-rated!).  

I recently commenced a Master of Creative writing in order too … master creative writing.  Although I have been writing poetry for the last 8 years, I have decided to switch gears and develop my craft in writing stories.  Why?  Because when I was a teenager, I experienced some success writing short stories;* I vividly remember my Year 12 English teacher being so pleased with my work that he copied my story and handed it out to my fellow students as an example of how to write in the short story form. 

When I left school, I buried this gift because I was told that I ‘had’ to earn money, pay bills, get married, and have children.  Now that I have done (and am doing) these things, and since my daughters are in their late ‘teens, I am now pursuing writing.  I love using my imagination.  Yet I also feel like I am at a stage in my life where I have the ability to write better fiction than before because I have matured.  I’ve calmed down a lot since I was a ‘teen; I understand myself and life a lot more, and a part of this has been confronting ugly truths about myself and the world.  It’s also a better time because I have experienced so many things that I can easily turn into decent works of fiction.

I may share here what I write, and maybe not.  Right now I am enjoying the ride 🙂

 

* My favourite short story is The Necklace by author Guy de Maupassant.  Have a read of it: the ending will have you stumped.

Find a Path or Make a Way (Poem)

On By NahumIn Nahum's PoetryLeave a comment

In May of this year I visited Tasmania for a holiday and I happened to drive from Strahan on the island’s western coast to Hobart on the east.  Not far out of Strahan, I passed through old Queenstown, a place that is both historical and onerous in one: over 100 years ago it was used for copper mining, and a result of this commercial activity was that it released elements into the atmosphere – such as acid – that eventually killed all the luscious forest in the area.  In time, the place looked like a moonscape, and has become synonymous with harsh survival.  I visited its railway station, which had an interesting sign about overcoming the odds in life, which is what concerns the following verse that I wrote; it is 172 word rondeaux redoublé.  I hope this poem gets you thinking too 🙂

Poetry Writing Experiment (04/2026)

On By NahumIn Experimental Poetry, Nahum's PoetryLeave a comment

The other day I attempted a poetry writing experiment where I wrote some verse based off ‘random’ phrases that I had found in various sources.  Initially, I compiled a list of 40 of them but then I whittled them down to 15, which you can see below.  The statements come from a broad cross-section of sources: one sentence is from the well-known poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge; another is from the novel Robinson Crusoe.  Some are from an Australian lifestyle magazine, one is from a Christian devotional, another is from a recipe book for diabetics, and some are from the sports section of a newspaper.  The quotations that I selected are as follows:

  • Anise hyssop
  • Mistletoe bird
  • The Pyjama Federation
  • Navicular hotspot
  • Muscle twitching
  • Simmering casserole of commerce.
  • “The naked hulk alongside came”.
  • Peering into the collapsed crevasse.
  • “Today we love what tomorrow we’ll hate”.
  • “None of the bomb damage was wasted”.
  • A full account of our calamity was sent.
  • So, how are your roots doing?
  • Don’t go wasting snowstorms.
  • The perfect way to embellish corners.
  • Desert is the new black.

I molded and adapted the statements to suit the poem that I was writing and what follows is what I eventually came up with; it’s cryptic and ambiguous, but it was fun to write.  The first two stanzas sound more serious but the last was more playful, one where I was able to find a place for the words “Pyjama Federation”.  It’s 138 words in length and was written in rhyming couplets of (mostly) hendecasyllables, where each line has 11 syllables.  Enjoy.