It's summer!

School ended Wednesday (WOOHOO!) and it's summer! That means lost of sleeping late, lots of movies, and lots of writing and reading! In just three or four days I've already written about 4000 words in my book - getting really close to the end! I have to say, I'm a bit scared of finishing since then I have to do my least favorite stage -- revising -- but at the same time, I've only gotten that "holy crap I finished!" feeling once before, and it was exhilarating. I'm definitely looking forward to THAT!

So I'm looking to enter a 100 word contest. I wrote two poems for it. Trust me, they're both 100 words. Which is better? Can you give me a reason why? Any suggestions?

POEM ONE
I face front and wince at the spotlight.
“I’m here for Everyman One.”
A pause; excruciating wait.
“Show us what you got,” comes The Voice from the dark.
Inhale.
I begin small, cries and lullabies.
School days and take me out to the ball game.
Pomp and circumstance twice separated by a beat of four.
Heigh ho Heigh ho
And to a wedding march I go
Beat Beat And. . .
Cries and lullabies
School days repeat
Slowly creeping in my petty pace from tomorrow to tomorrow
To a funereal march.
Exhale.
The Voice speaks once more.
“We’ll let you know.”

POEM TWO
One second is all it takes.
Move forward and nothing is the same.
Back a tick and the status quo is a rock.
The wave rushes from behind us
Pushing through that moment and inexorably to the next.
But what if we could fight the tide, step back over the line we’ve crossed despite the pounding rush?
If we could step back
Rewind to before the ball left our hand
Or the word left our lips
Or the bullet left the gun
Or the match slipped from our fingers
Would we even know that we had to do it differently?

Ten things

Just some points of thought:

1)I'm so ready for school to be done. For so many reasons.

2)Ragtime doesn't work if Sarah can't sing.

3) I think I may have pushed a limit in my novel. My goal was to turn a sympathetic character "evil" - trouble is she's a 12 year old girl and I'm wondering now if I pushed what "evil" is too far. I guess I'll have to wait and see where the book is going and possibly pull it back (it is meant to be middle grade fiction)some. Of course, if the stakes aren't high enough, the whole thing becomes pointless. I feel like I'm getting close to the climax of the book (I'm at 33,000 words of a projected 50-60)so I need to figure out how to play this just right...

4) Ipod shuffle is like the debate between free will and predestination. Caitie and I believe the shuffle pre-determines your playlist -- setting it in place when you start the list. Will Apple create a list that does have free will and can adjust as you skip songs? If so, is this just another frightening step toward real AI? Where will it end??

5)Unless you're Caitie, Jess, or Dan I can go to sleep tonight relatively sure I saw a movie this weekend you have never seen and never will: it was called "House" and it was Japanese and it was really really weird. Really weird.

6) As I'm typing this we have on the special about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studios. I want to go to there.

7) I already miss Lost.

8) When did the MTV Movie Awards become "The Twilight Zone?"

9)I'm going to a baseball game with my father tomorrow night for the first time in my life. This is very surprising to me. Not that we've never gone, but that we are at all as neither of us really care about baseball.

10) Did I mention I can't wait until school is over? I think I did. Going back in September is going to be damn near impossible. Sigh.