30 Days of writing prose, day 30.

I made it.

{Whew.}

I’ve written both stories and essays during this last 4 weeks and 2 days. I go to the gym many mornings, and while I’m there, ideas for poems start lining up in my head, but I’ve had to push them aside.

Not, now. Be patient. I’m going to need all of you pretty soon.

My favorite essayist, in terms of the amount of time I spent reading his essays, was the famed science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov. In his essays, he wrote mostly on actual scientific subjects, but he also wrote on a wide variety of other topics, and I always found him engaging, informative, and entertaining. He also made writing essays look easy.

It is not easy, for the record.

In the world of short stories, I’m not sure who my favorite practitioner has been; it may very well be Sherwood Anderson, since both the Winesburg, Ohio collection and the short stories in Death In The Woods and Other Stories are among the most memorable ones I ever read. I don’t know that people read Sherwood Anderson much anymore, but he was brilliant, in my view.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was another author whose short stories I really liked; I can’t figure out if people really read him these days (other than Gatsby) or just make up quotes and attribute them to him. “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”, “The Ice Palace”, and “The Diamond as Big As The Ritz” being the most memorable of his stories to me, but several others also standing out in my memory.

My life being what it is, reading time is hard to come by. In recent years, except for reading books written by fellow bloggers*, I am much more likely to use Audiobooks. But I have bought some books of essays and short stories there, so I am continuing to explore new (to me) authors, albeit slowly.

I have thought, now that I am going back to poetry, about doing some spoken word poetry, but I despise the sound of my own voice.

Truly. Despise.

But, starting tomorrow, it’s back to poetry for me.

Thank heaven.

* Like this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one…