FREE CLASS BAD DAY and 2 poems

Howdy, Campers and Happy Poetry Friday (Irene's hosting today)

I asked UCLA Extension to reschedule my free, 3-hour Writing Poetry for Children ~ an Introductory Course for the Big-Hearted, Brave, & Curious (my title, not necessarily UCLA's)

Why? Because of MASSIVE technical difficulties. 

image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay 

I'm sure none of you have experienced that before, right?

The good news is that everything will be working smoothly on the new date: May 6, 2026 12 noon PST and here's the link to sign-up.

So...lemme give you the back story through two poems I wrote the day it all began and the next day (the first poem is simply a very long list, Hang in there ~ the 2nd poem is very short):

MY BAD DAY by April Halprin Wayland

note: on Friday the 13th, I was at the Tucson Festival of Books, and everything below is true.

Why was it a bad day?

Well, after 21 days of the flu,

I land in Tucson,

check into my hotel,

and decide to find the University's Education Building
where I have to check in on Saturday.

The trolleys, shuttles, and buses in Tucson are free.

Free, my friend!

The hotel clerk tells me where to the catch the trolley.

I wait.

And wait.

Finally, I ask a woman who looks like she might have information because she is wearing a neon green vest

when the trolley's coming, and she says, because she is, indeed, an information woman, that the electrical circuitry of the trolley rails is down.

I ask her what alternative I could use, and she suggests a shuttle, but the shuttle never comes, so I walk a ways and discover a large transport hub with buses coming and going.

I ask the information supervisor which bus I can take to the university. She walks me to the sign that says,"3 West"

"It should be here soon," she says, walking back to the information station.

After about 25 minutes, the bus comes, and I ask the bus driver to take me to the Education Building. He looks puzzled. Not a good sign. He asks for the address. I give it to him.

He looks it up in his map.

"Nope, I don't go there. But lemme go check."

Comes back 15 minutes later. "You need to take the 16 East."

He drives off. I decide not to wait for the 16 East.

I walk back to my room to work on my laptop, but when I open it, my computer says I have two minutes worth of power (even though it's plugged in). Then it offers to figure out what the problem is. The diagnosis: you've come to the end of the battery life of this laptop.

I'm not worried. I can do a lot on my phone. 

Until I look over at my phone...which just died...

...and it's not charging.

When I have just a few minutes of phone left, I text my longtime tech guy, Scott, who figures out which three Target stores near me carry the products I need.

Argh. I've been boycotting Target.

I remind myself that my mantra is "heal yourself first and the world second."

So...

Scott texts me the links of the products I need, but as my phone's power slowly disappears, the links no longer open when I touch them. 

They're just gobble-dee-goop.

So Scott writes the description of each product including Target's item number. 

1 minute of power left. 

I ask a guy from the hotel to take a picture of what Scott just sent me.

Then I realize I can't call a Lyft or Uber because those are apps...

...are on my very dead phone. 

So I go inside and ask the desk clerk to call me a cab. 

She looks at me blankly...doesn't seem to know the meaning of "calling a cab". 

I gently say, "Try Yellow Cab ~ there's usually a Yellow Cab in a town like this." 

She calls Yellow Cab and they ask her to ask me if I have cash.

Realizing that I may need to keep my cash now that I'm without technology, I tell them I don't.

The desk clerk says there's an ATM in our lobby. 

Well, that sounds promising! 

So I stick in my credit card, and it asks me for my password. At first I can't remember it but when I do, it includes the pound sign... 

...and the keyboard on the ATM does not have a pound sign. 

Finally, the hotel says a taxi will come for me.

I wait outside 10 minutes. 20 minutes. 30 minutes. 40 minutes. 50 minutes...

...then walk across the street to the steak house, which has a wonderful selection of food. I splurge, and bring it all back to my hotel room feeling cozy.

I'll watch TV! So I settle down with my yummy feast and turn on the TV, which immediately goes dark as does my entire hotel room 

and, as it turns out, the entire hotel.

This part is kind of fun. My room is six stories up facing the street, and every building surrounding our hotel is dark. The cars below are stuck in a long line, which, I assume, is because the traffic lights aren't working. When I look at the distant freeway, all the cars on the freeway are also stuck in a long line.

So I eat my yummy dinner and decide to go to sleep.

But it's Easter break near a college campus, so every 15 minutes some hell-bent group of kids in loud cars who have probably been drinking make enormous amounts of noise up and down the street directly below me.

And every 15 minutes I wake up. 

I decide I will call the office in the morning to switch rooms...

...until I remember that I am not a morning person. I think better at night.

So I call the hotel and ask if they possibly have another room for me. 

They're very nice. 

They immediately secure me an interior facing room on the 8th floor.

They send up a roller cart and I pack everything up, 

trying to keep it in some kind of order so that it's easy to unpack.

I go to sleep and thus ends my bad day.

poem (c) April Halprin Wayland
============ 
poem for March 14, 2026

THEIR BAD DAY by April Halprin Wayland

A frightened Ukrainian mother with five freezing children huddles in this bus with 65 freezing neighbors, a bleeding Iranian infant, a deported American grandfather, and the body of the dead soldier from Gaza...

all lean over, CC apeer out the window of the bus at my bad day...

and laugh. 

poem (c) April Halprin Wayland

======

My tech guy, Scott was my rescuer. He helped me order a new laptop at Costco (which is a really good company in a world of creepy businesses), helped me order a new phone, and sat by my side every freaking step of the way (of course, the new laptop decided to rearrange everything as in where is that freaking file?)

I am a lucky duck.

I hope to see some of you on May 6th. (And don't be discouraged by the waiting list...students always need to cancel at the last minute, and UCLA lets waiting list folk in as soon as there's an opening.)

Thank you, Irene, for hosting today!

Do you have a poem inside
about a very, very, very bad day? 

It was theraputic to write about mine...

...share yours!

Revising and Jamming and Finding Your Soul Story

 

Recently I attended a fantastical and inspirational hangout sponsored by Kid’s (and YA) Book Revisions Plus, hosted by Emma Dryden, Eileen Robinson and Harold Underdown. With over a hundred years of editorial experience, the three hosted the hangout to introduce the new direction for their collaboration and to gather ideas about what writers want to learn. 

Harold, Emma and Eileen

As I listened, I was very keen on the current changes happening in the business of publishing, as was everyone who attended. Publishing is a business, and now more than ever, it is a very dispiriting one.  As the discussion started, it was a relief to realize that I was not the only one who felt that perhaps my story doesn’t fit in.

As Harold introduced themselves, it became obvious that the prevailing theme of their new collaboration – as it has been through their many years of working together and as friends – that the publishing business is external from the craft, and it is open to very subjective opinions and the whims of trends. That the dreadful truth about publishing is the odds are against us.

What is discussed is a new definition, a new purpose for the revising process.  Revision is about finding your soul story.

I am reminded of a favorite idiom: find your jam.  To connect with something you prefer, desire, love.  To hangout with these three is akin to jamming, much like musicians finding their melody. The discussions focus on technique, improvisation to foster creatively, developing skills, and – most of all -- having fun.

And so it seems, revision is akin to jamming. As Eileen reminded everyone, revision allows the writer to not only come back to yourself but also to stay true to yourself.

As Emma reaffirmed,  writers write. Everything else -- everything external -- is beyond our control. Writing is an internal process. As such, we focus on what we can control: ourselves. Adapt, rethink, refocus. Take chances. Leave your comfort zone. Write something new. Write something different. Submit, and submit again. Persevere. 

Recently I returned to an old manuscript. I began working on this piece with Emma over a decade ago, about the time my book, Girls of Gettysburg (Holiday House, 2014) came out.  (Fun fact: I had worked with Harold on Girls of Gettysburg!) And through the many revisions, and even a couple of rejections, it became obvious that something was missing. O, my then-agent and an editor loved the voice, and they loved the characters, they loved the action and the setting. It was technically a good story, but something else wasn’t quite connecting. Putting that manuscript aside, I began working on something else. (Another fun fact: I worked with Harold and Eileen on this new story!) This new story also went through several revisions. I took more chances with this one and left my comfort zone. I ignored trends. With each revision, I began to sense what had been missing with the old story: myself.

 By the way, that new story, The Barbary Chronicles: The Lost Prince, will be available October 2026, published by Charlesbridge Moves!  You can find pre-order and more information here!

So returning to that old manuscript, I’m revamping and recycling, and taking some big chances. I think I get it now! Fingers crossed.

To cite another favorite idiom: We do our best and leave the rest to the universe.  

 Or, as Neil deGrasse Tyson offers much more eloquently --  and really, who else knows more about how the universe works than the mighty Tyson:

“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.” -- Neil deGrasse Tyson

 In other words, we be jamming now!

-- Bobbi Miller

Recycling, Revising, and Rethinking

Happy first Poetry Friday of National Poetry Month! I share a "recycled" poem at the end of today's post, along with a link to this week's Poetry Friday roundup.

Last Friday, April wrapped up our series of posts on new things the TeachingAuthors have been doing this year. We thought it would be a fun contrast to follow up that topic with ideas related to recycling, revising, or rethinking old projects or activities. 

When I started at Vermont College way back in 1998, I was definitely NOT a fan of revision. One of the most important things I learned in the MFA program was that the real work of writing is in revision, or as faculty member Sharon Darrow used to say, "re-visioning." I came to love revision, and, as a writing teacher, I try to instill that same love in my students. Re-visioning can lead not only to a more powerful piece of writing, but also to publication. 

Let me share two fairly recent examples from my own work, one prose, the other poetry:

In February 2025, I posted here about the publication of my nonfiction story, “A Life-Changing New Year's Tradition,” in Chicken Soup for the Soul Tales of Christmas:101 Stories of Holiday Joy, Love and Gratitude edited by Amy Newmark. However, I didn't mention that the piece was the revision of a story Chicken Soup had rejected two years earlier. I had put the story aside for a while (which I find crucial for gaining perspective) and then reread the piece trying to see it as an editor might. I realized the story needed a tighter focus and a stronger ending. With the help of my critique group, I reworked the story with that in mind, and the new version was accepted.     

In a blog post last October, I accounced the publication of my poem "Thirsty Amaryllis" in the fall 2025 issue of Little Thoughts Press Magazine. That time, I did describe the poem as one "I first wrote years ago, but it wasn't until recently that I revised it to my satisfaction." Prior to the acceptance by Little Thoughts Press, I'd submitted a different draft called "Amaryllis Gift" to another journal. Here's that earlier version:

              Amaryllis Gift

       Four scarlet trumpets
       sing a silent song
       to the sun.

       I stoop to water
       their parched roots.

       In return, they caress 
       my shoulder—
       powdery lips
       blessing me with

       an amaryllis kiss.

  © 2022 Carmela A. Martino. All rights reserved.

While revising, I worked on adding more alliteration, and I played around with stanza breaks and formatting. Here's the version published in Little Thoughts Press. (You should be able to click on the image to enlarge it if needed.)

The changes may seem minor, but it took a lot of rethinking to see new possibilities for this poem. I'm so glad I made the effort! 

How about you? Do you have a project sitting in the proverbial drawer that might be worth recycling, revising, or rethinking? I'd love to read your feedback in the comments. 

When you're done here, don't forget to head over to Matt Forrest Esenwine's Radio, Rhythm, & Rhyme for this week's Poetry Friday roundup! 

Happy writing (and revising)!

Carmela