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Identity: ACRONYM

by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

I’m happy to share with you that my poem ‘Acronym’ has been published on Poetry Corner, under theme “Identity: All of Me”. This is my third poem published outside businessinrhyme.com and it’s starting to be exciting 🙂

Kuli Kohli's avatar

8 AM

It’s time for a square outfit

and

Smile No.3

I look further in my agenda:

7 PM

My apron is due,

Pizza Hut perfume.

11 PM

I’m a wild cat

with lipstick, cherry red.

So many roles to play:

Daughter, Mother

Sister, Friend

Colleague, Boss

Student, Teacher

Wife, Lover.

So many acronyms to wear:

Miss, Mrs.

B.Sc., M.Sc

Ph.D.

When it’s time for me?

To wear I?

by Maja S. Todorovic

Maja is an educator and writer, currently living in the sunny Hague. When she is not busy with rhyme, she munches on the bowl of fruit and pretends to do some yoga – or at least that’s how she would like to spend her time.

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9 best practices that can drive your editing process, part II

by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Writer's creative bites

Art-Plotnik

In the first part of this blog post I shared some of my favorite practices that can help you become more efficient when it comes to editing. But there are more things you can do to become even more productive:

  • Track Your Bad Habits.  If you want to be better at your writing and editing, try to notice your typical mistakes and actions. Commonly misusing a word or phrase? Highlight that word or write it on a sticky note somewhere you will see it often. It will remind you not to use it and think of more creative ways to say something. One thing that really works for me is to write myself notes  for anything I need to correct. It’s a learning process in progress and how your writing improves, less things you will want to fix.
  • Try reading it backwards. This is a bit weird, but it helps you become more aware of what you wrote. Begin with the last sentence and move up from there. You can see does your writing builds momentum, some sort of positive tension of expectation: words play with your logic and your focus improves – you can better sense the fluency and rhythm of your writing
  • Don’t be hard on your self. The truth is there is no perfect writing. Your task is to do your best with given time-frame, conditions and knowledge you have. That has to be enough.

Now, my students often used  to ask me: “Can you over-edit your work and how that can harm your writing?” and I think it’s a good question to answer.

Over-editing can prevent you from sharing your knowledge and message with rest of the world. Your writing doesn’t have to be 100% perfect in order to help and inspire someone. When you you are tempted not to publish your work, that’s almost the same as you have erased all of your work – it can’t help anyone if it’s hidden in your computer folders. Instead of torturing yourself  over grammatical perfection, ask yourself does your writing brings any value to your readers? The next thing is, it simply kills your productivity. Over-editing wastes time and energy. It’s tiring, it sucks the inspiration out of your body and mind.

How to recognize you are over-editing?

  • you are endlessly rewriting what you already wrote, without moving on to write something new. That holds the danger of you losing your own writing voice and the purpose of your writing. When you edit your piece too many times, you can end up editing every drop of life out of it. A conversational style is becoming more popular and you shouldn’t shy from it. It helps you connect with your readers and express your won personality through words. Even in business communication you need to stir up your writing and avoid being too stiff;
  • you let fear command your editing and you start to doubt something you previously considered good.
  • you sense something is wrong or missing but you can’t figure it out and that keeps you stuck at one page.

So, what to do about it?

Our habit to over – edit is connected with critical side of our brain that seeks approval and strives for impossible perfectionism. One little trick that might help is to make notes for yourself what you want to accomplish in writing that day – bring intentionality to your writing.

Monitor your self-talk and tell yourself you’ll deal with it later. You might be saying to yourself something like “This is just too boring.” Or “I’m a really bad writer.” The trick is to be conscious of it. Then, answer to yourself in kind and gentle way–

“I’m writing right now the best I can;  I’ll deal with these concerns later.”

This kind of silent promise you give to yourself shuts down that resentful critic and allows more space for creativity.

Many of us spend more time editing than on the actual writing. Editing is a just a tool that helps us improve what we already wrote, but it doesn’t determine are you bad or good writer. What mostly matters is the idea and the purpose behind it.

Now, it’s your turn: do you have any editing tricks to share with us?

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Who’s for cake and some sweet giveaway? :)

by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme

Apparently we have reached our first official anniversary. This week marks a year since Business in Rhyme has been launched and it has been a great experience.

happy birthday business in rhyme

With over 500 posts published, research, interesting articles, new friends…and poetry, it has become a real and inseparable part of my life. I know I haven’t  been very active on the blog lately, but there is a lot of work behind the scenes I’m doing. I’m thinking of getting blog more focused, mostly on creativity and writing oriented (which is where my inspiration is driving me) with more practical, action based advice. It’s also a great opportunity for me to learn, try new things and explore. Nevertheless, there is great content coming your way, I hope you’ll find enjoyable and useful.

As a reminder, here’s how it looked in the beginning:

How poetry can stimulate creativity?

Organize your own creativity workshop

3 lessons that writing haiku taught me about business

Aaaaand (do you hear drums too? :)) as a part of this celebration we’ll be having a small giveaway:

This book:accidental geniusAccidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content by Mark Levy, contains great tips on how to jump-start your writing and creativity. Full of practical prompts, entwined through personal experience of writer and his challenge to come up with new ideas can be yours: all you have to do is to fill in the form bellow (please give your full name and email address so we can contact you) and state in one sentence how this book can benefit you. One that I find most inspirational will be the lucky, new owner of this book, a ‘must have’ tool for any writer or creative. By signing up, you are automatically subscribed to our mailing list (you can opt any time) and in the August issue of the newsletter we will announce the winner (and if you are already subscribed to newsletter – don’t worry, you won’t be ‘double’ signed up 🙂 )

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Thank you in advance for participating, for being part of this community, for reading my scribbles and giving me the opportunity to enjoy your work as well. It’s really precious and unforgettable.

Maja

Poetry improves lives: a guest post Paul Vaughan

by Maja Todorovic, posted in Poetry improves lives: guest post series

This is a guest post, a courtesy of fellow poet and writer Paul Vaughan, where he shares his personal experience on why he writes poetry and how that impacts his life:

Why do I write poetry?

Four years ago I had just gone through a second divorce, started a new job after several years of struggling with depression, was living in temporary lodged accommodation while practicalities were sorted out, and trying to be a dad at arm’s length. This, I thought, was not what I had in mind….

I’d like to say things turned around but they didn’t, not then. I spent three years scraping around being at something of a loss. I no longer knew where I fitted into the world around me. I was not even sure I knew who I was any more.

I had written the odd poem before then, but only on a whim. Friends encouraged me to perhaps do it more as some felt I had a talent for writing, so a year ago I started contributing to a social poetry website, then eventually started writing a blog, “Edge of the Bellcurve”. It’s a ramshackle mix of poems, personal perspectives/philosophy and general musings on poetry itself.

I wanted to write to get at what I feel, rather than what I think I should feel. To say what I mean, rather than what I think I should say. Poetry is an expression of authenticity, widely drawn. If you write poetry there is nowhere to hide, and I wanted that, to be reconciled to myself. My blog is not anonymous because I very much wanted to be visibly attached to what I wrote. I think often I write poems about simple things, about love, loss, sex, death, and the ways that people often get disconnected from themselves, from their truth, out of fear.

The jury is out as far as whether what I write is any good or not, but I would write it anyway. Having started, I can’t stop. I won’t stop. Not everyone “gets it”. I’m pretty sure some people are appalled by it, in fact, and one person accidentally sent me a text intended for someone else declaring that I was a “knob” for writing and publicly posting poetry. On the flip-side, I have also made new connections with other people, and started performing my poetry at open mic evenings, where I can both perform and listen to the poetry of others, which has been great. I see poetry as a “conversational” experience, an interplay with other poets.  I have even a couple of print magazines accept poems for publication and wangled a 10 minute slot on the fringe stage of a local poetry festival. This is all just icing on the cake though, compared to the actual exercise of creativity and the personal freedom that emerges from that.

I really enjoy the idea of sharing and promoting the work and events of others too, so have now set up an online poetry magazine. I am no longer quite sure what I used to do before!

The encouragement of others is fantastically important when you start out, as writing poetry can be an emotional, sometimes anxious process (or at least it sometimes is for me). I cannot really write a piece like this without mentioning my friend Steve “without whom this would not have been possible….”

As a sample poem I wrote this one about the experience of performing open mic poetry, and it’s more of a performance than a “page” poem. I used to do a lot of poetry recital as a youngster, but performing your own poems is a very different experience.
Is this thing working?
I’ve never done this thing before,
taken the mike, addressed the floor…
Hang on – that rhymed!– is this just spiel?
Or is this poetry for real?
Is this thing working?
Is it switched on?
Is there a knack?
Can you still hear me at the back?
You’ve let me come and stand up here,
while you sip your pints of beer,
you’ve got no clue what I might say,
if my words might go astray….
I may have a dark agenda,
here to spread my propaganda.
Or am I here to point the finger.
turn this into Jerry Springer….
my wife is sleeping with that man.
Why trust me?
Give me this space?
I could be crazed and madly pace….
Why?
Why trust anyone to speak,
why listen to a heart that beats,
why open minds to songs and prayers,
why dance the dance or wrestle bears,
why ever haunt that secret place,
why ever flaunt your human face.…
Is this thing working?
Is there a…crack?
Can you still hear me?
Can you still hear me at the back?
Paul lives in Yorkshire, England with his cat Rosie, where he works, writes, recites to anyone daft enough to listen, sometimes scrawls poems on pavements in chalk when he is drunk, and avoids eating custard at all costs. Unless it’s in a vanilla slice. He has recently started an online poetry magazine https://algebraofowls.com/

If you would like to contribute with your guest post visit this link for further information. Further, if you are interested in getting more inspiration for your creativity, sign up for our free bimonthly newsletter.

Getting ready for night out

by Maja Todorovic, posted in My personal rhyme - from time to time

They say it’s much better to use ceramic knife.

It doesn’t oxidize vegetable meat.

She first rolled the beet over the flat counter – to let

the juices stir. Than cut it in half. She needed only

few drops for a blusher.

 

On the shelf in front of her, beside his favorite tea cup she found cinnamon.

Just a pinch of this spicy heat will act as a bronzer.

The index-finger on her right hand she gently dipped in the ashtray –

to give it a soft grayish glimmer to her eyelashes.

 

And the final touch – carmine: dripping souse of red, succulent melted cherries

she mixed with three tears of her own blood she harvested earlier

from her left thumb.

Now, who can resist kissing these pulsating lips?

 

As she was waiting for him to pick her up, in the last minute she adorned her

right hand with this piece of baked clay – perfectly matching her makeup.

Maja S. Todorovic

The hunter

by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

For many moon returns I’ve been collecting words. I made a bed. A garden. A bed, planted garden and mounted house, I made of tough love. My heart is even now. It beats in the rhythm of the street clock, only speeds up 6 minutes before noon when it hears the song of trash trucks.

Day sits on my back like a bride’s veil, light but deceiving in this hour of zenith. Nothing stops. You can’t stop. Each worth is measured by a sixteen year old thumbs made of french fries. Exteriors sublimes, narrow walls of sudden disapproval are in front of me. I’m not alone. There’s many of us. Disgruntled, as I rise above superficial daily, biphasic outcomes, executioner appears with an ax, rope, whip in whoop to behead my intentions.

Non-approbation sprouts fear like a weed in the field of your purple smiles;  it’s a black sheep in the white flock of your thoughts, unwanted spurt hair in a bushy emotions you would like to pluck. They say you need to face you fear. I don’t have time for that. I can smell it from a long distance, I can sense its millihertz vibrations. I sneak, like stealthy snake I eat it raw, fragile, undeveloped and spit out the shells made of careless, nameless sentences.

I look deep in side of  myself: satiated garden groomed, blooms in the color of your eyes.

Maja S. Todorovic

 

14 literary (wordpress based) journals worth following and submitting your work

by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Write, create, innovate!

As my previous list of journals was very well received by you, my dear readers, I thought to do a similar, follow up list, but this time looking at some great magazines here at wordpress.com.

These sites I follow and read as regularly as I can and I hope you’ll find them interesting.

  1. Smoking glue gun: is my absolute favorite. Here I have discovered many new authors I adore like Kelly Boyker. As they say:

we look for the flashy, fresh, feminist, grotesque, avant-garde, minimalist, startling, etc. We accept original unpublished art in all forms: text, sound, video, image, hybrid, etc. we welcome simultaneous submissions.

2. Eunoiareview: I’ve been also following for some time. I like reading their poetry as it is very inspirational. In their own words:

It‘s an online literary journal committed to sharing the fruits of ‘beautiful thinking’. Each day, we publish two new pieces of writing for your reading pleasure. We believe that Eunoia Review can and should be a home for all sorts of writing, and we welcome submissions from writers of all ages and backgrounds.

3. Oddball magazine: If you like something different, odd (like me) that this is the place for you. Check it out here.

4. Algebra of owls: They have published some great stuff from our fellow bloggers/poets and it is becoming a place where I frequently stop by to see what’s new. Really like it.

5. Odd magazine: it’s all about exploring and fulfilling your mind with different experiences:

Odd is a place where people are coming for their weekly slice of happiness.”

definitely worth following and reading on a regular basis.

6. Red wolf journal: has usually a defined topic and you should submit your poems accordingly. More about it you can learn here.

7. Clear poetry is a fairly new magazine – focusing on and encouraging contemporary poetry. I liked many of the poems I read there and I highly recommended for regular visit as a sort of inspiration or for submitting your own work.

8.The Rising Phoenix Review is a monthly online zine dedicated to publishing poetry focused on the working class and other marginalized groups:

We believe in the transformative power of poetry, and our mission is to publish writing that actively engages the social issues of our time.

The Review was created by Rising Phoenix Press, an independent publisher located in Boston, Massachusetts.

9. Subsynchronous Press – Small Press Publisher of High-Caliber Poetry, they offer opportunities for two magazines to publish your work. My preference goes to Veil: Journal of Darker musings, dealing with more humorous and darker themes. Nevertheless, check them out as you might find something suitable for you.

  1. The Stare’s net:

 We are open to submissions of poems in many styles, with a general theme of political issues, social justice, equality and diversity. We don’t want to be a platform for entrenched positions or a place where people play out tired political scripts; the poems we relish:

– surprise us

– make us think in new ways

– strive to reconnect politics in its broadest sense with people

– challenge our understandings of left and right

– engage with the difficulty of mass society

– imagine how society should run and be run

– offer hope

11. A swift exit is something completely new to me. At the moment they are open and accepting poems for their first volume of poetry.

12. Sicklitmagazine is also fairly new, not afraid to dig into different taboo topics. They accept poetry, fiction and flash fiction. Check here their guidelines.

13. Silver birch press is not a journal, but rather a blog of a small press publisher, based in LA. They publish some great stuff and occasionally there will be a call for submissions for anthologies and ext.

14. The Fem is more dealing with feminist writing and issues. They are oriented towards writing that speaks to experience (as they state it). Often you will come across themes like sex, gender, race, ability, and sexuality. I’ve enjoyed many good poems here, so give them a visit if you interested in mentioned topics.

I hope you’ll enjoy browsing these blogs/journals just as I do 🙂

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A lesson

by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

I can touch you.

I can kiss you

or

I can scratch your face.

 

I can punch you in the stomach

or

I can swing you in my arms

like a little baby.

You won’t feel it.

You are not here.

Numbed, you drift, float.

Just pale flesh sits across me, trapped in a body

without attention, goal, motivation, idea

in temptation to give up.

 

I can see through you.

I see a desert, deserted of anything human.

Just yellow sand and auburn sky, in vast emptiness

that merge in distance

without horizon, just one dot where time and space collapse.

 

There are winds, your thoughts, constantly try to

build a new landscape, sand dunes, your new realities.

Still, nothing changes. The form might be different, the essence is the same.

You throw sand into my eyes to blur my vision, yet I manage to see.

 

I see through you.

I learned from you.

However we try,

we can be surrounded by thousand people and still be lonely.

And it hurts like hell.

Afterwards.. you are just stoned.

 

Maja S.. Todorovic