Category: Creative Musings

1.3 … Feel Loved

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el (1)

LOVE LESSONS

1.3 … Feel Loved

30 around the corner
and the book of my loves
is still full of empty pages
and crossed out names,
unwritten passions,
and dreams unfulfilled.
I’ve learned to
be okay with the lonely,
but it doesn’t change
that the only
thing I want to do
is feel loved like
the sun loves the moon.

⚬⧝⚬

For more from this collection, visit

elluminations, vol. 1
LOVE LESSONS

Click here to learn more about elluminations. This poem is also available on Medium.

Want to read more poetry?
Add Unraveling Light on…

Goodreads

Buy the book on…

Barnes & Noble | Amazon | IndieBound

(Featured Photo by Altınay Dinç on Unsplash)

(elluminations © 2018 Elayna Mae Darcy)

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New Poems & News

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Guess who’s dropping a new poetry collection this week? 👀

Yep, it me.

As some of you might recall a few months back, I decided to start a new series called elluminations, which I originally planned to release quarterly through Patreon, while the first volume was made available for free.

Well friends, there’s been a change of plans, and this post is Part 1 of 2 explaining why. (Keep an eye out around mid October for the exciting surprise that is Part 2. 😉)

Say-No-to-Spoilers-Doctor-Who
Sooooon…

Part one of said change of plans is that I have decided to make elluminations vol. 1 available for free as well, and I will be releasing the whole collection over the next two weeks via this blog, Medium, and my Instagram page. This new collection is a bit shorter than vol. 0, and is called Love Lessons. The poems included in it are about personal experiences and struggles I’ve had in both finding love, and learning to love myself more. If you read the Love section in Unraveling Light, these poems serve as a nice companion to that.

The first poem in this collection, Seasons, will be released this evening here on Elayna Musings first, and then you can find it elsewhere on the internet tonight!

9BbJ
Huzzah for poetry!

However! As excited as I am to announce this new set of poems, I do have one last part to this update, and that is that after a lot of deliberation over the summer, I’ve decided to phase out my Patreon page. Getting people to subscribe there has been a challenge, and while the people at Patreon are seriously creating something amazing for artists like myself, it just doesn’t seem to be the right fit for me. I’ll be posting an announcement over on there to let patrons know that as of October, that page will be inactive.

October is going to be a big month though, for while I am phasing out Patreon, I do have something new coming for y’all to take it’s place. Till then, I’ll be sharing the new elluminations poems, and finishing up the sending out of the Kickstarter perks for Unraveling Light. (Which if you haven’t ordered one yet, you get get your copy here, here, or here!) Thanks as always friends. Looking forward to sharing more stories with you soon! 😊

Like poetry?
Add Unraveling Light on…

Goodreads

Or buy the book on…

Barnes & Noble | Amazon | IndieBound

(Featured Photo by Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash)

Create What Awakens You

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Creative advice abounds in today’s world of everyone-has-a-hot-take. We all have different ways that work for us, different things that inspire us and compel us to make stuff. This however isn’t a self-help article to tell you how to harness that magic for yourself. This is simply me, musing about how my imagination ignites, because it’s on my mind and I have to shake it out somehow. If it manages to spark something in you, well than all the better.

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
—Maya Angelou

This past year is when I began actively writing poetry. I say actively because truth be told, my poems prior to the last year and some change were all accidental. They were sporadic moments when the spirit moved me to write something down. Then I’d tuck it away, not to be seen until months later when I was moved by something new. But last summer, I did my first poetry reading event, and within me that night, something shifted.

Whether it was the way people responded to my words, the confidence I felt in delivering said words, or something different entirely, I cannot say. All I know is that night, I felt awakened. A new candle was lit within me, and I wanted nothing more in those moments than to fan this new flame of it into something bright and strong and beautiful.

Writing poetry became a more frequent occurrence. The poems got better with each one, and expanded from internal struggles that I didn’t feel I could talk to anyone about, to bigger world issues that I wished more people would be talking about. I started getting more funky and creative with them, mixing my styles and my rhymes and my rhythms. When I was writing poetry as opposed to my usual YA sci-fi work,which always feels like it must be so carefully written, there was a certain freedom and a new-ness that made me feel more alive and present than I had in a long while.

By the time I started sorting these new poems into an actual collection, I found myself wishing I had an artist who would be willing to do illustrations for it. I thought of all the artists I knew, but then thought of the empty-ness of my wallet. As someone who grew up with an artist for a sister, I know the value in their work, and didn’t want to ask someone to do it for free.

Around the same time, I’d entered a giveaway by an author I really admire, and actually won. Included in the prizes was a cool beanie, a bookmark, a pair of sweet headphones, and a sketch book, one that has the words ART HEALS painted on the cover…

Another new something had awakened. Another candle was lit.

Slowly, I started to find my medium. Sketchy ink doodles and abstract-y watercolors. I found a healing and a transcendence and a joy in making the art to accompany my poetry. It made them feel full, each work of art like the period to the sentence of each poem — something to complete them and make them whole. I was reminded of the Greek myth in which Zeus was said to have cut humankind in half, leaving each of us to spend our lives searching the soul we were split from. This fusion of poems and art pieces was like the two spirits of my creativity finding one another again.

The words informed the art, and the art deepened the meaning of the words. The further into my creative consciousness I ventured, the more myself I feel I became.

The original idea for this article came from my mulling over the phrase, “write what you know”. It is always the one creative piece of advice I have tried to follow, probably just because it is the set of advice most often heard. But as of late I have realized that writing what I know is only one small piece to the puzzle of being a creator. My poems and my paintings, my sketches and my science fictions, my blog posts and my Instagram stories — all of these things, different from one another though they may be, are part of who I am and what I create. Each of them ignites something different within me. Every form of art a single flame in my artistic bonfire.

When I walk through daily life, working a day job just to make it, I feel like I cannot wait to just lay down and go to sleep. But when I am creating, writing, drawing, and living the life that feels like I belong to it as much as it belongs to me, I am awakened.

I hope that you find the spark that awakens you, and I hope that you nurture that flame into a blaze that only you can make.


Cover Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

Fresh Start

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It’s days like today where the subtitle for my blog (Capturing Life’s Chapters) feels particularly fitting. After writing yesterday about my end of an era with working for MuggleNet, today feels like a bright new beginning, with lots of exciting things ahead.

Now that I will have more time, I have big plans to make Elayna Musings my main focus. What with Unraveling Light on the way, pending queries out there for They Are the Last, and a bunch of bubbling new ideas, the next few months look to be unreal levels of exciting. So I thought to kick things off, I’d share an update, detailing all the awesomesauce things y’all have to look forward to in the next few months. Let’s get to it.

They Are the Last

As I’ve been working on the poetry, and also waiting to hear back on my first major round of query letters, this project has been on a bit of a hiatus. I’ve got big plans for working on what will be the third draft this summer, before sending out more queries this fall. Just know that even though I haven’t been talking about it as much online, does NOT mean it has gone anywhere. Trust friends, I’m doing my best to get Piper’s adventures into your hands ASAP.

Unraveling Light

As of this writing, the manuscript is in the hands of my editor. (GOSH DOES IT FEEL COOL TO TYPE THAT PHRASE) She is hard at work doing final edits, as I’m over here finalizing the art work and making perks. Currently, we’re still on schedule to release it June 26th, 2018, but keep your eyes on this space for any updates should that need to change! And while you’re waiting, feel free to add the book to your shelves on Goodreads! *faints in disbelief over having a book on Goodreads*

Patreon

This is something I have always regretted not having more time for, because so many of the volunteer things I was doing on the side took up my every extra hour. But now that I’m re-centering on my own creative works, I’m psyched to announce I have done a 100% overhaul of my Patreon page, including a new about section, rewards, and goals. Y’all know well enough by now that being a full time writer and making you more stuff is the dream, so if you have $1 a month to spare and want to help make that happen, head on over. It is in conjunction with Patreon that I am absolutely bursting to tell you about another new project I am launching as of today.

elluminations

Bringing Unraveling Light to life with you all has been one long, magical dream, and it has made me realize how much I desperately love writing poetry. Having to keep that book down to just poems that suited the themes became harder and harder as new poems and ideas poured out of me. But to publish full collections of them with art included on a frequent basis would be something that would burn me out faster than you could blink. However, Patreon’s monthly subscription model has birthed an idea for how I can share my poems with you all on a more regular basis, without fizzling out.

Introducing elluminations. 

elluminations is going to be a quarterly chapbook that I plan to put together for you all so that when I don’t have a major release coming out, you still can have new, original content from me. In keeping with the theme of Unraveling Light, I felt elluminations was the perfect name, because not only is it a nod to my first published collection AND my own name, but it also hearkens back to illuminated manuscripts of medieval texts, in which monks painted elaborate designs around their letters and pages.

A chapbook, for the uninitiated, is just a shorter collection of poems by a single author, so you can expect that each one will contain anywhere between 10 and 30 new poems for you. Since monthly would be too hectic of a turnaround, but one a year would be too few, I’ve decided I will release a new volume each season. (So for the rest of this year that means you can expect one in June, September, and December!) Each volume will be named by a unifying theme to tie these little collections together. I already have some ideas brewing about the first one, which I’m hoping to release right around the same time as Unraveling Light this June.

But HERE’S THE REAL EXCITING PART! These past few weeks, as things with Unraveling Light have been flourishing, I’ve managed to put together a Volume 0 which will be free and available to the public, both here on my blog and on Medium, so that you can get a taste of what to expect from future editions!

Volume 0 is titled Independent, and the theme deals with the journey I found myself on as I struggled through the loss of my parents. A rough topic to start on I know, but this mini collection (which features 17 poems in all) is very close to my heart. And if you end up enjoying what you read, you can hit up Patreon to become a supporter, so that you’ll get all the future volumes delivered to you once they’re done! (So for $5 a month, you get a subscription to elluminations plus a bunch of other cool stuff!) I am so, so excited to get this project started.

—

So that about wraps things up for now! As I said a dozen times in this post, I am THRILLED to finally be dedicating my time to writing and creating original things for you. 2018 really is shaping up to be one helluva creative year, and honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. ^_^

 

 

Cover photo by unsplash-logoDebby Hudson

 

These Poems Three

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Happy National Haiku Day, friends! Here are some new ones I recently shared to my new @elaynamusings Instagram account, in honor of this epic day honoring one of my favorite poetic forms.

 

deep down within you
is a brilliant, shining star
let its light guide you…

 

though your heart may bleed
still, it beats inside of you
remember your strength

 

kindness to yourself
is far greater than riches
self-love outweighs gold

For more of my poetry, check out Unraveling Light, now funding on Kickstarter!

The Convention Kid

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Two years ago yesterday, the very first episode of SpeakBeasty debuted, and thus began one of the most remarkable creative endeavors of my life. Since then, we’ve hosted live shows at MISTI-Con and New York Comic Con, we’ve covered the red carpet premiere of the first Fantastic Beasts film, we’ve had one of the show’s four main actors as a guest on the show, and (this one is my favorite) we’ve gotten to meet some of our incredible listeners IRL, and hear their stories about how our show touched their lives or made them smile on a bad day. There have certainly been struggles and conflicts and moments of frustration, but all of them have been outweighed by the staggering amount of good things to come of this show. From professional milestones to profound friendships, it’s been an incredible ride, and we still have so much yet before us with the release of the next four films.

But as SpeaBeasty continues on (our 52nd episode is due out on New Year’s Eve) I’m today starting on a new adventure, and launching my first solo podcast—a new show called The Convention Kid. 

The Convention Kid was conceived out of a culmination of moments, the first being that my roommate asked me if I’d ever considerered reviewing or talking about the conventions that I go to. I said I wasn’t really sure how I would, but the idea was inception-ed in the back of my brain. The next part, was going to PodCon, which was one of the best weekends I’ve had in a long time. The con was so wonderful and pure and full of infectious creative energy, and all the panels left me with new ideas for new shows I could create. And then, it hit me. A memory from childhood. A sign that maybe this was always where I was meant to end up. Something that goes back to the literal day I was born.

Folks, I was literally born during a convention.

Backstory time—my grandfather was a firefighter chief for years, and so every year in the end of September, my family attended the Pennsylvania State Fireman’s convention. Mind, this was no comic con sort of event like the ones I attend now, but it was still a convention. And so while all my family’s friends were off at the event, my mom was in the hospital having me, racking up a crazy phone bill calling everyone from the convention who wanted to hear how she and brand-new-me were doing. And so each year, when we went to the convention, my mom’s friends would see me and say, “Hey, it’s the convention kid!”.

Apparently, I’ve always been who I was supposed to be.

And so thanks to PodCon, these ideas coalesced into this pilot, called A Rising Tide, which comes from a quote that the hosts of the Spirits podcast said at PodCon that really stuck with me in a big way. The phrase was…

A rising tide raises all ships.

It’s a beautiful phrase, that I think embodies how artists and creators should approach their work. It reminds me that when we uplift others, we uplift ourselves as well, and then together achieve more than any of us could have achieved alone. It made me want to start this new show, so that people like me who love cons and fandom can bond together over our geekiness.

I’m really psyched to start this new journey, and I hope you’ll join me along the way. And if you really like this first episode, definitely consider popping over to the shiny new Patreon page for The Convention Kid, where for anywhere from $1 to $10 a month, you can support the show so I can keep making more episodes and deliver you an even better show.

So now to the reason we’re here, I’m proud to present Episode 1 of The Convention Kid. I hope you enjoy the show.

Red, White, and Blood

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This is a poem I wrote in response to the disgusting display of white supremacy that took place at the Unite the Right event this past weekend in Charlottesville, VA.

Red, White, and Blood

an original poem by Elayna Mae Darcy

 

The saddest truth
is that we were never better,
and your “greatness”
was a myth and a lie.
Fed to the knowledge-hungry
minds of our children
so often and so young,
that before we even knew it,
we were addicts to the lie
of a free country.

We believed it was
one built on
promise,
togetherness,
and equality.

You branded it
onto our brains
when you forced us to
stand and pledge allegiance
to a flag made of blood.

Red blood,
for the lives lost.
The people you slaughtered
to build your picket fences.

Blue blood
is woven as the background
to the stars, because you believed
your money mattered more
than lives.

White blood,
for your bigots
who died to “protect”
a culture that believed
that those who were
black brown or other
deserved to be ripped
from their mothers
to serve you.

As a child,
I pledged to your
red, white, and blue blood,
not knowing the truth.

I thought that the
star spangled colors
stood for something good.

I wish I had known it was lies.

But when I look to
the truth with eyes
wide open, I see…

This place was never free.

So I stand with the people
who don’t look like me.
I try every day,
to shut up and listen
to their truth,
their history—
the honesty
classrooms kept from me.

I cannot change
what’s been done,
but I can help change
what’s to come,
with a mind that’s open,
and with a heart
that beats as one.

—

(Cover photo by Filip Bunkens)

Tiny Stories

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In honor of National Haiku Poetry Day, I decided to pen a few. Here are seven original haiku poems from me to you to celebrate what honestly might be my favorite kind of poetry. I love that they force one to say so much with so little. Hope you enjoy them!

—

Why I Write
Stories in my blood
Words in my bones, escaping
through my fingertips

—

What I See
Skyline lights dancing
Teeming life of the city
Conscious mosaic

—

Do You Know?
Your smile in my mind
Things unsaid are lingering
Heart facing the wall

—

Liquid Motivation
Mocha and ideas
A cup of inspiration
Meaningful sugar

—

To My Story
Always in my mind
Adventure won’t let me go
This story will live

—

What’s Expected
The desk holds me tight
An embrace I can’t escape
I’m suffocating

—

Sundown
God’s finger paintings
Roses on fire, blazing sky
Darkness trails behind…