On my "Write your Life!" blog, I've extended a challenge to write one short poem (4-12 lines) each day during March. The poetic form is up to you. My choice is the rictameter (nine lines with the syllable pattern 2,4,6,8,10,8,6,4,2 and identical first and last lines). It's supposed to be in a diamond-shaped pattern, but I haven't figured out how to do that here. Anyway, here is my first poem for the month:

The Month Begins

March first.
Spring starts this month.
No flowers, no birds yet,
At least not in Chicago where
Winter lingers long past dreams of new joys.
Still, rays of hope peek through dark clouds.
Through snow or rain or gloom
We write, we dream
March first.

Go to http://www.seniormemoirs.blogspot.com to read more.

Copyright 2008 by Marlys Marshall Styne

How about six-word memoirs? They are featured in a new book, Not Quite What I was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. Read more about it in my blog,"Write your Life!"

Why not try writing your own six-word memoir? Meanwhile, here's mine:

Seventy-five, wrinkled, writing, still enjoying life!

I can't blame Paul for taking a new, apparently interesting and time-consuming job, but I regret that we, the readers, have not done a better job of keeping the site going.

Will anyone join me in contributing once in a while? One contribution per week from each of us would be great!

Meanwhile, here is a reprint from my blog, "Never too Late!":

Amazon Shorts: A Cure for the Winter Doldrums?

Yesterday, I found myself with nothing I wanted to do, nothing I was especially interested in reading, nothing I wanted to watch on TV. Notice that I used the words "wanted to do": I have quite a collection of books to read, plenty of miond-numbing tasks awaiting me, and stores within walking distance--and the sidewalks even appear to be reasonably clear after the recent snows. I am not exactly housebound.

Anyway, I wanted something new and different. So what did I do? I downloaded five Amazon Shorts, and read and wrote customer reviews of two of them. Never heard of Amazon Shorts? I admit that (to my surprise) I've written two myself and had them accepted recently, but this wasn't about my stories. It was about shorrt, quick, and easy immediate gratification. At 49 cents each, that's only $2.45 on my credit card. Each story is about 2,000 to 10,000 words in length, easily read on screen or printed out.

I selected stories from the "Literature and Fiction" group, "Women's Fiction" division. That's where my stories reside, so I cllicked on and read about other stories that appeared to deal with older women, their lives and their problems.

So far, I've read and written very short customer reviews of "Am I Wife or Daughter?" by Brenda Hill and "Merry Christmas, Miss Budge!" by Daphne C. Simkins. I enjoyed both stories. Do they rank with the masterpieces we're all familiar with? Not really, but for enjoyable reading on a cold Saturday afternoon, they were great. I look forward to reading the others today; they now reside on my computer as PDF files.

There are thousands of Amazon Shorts available, in many different genres and categories, from Business and Investing to Cooking, Food, and Wine to Religion, from Mystery to Romance to Science Fiction. You're sure to find something interesting. Give it a try, and tell me what you think.

Copyright 2008 by Marlys Marshall Styne

Update: There seem to be some technical difficulties with the forums. I'm trying to find out what's wrong and fix it at the moment. I'll post an update once it's working properly.

I have resurrected our forum section for anyone to join in on discussions. You'll see a link to the discussions at the top, just beneath the logo.

There's a message board for general discussions, another for writing, and a couple of other miscellaneous sections.