what's in a name?...

When I first titled this space "Rough Draft" it was because I felt like none of my writing was ever really finished - especially the poems. OMG! The poems! I would start one and decide to perform it before it was done and have to improvise the ending on stage. Or I would be commissioned (and by "commissioned", for the most part, I mean "asked very nicely") to write and perform a piece by a certain date and would not get around to the writing of it until...oh...the day of. And then there was this possessed scribbling that took place all the way until I was being introduced and called to the stage (at which point I'd try to pull a poignant ending from heaven knows where, or I would be improvising the ending...again). The good thing about this? It kept me on my toes. The bad thing? At later instances, folks would ask me to "do that poem", and I'd have to 1) break the news that parts of it were freestyle, so this may be a little different, sorry 2) start the poem and hope that i could end it the same way 3) try to convince them to listen to a different poem I've been working on - one with a middle and end. Another bad thing was that, despite the good bits I'd actually created and the typically positive response from the listeners, I always felt I was short-changing my audience. That is a sucky feeling.

What? Huh? What was I saying? Oh yes, the title...

The problem with calling this space "Rough Draft" is that life, unlike art, cannot be revised or done over. (Thankfully, like my poems, it can be improvised from time to time. Yes!) Yes, we can learn from the past as we go forward, but "Rough Draft" became misleading and mocking to me. This. Is. Life. I'm not going to get even one day back by being timid - by living in pencil. Every action is permanent, and I'd better make it count. So I've landed, for the time being on "Words, Words, Words" because, no matter what, that will always be an accurate description. *And I like Shakespeare. Whaddaya gonna do?