Brandiwyn🎶 v.2026, also known as Michelle Tuesday, is a musician, educator and writer hailing from Columbus, Ohio.
La Bene Vita
The (Tentative*) Topic Rotation Self Sundays: Personal blogging days about family, leisure, work, and health. May be boring.
Music Mondays: Commentary, articles, and links highlighting music, theory, and ed topics.
Writing Wednesdays: Discussion on the art and business of writing. "Invalid Item" Thursdays: A weekly original short story submission.
Friday Reviews**: Every Friday, I will review a minimum of one short story on WDC.
* I reserve the right to change the topic of the day at any time, at least until I acquire a million followers and gain official "influencer" status, at which point I shall be more consistent in order to meet the expectations of my adoring public.
** I can only commit to one review per week. If you would like your short story to be in my reviewing queue, please send me a WDC review request. Checkout my public reviews toget a sense of what to expect.
I love a good turn of phrase, and even novels have poetic pieces within them. I'm excited to hear you're getting into poetry and hope we can explore that more.
Anni Pon- having to plan or edit poetry seems a little antithetical to it's nature.
This is an excellent point, and something I didn't think of. I also agree with your other comments.
I agree with what you've said about poetry. It's very easy to write a poem, just about anyone can do it. But it's hard to do it well. Most people have an innate sense of story telling, so amateur prose usually isn't as cringe. A lot of people seem to think that if you just add line breaks to your current stream of consciousness, or put together a series of lines that rhyme, that's a poem. But poetry has rules -- it requires meter and imagery and abstraction. It should have layers. Those things don't usually come naturally; they require intentional effort and planning. However, most people have the impression you can just sit down and poetry will flow out of you without even trying or having to edit after. In fact, having to plan or edit poetry seems a little antithetical to it's nature.
To be fair, mediocre poetry still serves a purpose. It's writing practice, catharsis, bonding, etc. I've definitely seen some on here that have a lot of potential, as well as some really good "amateur" poetry.
Charlèaux - I agree and love WDC too! I've personally posted a lot of less-than-brilliant works of all varieties and learned from feedback. I actually feel like reviewing the work of others teaches me just as much, if not more. Nineteen years is a lot of learning! I should have a PhD by now. I certainly don't mean to discourage anyone, beginner or otherwise. It's just how I learned to recognize good poetry and what makes it good, that ability to compare/contrast. I appreciate the variety that allowed me to learn. So I'm not saying don't post your beginner poetry.
Robert Waltz- To your point that sometimes authors just need the catharsis of writing the words, I'm with you - if I feel like it's more intended as a personal journaling experience, I don't review it. On a related note, I never really circled back about reviewing poetry as a "quick read" to meet reviewing goals. Over the years, as I've become better at noticing the layers in brilliant poetry, it can actually take much longer to read, digest, analyze, and properly review. And good point about imagery being a key element of poetry.
One thing I look for in poetry is concrete imagery. If you're just writing about your feelings, even if it rhymes and has meter, it's not what I'd call good poetry. And yes, I'm including my own efforts in that.
But.
Writing it can be a kind of release for the writer, and I can understand that. Reviewing such poetry is difficult, at least for me, especially when I can tell it's heartfelt and very personal. To be perfectly honest, most of the time, I skip such efforts when I'm on a reviewing kick.
I call such work "angsta rap," because it's all angst, and lots of words that don't really communicate anything new.
One of the most important writing lessons I've learned here is that, paradoxically, the more specific you are in your writing, the more relatable it can be. Writing something like "My parents never understood me" is boring; instead, if you wrote something like "They gave me a Playstation when I wanted an Xbox" is closer to the right track, in my opinion. This is especially important in comedy, I think, but it's also applicable to other genres.
A lot of poems on WdC leave something to be desired. So does a lot of the fiction, or really any form of writing on here.
I think the reason for that is because this is not a publishing company. This is a website for writers to share their work—first drafts, unpolished... And I think that's one of the best things of WdC.
Like you said, that's not to say that these pieces are all inherently bad. It just means that this community has become a safe space for people to not only share their finished, edited, and perfect work, but it's also a space to share those midnight thoughts, random poems that hold no meaning, or maybe a piece that they know they'll never go back to edit but they share it anyway.
Because that's what WdC is: Unedited, clumsy, non-published writing from mostly amateurs. That's why I love WdC. Sure, I get to read a lot of crappy pieces. But if those people stick around, I also get to watch them get better and improve their work.
This is also a great site because it's one of the few places where you get to come across published authors as well as the 14 year old who just wrote their very first poem and had the guts the post it.
This isn't me disagreeing with you. Really it's me agreeing with you. But that's why I love WdC. Some pieces melt my brain with emotions, and others make me cringe while trying to read through grammatical errors. It's like Russian roulette but with words.
if you're curious, she made it in time for my lesson.
I'm learning a lot and apparently she's allowing my muse to lead us.
I swear this isn't some kind of rookie mistake...
The Internet - and Writing-com - are abundant with music-inspired writing. That makes me happy. But the majority of these creations were inspired by lyrics, not the actual music.
I invite you to consider letting the sounds of the music itself inspire you. I could write an entire book on the various ways we can compose and arrange musical instrumentation to represent life and emotions. But it's a busy day, so I'll start with the basics, and we'll call this Chapter 1.
Here are some ways music can shape the images we see in our minds and the emotions we feel. This list is only a subset.
Key
In the simplest example of this, major keys sound happy, while minor keys sound sad or creepy.
Instrument Choice
Trumpets are used for fanfare; for example: the king/queen's entrance, the hero's return.
Instrumentation Solo violin or cello can feel deeply emotional, sorrowful, vulnerable - but collect a whole orchestra full of violins and cellos, and suddenly, they can sound confident, triumphant.
Articulations
A fermata (holding a note longer than a listener expects) creates tension, the anticipation of something coming. A legato melody (with notes that are smoothly connected and flowing) could evoke a river or gentle breeze. A staccato passage (short, bouncy, separated notes) might sound like a playful pet, or bring on a feeling of anxiety.
Combining Strategies
Composers can hone in on a particular feeling or image by mixing and matching the elements above and the ones not listed. For example, if I played staccato notes very slowly, I might evoke the image of water droplets falling. A steady, repeated note might sound like a dripping faucet, while a collection of different notes with an inconsistent rhythm might sound like water in a cave, dripping from stalagtites into a still pool beneath.
Check out these two examples of musical symbolism in the song "Airplane" by the Indigo Girls. Both passages evoke an image of an airplane taking off - the first with vocals (because your voice is an instrument, too) and then with the piano.
NOTE: Listen to both videos, but only a few seconds. They each start in a different spot in the video. I forgot that the time attribute on a YouTube embed doesn't work on WDC. Sorry! Here are the times for the two examples:
Vocals Ascending at 1:27
Piano Ascending at 2:10
Your homework
Listen closely to the instrumentation in your favorite music, and see if you can identify parts of the song - the music, not the lyrics - that remind you of something. Even if you don't have the vocabulary to explain it, I invite you to post a video in the comments and give us the min:sec, so we can hear it, too.
it's now on the list!
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, also known as Michelle Tuesday, is a musician, educator and writer hailing from Columbus, Ohio.
Thursdays: A weekly original short story submission.