A Tanka Diary

I can't believe it. I am keeping a tanka diary!  In my wildest dream, I never dreamed that I would write tanka, not to mention keeping a tanka diary. When I was working on my MFA, I had one thing in mind--writing plays. I did consider myself successful in playwriting--having some stage-readings inside and outside Seattle, productions in small local theatres and finalists in nationwide competitions, plus three grants, one from the Dramatists' Guild for my loss of income due to a severe knee injury. (Without a good resume, I probably wouldn't have received the Guild's monetary assistance.) I wasn't doing too bad writing for American theatre. Then, I shifted to memoir writing and then, to fiction writing. 

In August 2010, I was admitted to ICU for pneumonia and congestive heart failure that almost killed me and was hospitalized for a week. Eager to get back to writing but too weak to work on my novel, I wrote haiku that I started in 2007 but wasn't serious about. Encouraged by the publication of my haiku, I tried my hand at tanka last October and had my first tanka published in the March issue of A Hundred Gourds.  Ever since, more of my tanka have been accepted for publication, I decide to keep a tanka diary.

What a twist and turn! Such is my life! Things happen when I least expected them. Like my resettling in America, with neither gold for the boat trip, nor relative in the New World, how could I come? Here I am, chasing a writer's dream in my adopted country!

More of my published haiku:

Haiku News http://www.wayfarergallery.net/haikunews/