Hot News: New Milestones, 6 M Pageviews & Adding 1 M Pageviews in 25 Days; Call for Submissions

My Dear Friends:

NeverEnding Story reached a new milestone mid-afternoon yesterday: 6 M pageviews—adding 1 million pageviews in 25 days.(FYI: On August 12, 2026, it reached 5 M pageviews; yesterday's pageviews: 70, 283).

I’m grateful to everyone who has shared this poetry journey. NeverEnding Story now seeks haiku and tanka submissions. The accepted haiku and tanka will be translated into Chinese and posted on NeverEnding Story and X. And you are welcome to follow me on X at @ericcoliu (5 following; 5,287 followers).

on the windowsill

two canaries singing

to each other

I tweet and retweet

NeverEnding Story  😋

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write.

—Anaïs Nin

HOWEVER 😏

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

—Thomas Mann

Try Again and Fail Better

My fingers strike the keyboard with rhythmic force; my eyes sting, rimmed with red, but something keeps carrying me forward like a surging current beneath the skin.

another

false dawn while robins call

I add three words

backspace them, write five more

then delete the whole line

(FYI: The title alludes to the famous quote about trying and failing:

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. 

-- Samuel Beckett, "Worstward Ho,"  a radical, minimalist prose text that strips language down to its barest essentials to explore decrepitude, memory, the limits of expression, and the stubborn human compulsion to keep going despite inevitable defeat).

And a gentle reminder:

The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it.

—Dylan Thomas

A poem after a poem after a poem is POWER!

—paraphrasing Margaret Atwood

Look forward to reading your poetry

Happy Writing

Chen-ou