A Writer's Notebook, Day Three-Hundred-And-Ninety-Three

I am finally back in a better writing environment, and that has moved me back, fairly quickly, to wanting to push myself more.  I'm not yet ready to really go for it, and I am still not entirely set up in my new office, but I do want to begin pushing myself again.  In part, this will be about thinking through some of the questions I had begun considering before I went through this upheaval, questions that are largely about understanding the work I am doing, developing an explicit knowledge of techniques I've used instinctively, for example, as well as gaining a stronger ability to explain some of the thought processes that go into the work.  In addition, of course, I want to push further, to create poems that are doing things I may not even have thought of yet.  I am interested, still, in integrating some of my new thoughts with older tactics, and I also am really wanting to do a wider variety of poems, including not only types I've explored before, but new ones as well.

The point is, I feel renewed, and I am ready to go.  I still have a few things to get in place, but I am working, and I feel very strongly that I am prepared to take the next steps, whatever they may be.  I'm certain that one step I'll be taking soon is increasing my output to six poems a day.  It seems like a silly thing, but for whatever reason, I do find that increasing the output changes my thinking and challenges me in unexpected ways.  The change to routine it provokes is a good kick in the pants, and I need that right about now, to get me from thinking about all this into action.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Writer's Notebook, Day Two-Hundred-And-Fifty

Each of the three pieces I wrote today was a bit of a struggle to get going, if I am honest.  That happens, as I have mentioned, and my answer is generally to just wait it out, and the results vary.  A lot of the time, if I am really stuck, I might try to force something out, often it winds up being a bit meta, with me writing about being stuck without much in terms of inspiration, and it feels a bit like I am working scales in a way.  All the aesthetic decisions are there, they just don't always have a lot of purpose behind them, and that is fine in that context.  Essentially, I am just forcing myself to do the work, and getting it done, and I am showing myself that I can and will do it even if inspiration never strikes.  This can often take pressure off, and that lack of pressure opens up creative thinking and inspiration. Now, that is a fine thing for me to do, and I am likely to use that approach again many times in the future, but today I felt that I wanted to make myself do
Read more

Le Guin, Steering The Craft, Chapter Five: Adjectives and Adverbs (Exercise Five, Chastity)

A note of apology for my lateness with this.  I had expected to have time earlier in the day, but it was not to be, alas.  Anyhow, I am still a bit nervous about this exercise, though it is clearly of significant import to Le Guin, as she points out that it is the only exercise that she has given to all of her workshops.  That, of course, does not alter my feelings about it, excepting that I am aware of it as something valuable and worth doing, so the fact that it is a bit daunting might well be seen, through that light, as a promise of reward, perhaps.  The more difficult the task, the more one has to gain, at least by some logic... Exercise Five: Chastity Mr. Torino was in charge.  He had his way.  It was the way.  Desktops are clean.  Nothing but work.  No pictures: not your kids; not your girl or wife; not (as Allen recounted) your car.   None of that.  No plants.  No cartoons.  That is for home, this is work.  Every desk had a calendar, the calendar.  No character to it, just
Read more

A Writer's Notebook, Two-Thousand-And-Fifty-Nine

I have been thinking about how I can discuss certain aspects of my poetry and the choices I make as a writer.  In particular, I tend to write without as much reliance on sensory details and descriptions, instead choosing more abstract depictions.  This is something that I know many writers would call an odd choice, as specificity seems inherently to demand the application of detail, but I tend to be a bit hesitant about relying on depictions that utilize the senses, as I find that approach somewhat problematic.  For one thing, sensory description is always going to be less than universal, and not only because of the reality that there are individuals who lack one or more sense.  In many ways, for me, the deeper problem is one related to language itself.  Our use of language creates our experiences in a very real way, though I can't necessarily offer a full explanation of what I mean by that right here, but using a word for an object bestows qualities on it.  If I call something a s
Read more