A Writer's Notebook, Day Two-Hundred-And-Twenty-Six

I wrote three new poems today, and also did a lot of work on a personal essay that I am considering putting online.  I don't want to get into the whole thing here, but it was a rather productive piece of work, I think, though I am sure that it still needs quite a bit of work. 

I do want to get back to work on some of the other materials that I've been contemplating, but I feel that it is important I recognize just how much work I've really been doing of late.  I mean, it has been a long time since i wrote poetry with any regularity, and now I am really back in the swing of things with it.  It was not that long ago that I wrote in this blog about the difficulties I had getting to work on it, and I am going to admit that it is still a lot of work, much of the time..  The most important thing is often just sitting and being willing to do nothing else.  That is not always easy, but it is what must happen to do the work.

Tonight, for example, I knew I wanted to write a poem, and I just did not have it in my head what it would be.  I knew I was in a state that was conducive, but I did not have any ideas for the starting point.  So, I sat and waited until an idea came, and then, after a bit, I had the poem in a shape where I could see what I was trying to do.  I actually wound up throwing out a first draft and starting again, now that I sort of had an idea of what I was doing and where I was going.  It took a lot of work, but the hardest part was just knowing that I needed to wait for an idea and then work that idea.

It seems, sometimes, like there is a magic in doing that.  I mean, if I sit and work and show that I need an idea and am willing to put in the effort, after I get that idea, I will also, later, be rewarded with new ideas that were waiting for me somehow.  It is as if the idea fairy says, "oh, look, he is actually treating the ideas properly, let's give him some more."  It may be simply that the unconscious is more open to sharing thoughts and ideas when it feels respected, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter that much which way it works.  In the end. it is the fact that I am able to do the work now, and I feel pretty great about that.  Getting it to be true for more than just poetry may take a bit more work, but I am sure I can get there too.

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