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

I did write five poems today, pushing myself towards one more, and I feel like I was getting somewhere in that last poem.  Some of the other work I did today felt like it could be quite worthwhile, of course, but that last one felt like I was heading in the direction of much of my best work of late.

I also did a lot of thinking about other work I am attempting, especially that play, and I think I might have an idea of how to get some of it working.  I'm not certain yet of the whole thing, but I feel that I am in the direction of an answer to how I will get the action to progress in the way I want.  Now, of course, I'm going to need to figure it out in more exact ways, and I have a lot of further questions that are being raised in what I am doing here, but I think I've gotten to a place where I can begin seeing those answers.  Really, I'd been a bit stuck on how to create the way past some of what I've already been writing, but the ideas I've had today are largely in answer to the specific block I had in progressing the plot.  Now, I am not entirely sure of the details on how to work it, because I still have certain questions, but I am working it out.

Funnily, working on this blog actually helped me to overcome a final small hurdle in my thinking about the piece.  The answer to a small detail just came clear to me as I was writing this, which is often the way of things, really.  I feel that I do have a pretty clear understanding of how to craft the next piece of the play, and to make it work in a way that makes sense to me and is true to the characters I have in mind.  Again, there is still a lot to be worked out, but I have a much stronger sense of how to move forwards, and I feel certain about my ability to do the work in a way that I hadn't in some time.  I've had a sense of what the overall plot and structure of the play would be, but I had certain small issues that were blocking my progress.  I did allow myself a bit of a rest on the work, but I have been thinking about it a lot.  I've got that playwrights group, and I do want to bring in more of it to that soon, but I didn't want it to be the same bit without a little more progress on it already.  So, I think the combination of feeling a need to do the work and still allowing myself some distance from it directly, in this case, helped me to get over that issue.  Maybe I am over-analyzing it, really, and should just be glad that I am so ready and excited to get back to work on it...

Anyhow, I feel quite good about the work today.  Overall, I am on fire right now, really.  I have written something close to 200 poems this year.  Many are not all that good at the moment, and I am sure that many will never be anything more than just basic ideas, but still, the law of averages says that at least a few are bound to be good.  I mean that in the context of being aware of my ability to actually compose good poetry, as I can easily imagine a person writing many terrible poems, but I am certain that at least some of these pieces are good already, and imagine that their are probably more gems that I am not aware of yet.  The bottom line is, though, that doing that much work in a way that feels sustainable to me is incredible and makes me feel quite good a lot of the time, if I consider it directly.  I mean, it makes me have a sense that I am actually doing something, even if my work is not yet getting into the world the way I would like.  That is important, and I think it is giving me more of whatever energy I will need to really get my work out there.

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