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

It was another productive day for my writing, first in terms of the poems that I wrote.  I think it was four in total, and I feel that they are all on the right track.  Certainly, they need work, but they are all things I feel have a realness too them, as I discussed last night. It is funny but I think I figured out a bit of something in that blog, or maybe over this whole past week, because I could feel myself starting in a way that might have, on another day, been just an exercise.  Instead, today I was able to sort of push myself to take a stronger approach, which is odd, because I hadn't really understood the difference between one and the other, and at the moment I cannot really explain it other than to describe some of it.

In several cases, I wrote a first line, or part of one, without the intent for it to be about much other than my current status and the desire to write a poem, as I often wind up iterating upon when I'm not inspired, but instead of just allowing that to stand as the subject, I looked at the line and thought about it a bit, then began to use it to move in a different direction.  In one case, it became something spoken in the poem which instigates the action.  In another, it was more that a long description turned in a direction that was interesting.  It started out with a discussion of how it was later than I planned on being awake and followed that for a long while until it hit upon a deeper subject in a way that I think connected at the end, in a sort of satisfying way.  I think that it needs a lot more work, honestly, but I feel it has the shape it needs to become something potentially great.

In addition to those poems, I also pushed myself this afternoon and wrote a sort of list poem that I am fond of.  It is rather silly, in some ways, as it is a proliferation of the future names for screen technologies of higher and higher definition, and I think it's pretty preposterous in a way that is fun, with a sort of satirical quality to it as well.  It's very silly in a certain way, but in a way that is intended to be meaningful in the end.  Again, it may need a bit of work, but I think it might be the closest to done of any of the poems today.

So, I got three good pieces today, but more importantly, I feel that I might have learned something about how my own process works, and maybe a way or two to get myself into the right frame of mind for engaging my inspiration.  In many ways, it seems like it is a matter of forcing it into action.  If I sit and wait, staring at the blank screen, it will often occur that a poem starts to appear, but it is also true that I can put down a bit of language first and wait a moment to see what it wants to become instead of letting the first idea, tired as it may be, continue to the end.  It may be, of course, that pushing myself the way that I started to do today will not always work, but I am hopeful enough to see what happens when I give it a go.

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