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

I am still feeling quite excited about my work and the progress I've been making in the past few weeks, but I am also beginning to reach that point where my creative energy, or at least my inspiration, begins to flag a bit.  I'm faltering slightly, in terms of the ideas for new works, but I am still keeping myself going at the same rate, with four poems a day as the minimum.  Often, I am finding them harder to begin, and some are just whims of the moment, in a way that is not always successful.  Of course, my judgement of the work is often suspect.  I have poems I like a great deal that are not seen as particularly great by others, and poems that I am told are exceptional which I had not considered as special.  That is to say, I am not the audience and cannot predict the results of the work.  That is not the truth of the thing, at least not entirely, as it is not as though I am some savant who can't understand the language I am writing, I do have a grasp of my work and an understanding of the technique.  At the same time, I must often just rely upon the idea that those ideas have been trained into me at a level of instinct, such that I do not consciously call upon these techniques, but create work that reflects the knowledge that I have.  Learning is the preparation, in the act, though, the learning must not get in the way.  If I am thinking too much about it, it causes me to trip up, so I have to be able to rely upon the skills without conscious consideration.

Well, that strange meandering rant should clue you in to my current need for sleep, but I do want to get back to my original point for a moment before I call it an early evening.  That is, I am feeling a bit drained at the moment, and that is something that keeps coming around, which is only natural.  As well, the same tricks for forcing out work don't always seem to be effective any longer.  I am not writing as many of the poems about writing poems, for example.  I am too self-conscious about that.  Other areas areas also seem to dry up in that way.  At one point, the animal poems were coming all the time, and if I needed an idea for a new poem, I merely had to think up an animal and name it and it would come together.  Now, it is not as simple.  I did write a moth poem yesterday which I enjoy, but it is quite different from other animal poems I have written of late.

The point is, even as I turn through these cycles, I am changing and facing new challenges.  It gets a bit more difficult, in some ways, to face the lack of inspiration on a day like today, even though I know that staying the course will lead back around to a place of bountiful ideas.  At the same time, there is also something familiar about this place in my creative loop, and that makes it easier to combat.  I know I will write the poems, because I have done it before.  It does not change because it is seemingly harder, that is merely a byproduct of my having improved, of my needing to hold up to a standard that my previous works could not have met or  merited.  Remaining committed to that path means knowing that I will have such days, even at times of incredible learning like this week.  One cycle does not always care about the other, it seems, but I can be glad that soon my creativity will soar again, even if it feels like I am only saying that to make myself feel better, I know it is true because it always has been.