A Writer's Notebook, Day Five-Hundred-And-Twenty-Nine

I wrote seven poems today, which is still far fewer than I had been writing for a long while, but I feel good about it as a step towards returning to my old habits.  First, I did not just write them all in a go, but split the work between two different writing sessions, both in my office, and both seemed felt quite fruitful.  I don't want to jinx myself by saying that I will repeat this, as I know tomorrow is going to be a hectic day, but I am hoping that I will.

Also, for the first time in a while, I felt a certain kind of creative freedom in the writing, the sense that I can begin anywhere and will arrive someplace worth going.  While many times I do come to the page with things I want to speak of, poems that are in my mind already, may even be partly drafted, I also know that many poems I write come from following a random thought or snippet of language that is in my head at the moment.  For some time, now, I have not felt entirely at ease with that approach, only turning to it as a way to fill out poems, thinking of them as just exercises.  In truth, every poem is just an exercise when I start it.  Many do not mature beyond that stage, at least for me.  But, still, I had a hesitancy towards the idea of letting the poem just happen without any intent behind the work.  I thought of it as the last resort, when I had no other ideas.  Tonight, however, I reconnected with this approach in a deeper way, seeing what comes when I allow that type of work to flow.  It is inherently different work than what I write when the poem is more thought out, as should be obvious even just considering things, but I was ignoring the actual poems that have often resulted.  Beyond which, it was playing within this approach that allowed me, today, to do more writing, and made me feel that, if I weren't so tired, I could have written as many new poems as I wanted to try my hand at.

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