A Writer's Notebook, Day Five-Hundred-And-Thirty

It was a very long and crazy day, and I had little time to work until tonight, so I only had one writing session, but I still pressed myself and was able to produce around ten poems.  Again, this is not to say that they are all particularly good, or even could be saved through revision, it is more about allowing myself to return to the working patterns I had been developing for so long.  I think that it is a natural rhythm for my work, in some sense.  As I mentioned last night, I have had other periods of writing in great bursts, it is more that I am now more steadily doing that work.  The amount, I think, is just a byproduct of that dedication, born out of a certain graphomaniacal tendency innate within me.  Or that is my best understanding of it.  I had worried about the quality going down because I was writing so much, but I think that is a strange and backwards concern, if I consider it.  While, yes, I can see an argument that doing so much writing might water down the results, that relies on the notion that their is a certain amount of creative energy or inspiration at my disposal.  Instead, I think these things are skills that grow with use.  This applies as much to the mental modes needed to enter the creative state and find ideas worth writing about as it does in terms of the actual technical and mechanical qualities of craft.  In the end, I believe that each piece I write is a step on a journey forwards towards a higher level of mastery: the more I write, the better I am bound to get.  I have written more than a thousand poems in the past year: do you think anyone can create a thousand of something without getting better at it?

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