the heron stood at the apex of the roof next door
and I watched him
as he peered off to the east
bemused by a sunless dawn
we waited together for something to change
for the wind
for the rain
we waited
until it seemed certain
another day had some
then he was gone
Back in the day I used to write poetry as I was inspired. I’d wait and something would strike me and I’d jot it down. If I weren’t moved to deep emotion, I didn’t worry about it.
On top of that I didn’t worry all that much about editing. I wrote what I wrote, and it was what it was.
All that changed on a site called The Alsop Review. It’s a really nice poetry workshop site, and I can’t say enough positive about it. I really found some tremendous poets doing some amazing work there, so keep that context through the rest of the story.
One day, I was merrily writing a poem about growing from boyhood into manhood using a sapling and the intrusion of a bulldozer as a metaphor and I was very proud of myself. I posted the work up on the site and waited for accolades.
Instead, I received something less than a warm reception. I got comments like “There is not one redeemable, salvageable line in this entire piece” and “Wow, that was awful.”
Somewhere between 20 and 40 comments later, my ego was completely crushed. Not a single positive comment.
Honestly, it was a good thing.
For the next month or two, I didn’t write a single poem. Then after that, I realized, I needed to know much more about poetry if I were going to keep writing. It is far too painful to be the imbecile splashing words against the wall in hopes that a few stick. So I read bunches of poetry text books, and dozens and dozens of poetry books by classic poets and modern poets and any well-respected poet I could find.
Six months or so of that, and then I started to write again. This time, I only wrote by choice. I avoided writing poetry – or anything – when i was in emotional turmoil. I started to wait and write what I wanted to write.
So, for a long time, I would sit down and say, “Today, I”m going to write <insert style here> about <insert random theme>.”
I devised bunches of little prompts and exercises to push myself. I wrote ream upon ream to give myself material to edit later. And often, now, I do edit old work until it is completely new.
My writing process works like this:
The poems are usually, but not always, about the same subjects as the notes. Whatever I read, or see, or hear, I put in the notes to use later. I also copy book marks so that i can go back and review links.
If I want to locate a poem somewhere, I frequently look up that place on google maps or on atlas site. I also look up things like indigenous birds, plants and animals. I go to wolframalpha to get statistics that might help me understand life in that location or drop me thoughts on odd or interesting things i can work into my pieces.
The more information I have, the more words I have to work with. Generally, I also google key words throughout the notes and thoughts to see if I can connect things to literature, movies or pop-culture.
All of that goes into every poem. That’s my basic process.
she said, ‘damn the rich’
with a twitch of her nose
a stitch ripped from the slip ‘neath her clothes
‘damn the rich, the lovely
the jaded, damn all the girls
whose best days have faded’
she said, ‘damn the rich’
with a tear on her finger
a curse on her fear as she wallowed it lingered
‘damn the rich, the needless
the means, damn all the boys
who wink in tight jeans
she said ‘damn the rich’
with a sighed loss of breath
a blessing for daddy, so close to death
‘damn the rich, the hurtful
the cruel, damn all the puppies
damn the whole world
she said, ‘damn the rich’
but she don’t mean a thing
ignore the damned chick, watch the wren sing
I have a lot of friends who suffer from writer’s block. I won’t lie and say I’ve never experienced it, but I have some strategies I’ve been using for a long time that have made it pretty rare for me. The best book I ever read that delved into this subject was called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. The advice there was “Look Closer” break things down into smaller bites and if it’s not small enough, then go smaller and closer.
This is the first thing way I avoid blockage, but I also sidestep it by avoiding the desire or inclination to create anything of any quality. Fear of not living up to one’s own expectations or the expectations of others is a huge mental block.
So this is what I’ve come up with so far, usually, blockage is caused by one of avery few causes.
Fear is difficult to overcome, but in that case, creating ANYTHING is better than nothing. So if you feel like you’re trying to create soemthing AWESOME, but everything is coming out crap, then create MORE. Much more. The frustration of creating nothing is much greater than the frustration of creating something average or sub-par. Also, the sub-par materials you create can be edited and used later.
Now, if you feel scattered, the best solution is simply to be more specific. When you start to write about ‘love’ and you’ve got nothing, write about romantic love. When you can’t write about Romantic love, write about your worst romantic love, when you can’t write about your worst romantic love, write about your worst romantic love’s bad breath. Eventually, you’ll find that a thousand words are written, and it’s hard to claim that your’e blocked once you’ve produced like that.
Now the last problem, that one is probably the one that tough. But if that’s where you are, if you don’t “Feel” anything. Try to pick one thing, any one thing, and look at it through a prism of experience and emotion. For example… take a duck. Look at it first as a chinese meal, then as a duckling in a pond, then as a collection of feathers, then as a verb.. find 20 ways to look at it. Sketch each, write a haiku about each, do anything you can imagine with each and then see how they relate together. Don’t worry what you feel, complete it like an intellectual exercise. Sometimes, you have to do an end-round the emotion to find the way back to it.
Now the last one, the over-focused on a single project that you’re stuck on. That one is interesting. I get that way a bit, but I usually just set things aside. The problem with doing that is that projects languish. I’m not sure I can recommend constantly setting them aside. I think maybe, a more productive approach might be to allow yourself to digress. If your’e working on a project, a poem, – anything – and you find yourself at an impasse, just let go. Don’t worry if the next thing you write ‘fits’ just roll with it. Expand on something that requires no expansion, give yourself permission to play with it. See if you can find the joy in what you’re doing.
Finally, the other thing you can do when you get ‘stuck’ is talk about it with smart people. NO offense intended to stupid people, but they won’t be as helpful. Explain what you’re doing to a really smart person, tell them what you’re thinking about when you do it. And when they start to ask you questions, answer them as in depth as you can.
This can really help you find ways around the obstacles.
I have many other strategies around blocks in creativity, feel free to ask me for more details.
apron stained with juice
big and too red to be blood
– hungry ants walk past
five dirty dishes
soak in the slick gray water
the stench too heavy to rise
once blue hula hoop
filthy and faded in the yard
“Maggie” still legible
a bike with flat tires
hangs in back of the garage
the streamers dancing
Today, my friend Christy Wells wrote to me in a little conversation we had, ” a demanding reader is an opportunity for a writer to rise to the occasion of improvement.” This idea is truly how I hope I always look at my audience, whether it’s visual or written.
She also said, “The most engaged and appreciable reader is too (wonderfully) selfish to care about what I want as a writer. That reader is my target audience.”
Now, like I told her, I don’t know if I share her target audience precisely, but in a broad general sort of way I agree with a lot of those concepts.
I think, the addendum that I might put on that target might be that while they don’t care what I want to accomplish they are receptive to whatever is put in front of them. They are willing to try to perceive what I might be trying to do, whether they care or not is somewhat irrelevant.
It is important to me that I respect the fact that they cared enough to read what I wrote, or view what I created, and they are not so hostile to my intent that they immediately reject it without any consideration. A sort of apathy towards my intent is absolutely fine, but it shouldn’t be an active obstacle either.
I love the point that selfishness is definitely wonderful in its way, but I do want the allowance that, if I’ve written what I’ve written well, regardless the myriad ways an audience might embrace or reject it, it will have the opportunity to have effect I intended. Perhaps it succeeds, perhaps it doesn’t, but I want an audience that approaches it with an honest indifference.
In that way, I like the idea of an audience and a writer that are only aware of each other in the broadest sense. The writer is often not writing ‘for’ them and the reader is not reading ‘for’ the author. They each have their own agenda and each is perfectly legitimate and acceptable.
I guess, in my mind, the great writer allows the audience to read the work as they wish, and the audience accepts that the writer meant something whether it is relevant to them or not.
everyone wore red or white or blue
back in ’76
i asked my nana for a pair
of shortsleeve pants
made from a flag
she could think of 200 reasons not to
then she gave me a kiss
and I was wearing them an hour later.
a big green glass
half full of pilsner
on a maple counter
a ballgame on
a big TV over the bar
someone’s always losing
the pilsner, flat
the glass cool
the game’s over
Over the years I’ve been a part of many writing communities and they’ve had varying affects on me and my writing. One of my favorite writing community experiences was “The Department of Modern Verse” it was a site built on the pathetic.org code that I worked on with my friend Steve Podielsky. We had it going for a tiny bit more than a year and had fairly close to 1000 members when we shut it down.
In some ways I regret shutting it down, not only because so many of the members never fully forgave me after, but also because I had so much fun with it. I made tons of friends and they were all so genuinely supportive about my writing. But there was a dark under-side to that whole thing that was very difficult for me to really understand a the time.
The saddest part of it was the way it became a baby-sitting gig. Constantly being the diplomat to prevent blow-ups between different people on the site. Ensuring that the environment remained good for people to join and grow and write became a harder and harder job over time. That devolved rather quickly into a sort of resentment inside of me that made me hate the place more and more – not only the place bu the people who were making my life hellish.
The lessons I learned as I took it down really stick with me to this day, and have probably held me back in some ways, but in others they’ve really helped me maintain a high level of productivity.
I thought about this a little as I was walking about through doors open Lowell today. Whether it’s in writing or in life, our community is both a huge blessing and an invisible barrier, and we must embrace both parts of that.
To the degree that a community offers opportunity to connect and share in all of the best things in life, there is absolutely nothing more important and vibrant. As an artist, I would be nothing without those connections, the hands shaken, the smiles collected, the hugs stolen on a truly bad day – these are the things that lift me up and carry me through. They’re the brilliant and wonderful moments that inspire me to write, to paint, to imagine a better world. So yay for that.
But there is also the other part of community, the part that leads to shame and guilt. There is the shame from the people that are upset when you don’t make their event, or the guilt from the ones that look at your askance because they don’t approve what you’re doing – all of that uncomfortable awkwardness that is built by the pillars of the community that just don’t like you becomes an enormous barrier to sharing and creating work.
It’s easy to say, “Hey, if they don’t like what I’m doing, screw’em.” Easy to say, hard to do.
But then, I walk around on a day like today. I walk into buildings that have been re-claimed from the jaws of demolition and find beautiful inspiring places that were recently just the dreams of men and women at drafting tables. I bump into acquaintances and share smiles and laughs with strangers, and I feel ashamed that I ever let the little bumps and barriers hold me back at all.
I admit, I am a bit of a bull when it comes to creating things every day, so maybe I’m not the best one to go on about the problems of being blocked and uninspired. Still, I can say this, there are a lot of opportunities in any given day to connect with the world around you and it is on you to make that happen – the world won’t do anything for you.
I’m going to take a bit of a walk and think about the affect of community on poetry. Anyone have any thoughts on that subject?
I’ll post what I think later.