How does the writer's brain work? It is a bewilderment to me, why it must be this particular word, or that particular image. How is it that now, in this time of several national and global crises, I emerge from sleep holding to this juxtaposition:
i wake
my face is wet
the blue heron stands
one foot
on a slate roof
???
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What else is there to do in November during a pandemic? Actually, I'm not attempting a novel, but I am attempting 50,000 words. I've done this before. I have two very bad novels, one maybe-memoirish something, and a few odd paragraphs. This time, sort-of-maybe-memoir-bits again. Or, just a series of Morning Pages.
We shall see. On day three, and keeping up so far. If I think I have anything of interest, I may post excerpts now and then.
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I know that we should all be writing as we live through, experience, this historical time. Historians will write these stories, and we don't know what those stories will say. As Bill Barr points out, history is written by the winners.
We, those millions of us just trying to get through history, are not, are unlikely to be, the winners. Those of us who keep diaries, or journals, or write poems or emails or actual letters to those we care for, will provide, perhaps, an alternative to official histories. These private notes are important. They are the grist, the truth, of our era.
Yet I resist my own, small, obligation. I pick up my mostly blank journal, and set it down again. I make notes in a poetry class, put them aside, and do not pick them up again.
These small notes are my attempt to begin again. It seems that I can use my own art journal pages as writing prompts. When words stick in my brain, in my heart, sometimes images are able to leak out onto a page. And sometimes those images give me a direction for words.
This is day five.
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I ask myself this often. What stops me from doing what I should, all those errands that pile up on every horizontal space in our house? CFS/M.E. can be scolded for some of it. Even much of it.
Sometimes it seems that the choice is between what I ought to do to maintain our house, and my relationship, and what I want to do to keep on being me. My failures at external shoulds used to be only my own. Now those failures effect someone else. Now Alan must maneuver past my piles.
Alone, the question What is stopping me? weighed most heavily on writing. What is stopping me from writing? What stops me from collecting my poems into a manuscript? What stops me from submitting my poems for publication?
These questions are still heavy. They sit on top of papers and pens and various misplaced items all over our house. Things needed, pulled from where they belong, and then left, heavily, wherever they land.
What is stopping me?
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Nearly two weeks of bed-ridden illness (not COVID) seems to have led to a reset. Of course, I've had many resets in my long life – but not so long a time without writing as this year. Even during times when I was not writing poems, I was keeping up with my not-diary journal, recording my dreams and whatever loose thoughts occurred to me. And even during times when I was not journaling, or blogging, the occasional poem would appear, out of air, or in response to random prompts or classes. And for several years, digital art journaling and collage kept the creative joints fluid.
This year, and the year before, not so much.
Now I return to recording my dreams, a practice which is, for unknown reason, essential to my writing. If I do not record my dreams, I do not write. Last night my dreams told me I need to return home, to the place which gives me words, and images, and poems. That is where I breathe most deeply, where I live most richly.
So. Begin again.
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Yes, indeed, writing takes practice. And practice is often tiresome. Even boring. Practice makes . . . more practice. Morning pages after morning pages. Day after day. Practice provides tons of material for That Inner Critic: "That all too familiar voice inside us that wants to shut the whole party down. Don’t do it! It’s not safe! You suck at this! Retreat!" (Andrea Scher in Brave Blogging)
The image above is from my Facebook page, and it's perfect for the discussion at Brave Blogging about the voice that stops us. Stops us from putting pen to paper; stops us from keeping the pen moving across the page. Andrea says, "The most important thing is to notice the voice when it’s there and name it." And I know this. Decades ago, I decided to see it as a tiny, ferocious kitten, hissing and spitting. Let's call her Spits.
Spits tells me I've passed my peak; that I never did peak; that this is all a pointless exercise; that I'll never be in the ranks of the best so why bother; that poetry does not matter; that poems are meaningless in these critical, dangerous times; and that I should be doing something useful with my time.
And that this, whatever I'm writing at the moment, is shit. Which, of course, I remind myself, it is.
Compost. I learned about that, I think, from Peter Elbow. Or maybe Natalie Goldberg. I no longer remember. But I do remember: Compost. Without it, what grows will be weak and spindly. With it, what grows may be strong and robust, substantive. And I want to grow something. Something substantive.
I want to grow poems. I want them.
So I practice.
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This is in response to a Brave Blogging prompt, to write a poem in less than ten minutes. The first draft was done in less than ten minutes, but there was some considerable revision. Another prompt was to write a "how to" piece, which, of course, elicited my contrary self. I ended up writing two; I will post the second tomorrow.
How Not to Write a Poem
Keep busy. Clean the house.
Empty the kitchen cabinets.
Scrub them out. Put it all back.
Organize the junk drawer.
No music. No dancing.
No long walks unless talking
and texting with friends
at the same time.
Read a light novel. Or two.
Or three. Do not read poems.
Watch the news. Get angry.
Go shopping. Drive fast.
Avoid introspection. Do not meditate.
Ignore your dreams. Always do two
or three things at once. Watch
television while on the internet.
Pay no attention to non-human
animals. Stay out of the woods.
Avoid gardens, lakes, strange
neighborhoods, and the sea.
At all costs avoid the sea.
Develop an active social life.
Resist solitude. Party hard.
Don’t wake up.
~ sharon brogan / 18 september 02016
I think of my poems as truthful – not factual – fiction. Have I ever scrubbed out the kitchen cabinets as a way to avoid writing? Absolutely not. I have, however, been known to organize a junk drawer.
Have I missed some useful strategies? Please add them to the comments!
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I am writing again, and doing several projects; too many, probably. Online, I'm doing The Documented Life Project and Tangie Baxter's Art Journal Caravan and Symbology Project. I'm behind in all of these. In real life I'm taking two poetry classes through the through the MOLLI Program at the University of Montana. I missed the first two sessions of both, made the next two and will make the final two.
All this has gotten me back to my journal. Several of these projects have participants who are interested in the actual stuff of journals; hence, this post. All the art journaling and collage-making I do is done digitally, so my actual real-life journal has always been pretty plain. White lined or unlined pages and black ink with an occassional foray into colored paper and ink, often short-lived. Mostly just writing, but occasional doodling. And I rarely print my art pages.
Now I'm trying something different, and enjoying it very much.
I've used Circa Notebooks from Levenger for decades, both professionally and personally. I love the versatility of them. I can use paper of different sizes and move pages around easily, within or between notebooks. I can have several notebooks with different covers for different projects.
It has finally occurred to me that I can print out interesting pages to use for my writing. I have accumulated a vast library of digital images, and there is no rule that I must write on white paper. This is what my current journal looks like (click the images for credits & larger sizes at flickr):
I'm using Tangie's Tangible Plans @ ScrapBookGraphics to make my pages. Here's my collection so far:
I'm loving using these. The images encourage me to loosen up and play a bit. You can't be too serious when there's a picture of a squirrel on your otherwise blank page. Making the pages was itself a fun creative activity. I didn't get serious about that, either; there is no fancy photoshopping here, just plunk the images down and print.
I panicked for a moment when somewhat busy pages popped up as I prepared to take notes in my poetry classes, but I decided to just go with it, and it worked really well. Better for me, in fact, than a thin list of things I want to go back to. Why didn't I realize this when I was in school?
As you see, I'm also printing out some of my collage/art journal pages. I think I've discovered all the various ways it is possible to screw this up: put the paper in the printer the wrong way so that the backside prints upside down; don't get the paper into the punch securely so it's wonky in the book; don't be careful about measuring before cutting the paper in half. I seem to have a genius for this.
It's worth it, though. If, like me, you don't have the space or energy for in-real-life mixed-media art work, but you wish your journal looked a bit more interesting, I recommend this approach. It's very fun.
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I am trying to reclaim my interior life, the life that generates poems. For too long, exterior life has intruded, welcome as some of those intrusions have been.
I'm slowly returning to old habits: writing my dreams when I wake; morning pages; reading poems. And I'm taking two classes through the MOLLI Program at the University of Montana: If it Ain’t a Pleasure, It Ain’t a Poem with Mark Gibbons and The Writing Process - Details and the Senses with Sheryl Noethe.
I also had some unexpected encouragement with the invitation to put some of my poems up at VerseWrights, where I am in very good company.
I may even have a poem or two to post in the next few days.
[Click the image to see credits & larger sizes at flickr.]
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CONFESSION:
Sometimes I click that LinkWithin: You Might Also Like widget on my own blog, when I see something that doesn't look familiar. Sometimes that takes me to a poem I don't remember writing, and sometimes I'm impressed, by something I wrote myself.
Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be able to write that well again.
The falling dream. The flying dream.
The dream in which you lose your teeth.
The abandoned kittens, the lost dogs,
the infant floating in its cradle on the lake.
The woman weeping, alone, in the forest.
The beast with an urgent message,
a critical missive you don't understand.
You fall, and someone offers his hand.
You reach out, but your fingers slip
through one another like light, like water.
You walk through the rooms of your life.
They are laid out, one by one, like a rail-
road flat with no corridors, no hallways.
You watch your own life pass as though
in a mirror, somehow reversed, somehow
not quite as it was. You arrive at now.
You wake in the fog of morning, slanted
bars of light on the ceiling. These dreams
wrap the shoulders of your waking hours,
a hooded shawl for your long, flat days.
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