Writing to think

Sometimes I'd like to pare away all the little irritations, all the everyday stuff that gets in the way of life – what shall we have for supper? Is it time to leave now? Where did I put that pair of socks? Do I really have to finish reading 'To the Lighthouse'? I'd love to put all of those to the side and make space to write...about....what? Because actually, you know, that is my life – life is the thing that goes on while you're dreaming about tomorrow – I can't remember who said that, for some reason John Lennon comes to mind.

This isn't some terribly worthy post about how to write or what to write about but rather the dull ramblings of stuff in my head while part of my consciousness – probably somewhere deeply submerged – I work out what I actually want to write about. Do we even decide what to write about I wonder? At the moment at the front of my head I'm considering this rather sticky keyboard on which my clean fingertips are carrying out a rather grimy Riverdance – who on earth leaves a keyboard like it's had a tub of yoghurt chucked over it? Don't answer that one, not even in your head. This keyboard is in a public space which makes the very suggestion of misuse of a computer grim.

And then for a brief moment Microsoft Word stopped working – blank screen, a moment of binary pique at the suggestion it'd been misused as some sort of public sex toy. As if.

I can see how from just these few ramblings I have the suggestions of a poem; a collection of thoughts about being here now. Something to make something else from – the creative act rather like the spillage on the keyboard.

 

And my fingertips still feel sticky and I've still not thought of anything new or interesting to say but the desire to communicate – born out of a sense of boredom and the inability to get onto Facebook – has led me to meander in amongst the tall grass and weeds of my imagination. My subconscious happily tucked up in a Mariana Trench where the thoughts, all dressed in white woollen jumpers and wearing three day old stubble, worry about ever resurfacing or contacting the conscious again.

Hmmm.

Unpicking knots and hour-glass figure poems

Last week I went on an Arvon course at The Hurst in Shropshire with the wonderful Daljit Nagra and Julie Copus – the week was quite wonderful and I’m sure I’ll mention it again in later posts. One immediate effect that last week has had is to encourage me to interrogate my own poetry far more than I have before. I’m finding myself going back to poems that I knew weren’t quite right but had something going for them and I’m tugging them apart line by line, word by word, stitching new bits in here and there in the hope that I’ll eventually come up with a new set of Emperor’s clothes….

Looking at your own work is (for me at least) the hardest thing to do because even after weeks of ‘resting’ a piece I still know the story and what I wanted to say and I can’t see past that to see what the poem needs to say. I had a conversation with Julia about this and she said that I was rather like someone listening to a great piece of music through headphones and singing along – I could hear the entire orchestra but all the audience got was my a capella version – she did kindly add that she was sure I had a lovely voice. I’ve always suspected I’m a little tone deaf.

So what’s the best way to deal with this problem? How do we make our work convey exactly what we want them to say? I truly wish I had a quick answer to this one, I wish I could say, “Well, it’s easy, just do X, Y, Z and then Bob’s your uncle and a deal for your first collection will be yours for the taking!” But I can’t. So far my remedy for redrafting is as follows – and this holds true for any type of creative writing whether it’s a novel, short story or poetry and even for writing non-fiction too.

Don’t censor yourself in the first draft

Try to train yourself to write freely or practice ‘automatic’ writing. Stephen King recommends this in his brilliant book, ‘On Writing’. Set yourself a time limit each day when you will not be disturbed by anything. Then write whatever comes out of your fingers. Last week I put myself under pressure at one point – I’d poured cold coffee over myself, wasted my break by waiting next to an empty loo I thought was occupied and had to write something, anything within ten minutes – here’s the start of it

“I’m harassed, panicking, I don’t like being pushed this is not how I work. I like plans, preparation, being ready, not hurried. I come prepared, I don’t just throw things together. I plan, prepare. I admit I’m anal and like order and I’ve not even begun to say what I wanted to say because I’m panicking, unprepared. I don’t like this. I feel boxed in, cornered – a rabbit in headlights except rabbits don’t do that deer do but rabbits just ignore the headlights and go squish under the wheels of a 4x4…..”

And from then on a poem suddenly appeared. It was a piece all about people who come to the countryside with very different expectations of their life to those who have always lived there. I admit it, it was a bit of a rant but one I hadn’t intended to write until I was put under that bit of pressure and also because I tend to write a great deal without thinking - ‘automatic’ writing.

So that’s fine, you’ve now got something down on paper. Great. Now what?

 

Put it away for a few weeks

Honestly, it helps. If you can put it away for more than a few weeks that’s great – with any luck you’ll have forgotten writing it and you’ll be able to see what the piece is really about. Distance – that’s the thing. Finding distance with your work is so important – you need to see the writing as something away from you, not part of you. Objectivity is what I’m getting at here and when you’ve just written something it’s hard to be objective and see things like weak line endings, bad meter, poor images and so on. After a few weeks those things should (hopefully) become a little clearer.

Now you’re at the stage that I was a few weeks ago – loads of stuff written, redrafted after a few weeks and then I’d even submitted pieces here and there. Some of the poems have been successful and some haven’t – that’s not always because they’ve been poor poems (I tell myself) but sometimes the editors have been looking for different types of work or perhaps just recently found something similar that they preferred. Well, at least that is what I was telling myself, but now – after last week’s many conversations – I’m beginning to see that some of what I’ve written isn’t yet fully formed. My background has been very much story based – I’ve always been a voracious reader of fiction, I wrote a novella for my Masters, I wrote opinion pieces for a magazine – all stories of a type. Yet my poetry has tended towards lots of abstract and rather nebulous ideas…apart from those that have made it into print…guess what? They’ve been rather like tiny stories.

So, my next piece of advice…

Apply the same rules of writing to fiction AND poetry

When you want to create a really rounded and fully formed character in a story you consider how you describe them with all the senses, how they speak, how they move, what others think about them, what others say about them, what motivates them and so on. So apply that to a character in your poem – think about what they’d say, what motivates them and so on. Even apply it to your poem – what is motivating it? What’s it really about? Pull it apart, work out if each and every line, each and every word works with your poem and with what you want it to say. Try writing out your poem in longhand if you normally use a PC or laptop. Try writing out your poem into prose, change the line endings, add words, take them away, keep slowly chipping away at it until it looks exactly as you want it to.

This last bit is the hardest part of all and I’m still grappling with them – so expect some further posts in the future attempting to make this part of the process somewhat clearer!

At the moment I’ve pulled one old piece apart and I know it’s saying something – originally it was an observational piece about two elderly women on the bus – I watched them and they interested me. Now I know from what I’ve written and rewritten that it’s a piece about being in the mother-daughter relationship and being overshadowed. The poem still doesn’t work yet, in fact it’s got rather an hour-glass figure – a great beginning, a strong end but nothing in the middle. I know that just like prose fiction I need to give it an event, something to hang it all around, something to give it tension but right now I can’t see what that might be. So this poem will stay in my Drafts folder for a while longer and that’s irritating because I like things finished….which is why I probably rush stuff and submit it before it’s really ready.

The way you speak to me….

Another post about poetry and how it works, this time on Tone.

There is a famous story about a professor of Linguistics who is explaining double negatives to his students, ‘I can’t not eat the cake’, for example, and how a double negative makes a positive but the reverse, a double positive, does not make a negative. From the back of the room a student calls out, “Yeah, right.”

The words ‘yeah, right’ do not form a negative on their own, in fact most of the time they will be a double positive but in this case the negative was conveyed by the tone.

Another example – you look out of the window and it’s raining and you say, “What a beautiful day” or you lose your keys and remark, “That’s marvellous.” The words themselves are all positive but because of the tone used it is clear to the listener that you mean the opposite.

So what does all this mean for poetry? As we all know poetry was always traditionally recited aloud and even now it’s far easier to understand if it’s voiced rather than silently read. It’s easy to convey tone when speaking but if a poem is only read silently it can leave it ambiguous. Here’s an example, William Carlos Williams’s poem, “This is just to say”

This is just to say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

 

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

 

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

So, was he really sorry? Probably not. Tone is conveyed by voice but it can also be conveyed by the words used and their context. Going back to the Linguistics Professor and his student we don’t need to hear the student saying, “Yeah, right” to know that he said this with a tone of sarcasm because of the context and also the words themselves. Had he said, “Yes, absolutely correct” we would probably have concluded that this was a keen and slightly sycophantic student – again from the words used – the implied tone.

So, tone expresses a meaning, it’s implied by the words used, their context and by the ways they are said aloud. We can conclude that William Carlos Williams is not sincerely sorry in ‘This is just to say’ because he tells us what pleasure he had in eating the plums saved by the person to whom he writes the poem and he admits that he knew they were being saved for that person’s breakfast. Williams implies an intimate relationship with the other person – whose fridge would you take food from? We know from interviews with Williams that this was a note written to his wife – he was a doctor and often worked night shifts, returning home to raid the fridge before going to bed.

Henry Reed the WW2 poet uses two voices in his famous poem, ‘The naming of parts’

NAMING OF PARTS

To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighbouring gardens,
          And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
          Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
          Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
          They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
          For to-day we have naming of parts.

Each voice has a different tone; the first voice is clearly an army instructor explaining in simple, prosaic terms what the soldiers are being taught about weapons, the tone is efficient, explanatory and almost brutal. The second voice is the internal one of a soldier whose mind is wandering away from the weapons lesson and onto the surrounding beauty of a garden in springtime. The soldier’s tone is gentle, dreamlike and Romantically poetic as he looks at the flowers, insects and trees.

The overall effect of two contrasting voices used in this way is a bitter anti-war tone. The brutal matter of fact way the instructor explains the machinery of war is offset by the soldier’s beautiful images which hint at deeper meanings.

- In the first stanza there is a mention of Japonica – a beautiful flowering tree but also a native plant of Japan – one of the countries against which the soldier will be fighting.

- The second stanza makes mention of the trees silent gestures which they (the soldiers) have not got – they will not be allowed to continue in peace, they have to fight the war.

- The third stanza mentions how fragile the blossoms are – we could argue that this suggests the soldiers are just like the blossoms, particularly in light of First World War imagery of poppies in the fields of Flanders.

- The final stanza is full of sexual references – ‘rapidly backwards and forwards’, ‘fumbling’, ‘cocking-piece’ and ‘bees’ all implying that these young men will have this taken away from them because of the war – ‘in our case we have not got’.

So we can see that in Reed’s poem the language, its context and the use of the voices all contribute to the overall tone.

Sometimes poets like playwrights or novelists will use characters in order to express views and ideas and thus giving us an alternative persona for the ‘I’ of the poem. Among the most famous of these are Robert Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’ (1842) and T. S. Eliot’s ‘The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1917). Later poets often employed this persona method but in the 1950s and 60s this moved on to ‘confessional’ poetry which leaves the reader (or listener) wondering if this really happened.

John Berryman’s ‘The Dream Songs’ play with tone and use not one but two personas, ‘Henry’ and ‘Mr Bones’. The collection which won Berryman the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 is

“a sequence of sonnet-like poems whose wrenched syntax, scrambled diction, extraordinary leaps of language and tone, and wild mixture of high lyricism and low comedy plumbed the extreme reaches of a human soul and psyche.” http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/6

Dream Song 4

Filling her compact & delicious body

with chicken páprika, she glanced at me

twice.

Fainting with interest, I hungered back

and only the fact of her husband & four other people

kept me from springing on her

or falling at her little feet and crying

'You are the hottest one for years of night

Henry's dazed eyes

have enjoyed, Brilliance.' I advanced upon

(despairing) my spumoni.--Sir Bones: is stuffed,

de world, wif feeding girls.

--Black hair, complexion Latin, jewelled eyes

downcast . . . The slob beside her feasts . . . What wonders is

she sitting on, over there?

The restaurant buzzes. She might as well be on Mars.

Where did it all go wrong? There ought to be a law against Henry.

--Mr. Bones: there is.

Mr Bones and Henry act rather like the angel and devil characters we often see in cartoons which represent base instincts, Freud’s Id or the devil character and the angel Freud’s Superego or the conscience – the remaining part of the personality being the ego or the conscious part of ourselves. Berryman plays with these two contrasting sides of his personality to show us how it feels to suffer from frustrated desire. Henry is ‘dazed’ by this beautiful woman and would jump on her if her husband and four others were not there and he is plunged into despair because she will never be his. Alone Henry’s desires would give the poem a melancholy tone – a desperate lover destined never to have the object of his affections, ‘Brilliance’ with her ‘jewelled eyes’, even if Henry does slip a little into his true baser instincts’ What wonders is she sitting on, over there?’. However, Mr Bones, Berryman’s conscience puts Henry’s longings into context as he points out that the world is full of ‘feeding girls’ and the final witty reply to Berryman’s ego wishing there was a law against Henry (or lust), ‘there is’.

Throughout the poem Berryman uses bathos to give the humorous tone; the mention of ‘chicken paprika’, the ‘husband & four other people’, that she is ‘the hottest one’, the ‘spumoni’ ice cream, her buttocks and the use of colloquial language, ‘de’, ‘wif’. All of this purposely works against any traditionally romantic and high-flown notions which Berryman puts in opposition.

Again we can see that the tone is created by the words used, their context and the voices used by Berryman.

Finally poets can address their poems to a particular listener which lends a different tone – both more intimate and particular. John Donne’s ‘The Sun Rising’ is written to the sun.

The Sun Rising

Busy old fool, unruly Sun,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?

Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

Late school-boys and sour prentices,

Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,

Call country ants to harvest offices ;

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

 

Thy beams so reverend, and strong

Why shouldst thou think ?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

But that I would not lose her sight so long.

If her eyes have not blinded thine,

Look, and to-morrow late tell me,

Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine

Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.

Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,

And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

 

She's all states, and all princes I ;

Nothing else is ;

Princes do but play us ; compared to this,

All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.

Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,

In that the world's contracted thus ;

Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

To warm the world, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;

This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

This device gives Donne the opportunity to tell the sun how unimportant it is when compared to his lover. The tone is romantic, the first blush of love, which we see particularly at the end of the first stanza, ‘Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,/Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.’ The use of the end rhyme emphasizes the romantic, troubadour style – this is a poem which is easily remembered because of the rhymes and can therefore be repeated to ones lover.

Donne also uses a gently reprimanding tone towards the sun as if it were an elderly badly behaved relative; ‘busy old fool, unruly sun’. This gentle chiding coupled with the romantic remarks about his lover – ‘She is all states’ enforces the sweeping romantic tone – this is a man entirely infatuated; ‘This bed’ has become the ‘centre’ of his world and ‘these walls’ the only place the sun need shine upon.

X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia in their excellent book, ‘An Introduction to Poetry’ explain precisely about tone -

“Strictly speaking, tone isn’t an attitude’ it is whatever in the poem makes an attitude clear to us: the choice of certain words instead of others, the picking out of certain details…..To perceive the tone of a poem rightly, we need to read the poem carefully, paying attention to whatever suggestions we find in it.”

As is always the case with poetry – read, read and read again.

Clichés, Sentimentality and Robert Burns

I am a sentimental romantic, I admit it. I try to avoid being overly sentimental when I write, in fact when I redraft I try to take out anything that’s even slightly slushy – as much as I love to cry over dead dogs (Greyfriar’s Bobby makes me wail), loss and misery, it’s only good when it’s well written. So I avoid the clichéd Hallmark style and try to aim for a more sophisticated version which allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Sometimes though familiarity really does breed contempt. Clichés become just that because they’re overused, not because they’re wrong. Words and phrases become overused because they’re good and everyone wants to say them and to write them. When I’m writing fiction I tend to use the occasional cliché in my first draft, in fact sometimes I’ll even put them in on purpose. Why? Because I use them rather like Post It notes or a highlighter pen – they remind me when I come back to the piece that I need to expand and rework that sentence or paragraph - I want it to mean the same thing as the cliché but I want it in my words and not the overused ones. 

One of the most well known and hackneyed clichés is that of a red rose to signify love – you can’t fail to have noticed how the price of red roses goes through the roof (oops, cliché), the price of red roses rises to ridiculous levels (alliteration but doesn’t have the same ring though, does it?) around Valentine’s Day. So who do we have to thank for that one? Not just Interflora but one poet in particular- Robert Burns who wrote the lyric poem ‘Oh my love is like a red, red rose’ in 1788 or there abouts.

Oh, my love is like a red, red rose

O my Luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play’d in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile!

There are various archaic and modern spellings to be found in different versions of this poem and indeed there are musical versions too as this is a true ballad, a lyrical poem. However, for me anyway, the best version of this is a spoken one – read by a man with a Scots’ accent. For all that this is a over used and exceedingly well known piece, it’s still one of my favourites and almost moves me to tears each time I read it – I did say I’m a sentimental romantic! I picture this as the parting of lovers forced apart by circumstance – or maybe I’m just influenced by the life story of Burns who was prevented from marrying his sweetheart and mother to his twin sons until he became famous. The words of this poem voice a very real feeling and desire to be eternal lovers – something that seems so unlikely and unusual in today’s cynical world.

Anyway, listen to Alan Cumming reading it – sadly the embedding has been disabled or I’d have put the YouTube window in here.  It might be hugely clichéd now but I adore this poem.

Networking and Marketing for Writers and Artists

Last night I went along to the Horsebridge Arts and Community Centre in Whitstable to take part in a Creative Canterbury networking event, and very good it was too. I met Alma Caira there - she makes hand made silver jewellery, does web design, animation, and photography in addition to teaching art and crafts. I'm hoping she soon gets a website showcasing her work to which I can direct you for all your jewellery and web design needs...my commission is cheap too! I also chatted briefly with the Arts Development Officer, Mitch Robertson who now wants to come and scream in my garden - living out in the sticks does have its benefits, maybe I could start up a whole new sideline of offering a Place To Scream.

Anyway, in amongst eating strawberries and grapes we listened to a brief talk about marketing for creative businesses which was mainly aimed at visual artists and craftspeople. All fascinating stuff as the speaker mentioned building a brand and giving added value. Most writers today already have to do this in order to get ourselves out there and known but rather than us providing gift wrapping or technical knowledge about displaying work we promote ourselves and others on our blogs, Twitter and Facebook. We write articles (like this one) which we hope will be of some use to other writers and maybe of some interest to our general readers too. We tell you what we're doing, how we do it and how you can do it too. We aim to entertain and inform and with any luck you'll come back and read something else here again, or perhaps you'll remember my name and look for other things I've written elsewhere. In other words, we try to build a readership, a following. I know I'm very much still in the early stages of this - I completed my Masters Degree only two years ago (feels longer).

The marketing man last night told us how important our network of satisfied customers is and how each happy 'consumer' experience is related to seven other people but the bad ones are told to...I think he said ten but maybe it was twenty-one people. Anyway, his point was that when you're not making an effort with your customers they tell more people how bad you are and people like to feel good about their consumer choices. For artists producing an item like a painting, a sculpture, jewellery or similar things this means talking to your customers; telling them about yourself and the item, giving them a story which they can recount to their friends. It also means making your 'product' a real luxury item by providing specialist knowledge, wrappings, in short giving or offering something extra. As consumers we all know this works - just think about the difference between a supermarket own brand packet of pasta and the one 'handmade' in Tuscany - be honest, is there a huge difference between the cooked pasta by the time you've covered it in wine drenched bolognase? Not really, but then look at the packaging - cheap clear plastic with the supermarket's name printed in large letters or gorgeous dark blue paper with jaunty yellow stickers. I know which one I'd rather my friends saw when they come over for dinner - my bank account doesn't agree but that's besides the point. The luxury item says something about us as consumers - it says, "I have good taste" and quite possibly, "I have more money than sense" but I'll gloss over that....And if you're purchasing something that costs over £500 (and a good piece of art or design will cost this) then you should be getting more than the cheap clear plastic wrapping with the supermarket name on it. The marketing man talked a great deal about how there are no real differences between BMW and Mercedes Benz cars, for example, but branding relies upon our emotional choices - how we feel about ourselves for buying one brand over another.

And before you think that this is useless advice for writers...just consider for a moment which books you'd rather have on your shelves or to be seen reading in a coffee shop....Jackie Collins or Margaret Atwood? Dan Brown or A.S Byatt? I'm not saying that any of those authors produce a bad 'product' - I've read books by all of them. I won't tell which I enjoyed most....but I'm a firm believe in wide and eclectic reading, a mixed diet for the mind if you like but I know an awful lot about sex, shopping and secret codes.

I think that for writers, and indeed for anyone in the Creative Industries, it's important to know your market; to know who reads or buys what you produce, to know what they like and then you can produce more of it that's better and more desirable. Personally I'd love to be a literary writer who deals with deep philosophical questions and appears on an A level syllabus (don't ask why that's important to me...I don't know, but it seems like the pinnacle of achievement - keep your Booker prize, I want to be studied by spotty seventeen year olds). That's my dream. My reality, as I'm quickly beginning to realise, is that I find it easier to write light humorous pieces with the occasional bit of thought-provoking going on - rather like a puddle with a hidden pothole - and I've been paid to write like that in the past. Maybe I ought to return to that half-written humorous novel, plot it out properly and get it written....

Last night was really worthwhile, it's given me plenty to think about and plenty to write about Now all that remains are two things, firstly a question I need to ask you, dear reader...what would you like to see more of here?

And lastly, that by reading this blog and telling others about it you're showing the world how erudite, amusing and downright sexy you are. Honestly.

On rejections and dealing with them

I spent a large part of July worrying about having a job in September - budget cuts and so on - and part of that worrying pushed me to write lots of poetry and send out everything I have to magazines and journals. On one hand this is a Good Thing as it gave me something to focus upon and it's what I should be doing anyway. On the other hand the downside is that I've received three rejections so far and heard nothing from the others.

There are two voices in my head holding a conversation about this state of affairs; one is the sensible calm voice who knows that rejections are a necessary part of writing, that more poetry is written than read today, that maybe some of the poems were not really ready, that they didn't fit what the editor is currently looking for and that I haven't had them all rejected yet. The other voice is... well, more of a shout, a tantrum with a stamped foot if you like.

Writing is a solitary pursuit; we write firstly for ourselves, to ourselves in order to understand the world, to make sense of our feelings. For some people their writing ends there - they write diaries which explore their inner world but never see the light of the outer world. The rest of us write because we want to share something with all of you out there we want to connect, 'only connect' as E.M.Forster said. So we spend our days watching, listening and collecting bits of life which we then transcribe and transform onto the page, making sense of it, giving it a new life, making it fresh. The transcribing and transforming is the alchemy - the bit we do almost in secret, tucked away literally for some in their writing sheds, offices, attics and garrets and metaphorically for others writing in cafes and libraries who hide in plain sight. When we finally return our work to the world we, I am often so blinkered that it is like my first born child - perfect in every way.

This is getting terribly poetic here - I'll just take a moment out to translate...

I love my writing therefore I expect everyone else to do so too. I'm shocked and hurt (with dramatic flounces) when others do not feel the same way.

So that's where all the foot stamping came from and it should last approximately 12 hours if you're lucky but don't allow yourself to continue the tantrum for over 24 hours if at all possible. Why? The short answer is (and this hurts) no one cares. The long answer is what the sensible voice in my head has been saying throughout all of this.....

Rejections are a necessary part of writing -
Your writing may simply not be good enough just yet and even with rejections there is a hierarchy (at least in my head...) - no reply whatsoever means the poem either got lost or really stank, a standard form rejection means it was poor but the editor is polite, a note asking you to submit again in the future means it was still poor but you show some promise, a note explaining why they didn't accept your poem means that you're close and the poem isn't bad.
All writers even the megastars like Stephen King have been rejected - I regularly recommend his book 'On Writing' to new writers. If you didn't ever receive rejections you (I) would begin to doubt the worth of doing this...to me if something is worth doing not only should it be done well but also it shouldn't be easy. Rejections are good for the soul and good for building humility - a very necessary trait in writing so you can continue to learn and develop.

More poetry is written than read today -
Sad but true. If each of us who claims to love poetry actually bought collections from new poets or subscribed to the very same magazines we wish to be published by then there would be a bigger market for poetry. It's the chicken and the egg all over again - the chicken is the reader that gives birth to the egg, the writer...or maybe the chicken is the writer....Either way, if you want to write poetry then read it. On that note I'll briefly get on my soapbox - make sure you're reading contemporary poetry as much or more than the classics. You live now, so find out what people are writing now. You need to know what has gone before but not to the exclusion of what is happening now. For example, rock stars, pop bands, musicians generally have an awareness of Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Blues, Jazz and so on, some even use pieces of classical music reworked...which reminds me - listen to Pachelbel's 'Canon' first, then listen to The Farm's 'All Together Now'.



Back to the poetry...

Maybe some of the poems were not really ready -
Did I actually put this poem away for a few weeks before I sent it out? Sometimes I can get so impressed with myself (I know I need to learn a little more humility but it's a fine balance between that and having self-confidence!) that I send out new work before it's ready. When the rejection arrives you need to look again at the poem - does it still work for you? Perhaps it needs some further revisions - now is the time to do it before you send it out again.

It didn't fit what the editor is currently looking for -
Poetry does go in trends and fashions and different journals and magazines look for different types of work. I know this is obvious but when you receive the rejection you need to remind yourself of this. Poetry tastes are different, it's all subjective and the editor you sent your precious piece to may simply not like poems about kittens (actually no one apart from small children likes poems about kittens - as much as we love the furry beasts we don't want to read soppy poems about them). Just like when you broke up with that guy who smelled odd - it's them, not you.

I haven't had them all rejected yet -

Yet.

So the short sensible answer to rejection is to 'man up' and revise, redraft and resubmit elsewhere. Keep reading, keep writing and hopefully keep improving.

I'm now going to take some of my own excellent advice and look at the latest batch of rejections.


Oh, and by the way, the job did re-materialise so I won't be entirely penniless by Christmas.

Writing for fun

Most of the writing I do is simply to please me - whether it's fiction or poetry I am my first reader and like to entertain myself. I think most people, if not all that write creatively do it because they have to, or want to, even if it's never seen by anyone else. I always love to talk to elderly ladies at family parties because so often they reveal that they've kept a diary or some sort of journal since they were a child - diary writing used to be so very common. I kept a diary from about the age of ten or eleven right up until I was in my late teens. One day I must look at these again - that is if I can bear to read the terrible purple prose and daily outpourings of teenage angst. Undoubtedly it will be full of dull, petty arguments and repeated fantasies involving Simon Le Bon.

More recently I've turned some of my experiences into comic turns - a couple I've posted here in this blog, quite a few can be found on various internet forums, especially those which ask a question each week - I submit anonymously of course. Most recently the divine Domestic Sluttery held a competition asking for culinary tales of woe, the winner receiving a gorgeous pair of 'I love cake' earrings from Love Hearts and Crosses - I posted the following story and won!


"A couple of years ago I was having some friends round to supper and I'd planned a very impressive rolled pork loin with apricot and herb stuffing all tied together with bacon, home grown vegetables - I was out to impress. I'd gone to the local farmers' market and bought the pork loin, then left it in the kitchen under a gauze umbrella thing ready for me to begin my creation once I'd got the veg. I went out to the garden (in my floral dress, of course) collecting mange tout, carrots and fresh herbs - impressive...but I was married to a farmer - none of it was my doing - I spent my days reading books and drinking wine!
So, there I was, Lady Bountiful, returning to the kitchen with my veggie haul, only to discover the large black farm cat had dragged the pork loin onto the floor and eaten half of it! It was still raw!

I cut off the chewed bit, rinsed it under a tap and carried on with the recipe, adding some more bacon and pretended it hadn't happened.
Later that evening once my guests had drank half their body weight in wine I told them - they don't talk to me anymore."

Here's the cat that did the deed, he goes by the name of Mog.