How is it that I can see in other's writing where they have gone wrong? Yet in my own I am entirely blind? This isn't particularly the case for writing prose - that's a little simpler for me to see, but poetry…poetry is almost impossible. I can happily teach my students to magnify one moment, one important fact, keep it tight, tell the audience in detail about that one precious thing. Don't distill your ideas by having too many of them in one poem. All these little nuggets of advice, yet can I apply them for myself? No. I suspect I'm still too close to the poems I have written - I need to let them wallow for a little longer - to ripen off. But I want to start to submit poetry to various places, I need to get stuff out there…but I feel as if I have nothing right now, nothing at all.
The simple answer to that is to write more. Write anything. Just write. And perhaps it would be a good idea to go back through the things I have sitting in my virtual drawers - folders and documents within my laptop where old stories sit mouldering away. Revise, redraft, rewrite. Resubmit.
Work.
I could quite happily spend many, many hours reading advice on how to write, how to redraft, where to submit things. But how will this get me to write any more? Truly I am the queen of procrastination.
I think maybe I have to set myself a target of writing at least 1000 words a day. Every day. 1000 words of anything. Anything at all. Just write.
I'll see how that goes…expect regular updates as I shall count writing in my blog as part of that 1000 words.
1 comment:
There's a good book by Julia Cameron called "The Sound of Paper".
But I've always found the advice the old journo gives the narrator in 'Brigh Lights Big City' works well: write before breakfast.
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