"For every good poem, there are seven bad ones."
This one bit of advice from Creative Writing class has stuck with me for a while. I tend to write poems en masse, spilling out stray thoughts onto a page for a few hours at a time. Usually, I don't read them again until much later, but when I do, almost every single one has something wrong with it. One or two seem to show some promise, so I reluctantly share them via the Unique projection screen. It is then that my worst fears or my wildest dreams are confirmed. I have been met with everything from scathing remarks (it's all more dramatic when people are criticizing your own work) to gushing praise. The praise usually is for a poem that I was either nervous about or disliked -- I can never quite figure out the critics.
The seven bad poems can sometimes become fourteen, or on certain fortuitous occasions, three. They may tumble out all at once, or take on a slow, steady gallop. More often than not, I sit idly, twirling my pencil or twiddling my thumb. I am, albeit foolishly, entertaining the hope that the Muses may take some pity on me. Should they be late, there's always the vapid time-sucking abyss known as the internet. Or should I decide to be more productive, there's always homework. Some of my best poems come to me while I'm churning out essays or math problems. For some reason, the busier I am, the better my writing becomes. If I was the subject of a nature documentary, this would be the time the narrator announces, "The writer thrives under pressure, reaching towards the sun despite the spiraling chaos outside her doorstep."
The Muses tend to pay me a visit right when I'm about to fall asleep. In a crazed frenzy, I attempt to ingrain the idea into my brain, convincing myself that I will write it down first thing in the morning. The second I wake up, I find that it has scurried away. Disappointed, I spend the rest of the day shifting through the cluttered corners of my mind for an answer. A few hours, days, or even weeks later, I will finally find an inkling of the original idea. At this point, I have probably come up with ten other better ones -- more than enough to satisfy the beautiful seven-to-one ratio of poetry creation.
I don't write poems, but I know what you mean by ideas coming at the most inopportune moments. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea for a story or a question that desperately needs asking spinning around in my mind. I've learned that I can never remember my thoughts the next morning, so I have to turn on the lights at 3 in the morning to jot down my notes.
ReplyDeleteI loved your sentence from the "nature documentary." You should write for Planet Earth and get Mr. Sutton to narrate it.
I also love the imagined documentary line. Very believable and funny. I think the most important thing, once you've written your fifteen or four or forty-five poems, is telling the good from the "not yet" (or maybe sometimes even the "never" : )
ReplyDeleteI understand the feeling, the one you described with the pencil-twirling. Some days, I realize, you really aren't going to write any good poetry. It just isn't going to happen.
ReplyDeleteThat the point at which we must submit ourselves to the roaring dark.
That is the point at which we must embrace "the spiraling chaos outside" our doorsteps.
That is the point at which we give up, assume an alternate identity, and write the worst poems we possibly can.
A hiaku for you (likely to be one of my 7)
ReplyDeleteNever doubt yourself
There is so much potential
Take courage my dear
:)