Community Ties

This morning, I completed a whole novel critique for one of the members of a small writing/support group I belong to on Facebook (shoutout to the lovely ladies of the #SFWG!) and it occurred to me what a wonderful opportunity the internet has given me.

I'm currently part of several writing communities, some virtual, some physical, and all important to my development as a writer.

For many, many years, I was an active moderator at Wild Poetry Forum. I found WPF when I was the young mother of 2, working full time, and trying to write something--anything--in the margins of my life. I had no flexibility to look for a local writing group and having access to a community of poets from across the globe and a place to post work for review meant I could participate in the time I could carve from my crazy life.

When I started to work on novel-length fiction, I stumbled into Forward Motion for Writers and quickly found a critique group there. It lasted for several years and I am still in contact with many of the members of the group. In fact, the artist (Jade Zivanovic) who designed and created the cover for THE BETWEEN was originally a member of that writing group. She is from Australia. I live in the US. Without FMWriters, I would never have had the great good fortune to work with her.

Another one of my communities emerged from a local workshop I took about 6 years ago. The Ultimate Science Fiction Writing Workshop introduced me to a group of local writers and after the formal workshop was over, we've stayed in touch using a combination of real-life meetups and an internet message board. In fact, it is from that group that the PEN-ULTIMATE anthology emerged from.

The #SFWG is a small community of writers--most of whom write historical fiction, though they let me play in their sandbox. :) #SFWG (and what it stands for is a secret!) is as much a private space to gripe, a place to share sorrows and triumphs, as it is a critique group. The wonderful ladies who make up this group know how much I appreciate their support this past year.

Another kind of community is what I call my 'water cooler': Google Plus. Over the past 2 years, I have grown to really appreciate the ability to hang out and talk 'shop' with a community of writers and artists there. When you work from home, alone, but for the company of two shelter dogs, it becomes crucial to have other folks to talk to.

I feel extremely fortunate to very literally have the world at my fingertips. Writing can be a very lonely endeavor. My myriad communities make my life so much more vibrant.

Today's blogpost is part of FMWriter's Merry-Go-Round Blog tour. To see what dozens of other writers from one of my communities have to say about their communities, this month's topic, check out the blog tour hub. 

The only way it can be said

Sometimes poetry is the only way something can be expressed.  At least I have found that true in my own life.  There is something about the indirectness of poetic imagery, the way it mines elements from the subconscious that normally wouldn't be let out of its cell that makes what emerges extraordinarily powerful.  

I have missed poetry in my life, these past few months.  My poetry books are waiting in a warehouse along with all our other belonging, for the reconstruction on our fire-damaged home to be completed.  But that is not the only reason I have lost my connection to poetry.

I have been afraid of what would emerge if I let myself write. 

So I have cut myself off from reading, writing, or responding to poetry.  In the process, I have both let down a community I care deeply about and have lost a part of myself that I have desperately needed.

It's April.  National Poetry Month.  It's time to take a deep breath and let what needs air and sunshine bubble to the surface.

I am hoping to share the drafts of new poems written this month here with you. It is a way to re-commit to the act of writing poetry. It is also a way to step back from the perfectionist practices in my life. This is raw, first draft writing. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't even have to be very good. It just needs to be written. And perhaps something I write will resonate with you, the reader, and you will write something in turn.

Unfolding

Fresh sheets always in the dryer, always
waiting for the door to open, waiting
to spill out on the floor of the laundry room.
White sheets on a dirt floor, indistinguishable
from the car wash towels, the dog
blanket, the once-white tube socks,
all uniformly gray. I try to bleach
my sorrow the color of boiled bone,
render it in the colander
of this grief. I lift the twisted mess
dripping grimy water
with the handle of a broom, snap
the wrinkles out of sheets
oblivion white. When I bury
my face to the folded stack
something still smolders.
--LJCohen, 4/1/11

Ah, Spring in New England

According to the weather report, it's supposed to snow this weekend. Well, that's the way Spring is in New England. The uncertain season.

In honor of the wonky weather that is Spring here, a poem written for one of Wild Poetry Forum's challenges.

Enjoy.

Storm Warnings
(after Rebecca Hoogs)

My dear, you are the meteorologist and I,
I am the weather, a cyclone churning off shore,
skipping across carefully plotted points
on well creased maps. To hell
with ratings and reputation. It's not
like you cause the tempest or the cold
shoulder, the run on milk and bread,
eggs. Still, it would always be best
if you waited for me to declare my intentions,
stick your head out the studio window
and agree. Yup, she's a doozy. That's right.
Right as rain. The rain I fell in
this morning while you flirted
with long range models, certain
tools in uncertain systems. No pressure,
but the superintendent's on the line, baby,
and my winds carry the fervent prayers
of schoolchildren everywhere, homework undone.
If you smile into the camera, bet
on a solid six to ten, I'll pout
and head off to sea or maybe just sit tight,
ignore the curses of weary plow drivers hours
from sleep and warmth, strand even you
at your desk. But once in a blue moon, I promise
to track exactly the way you expect.

--LJCohen

Wild Poetry Forum

Today's "NaPoMo" post is all about Wild Poetry Forum, my poetry home on the internet. While there are tons of internet sites and communities for poetry writers, I'd like to think Wild is a little special.

First, it's a large community and very active. This is good because you will get diversity in both the poetry posted, and in the kind of critique offered. If a community is too small, it can ultimately become narrow in scope, to the detriment of learning.

Second, it's a community of writers at varying developmental levels. Again, that's part of its diversity, but it also encourages a mentor relationship that develops among members. As members learn and grow, ones that have been mentored in this way go on to mentor others. This is a 'pay it forward' principle that works quite well at Wild.

Third, Wild is strongly moderated. We have a dedicated cadre of (volunteer) mods and admins who type their fingers off to make sure the board stays a safe, supportive, and challenging place for poets.

Forth, Wild has as part of its core mission to educate and nurture poets. To that end, we have weekly challenges and prompts, essentially a college class's worth of poetry goodness for anyone to take advantage of.

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, Wild has M at the helm and she is passionate about and dedicated to poetry. Wild wouldn't have come to be without her.

Where Challenges Take You

I've blogged before about Wild Poetry Forum, my poetry home on the 'net.  It's somewhat of a rarity for online poetry workshops in that it is large, inclusive of poets with all levels of experience, and doesn't subscribe to the 'American Idol' ethic of viciousness, while encouraging open and honest feedback.  It's not a perfect community--like any other gathering of individuals, there can be conflict and personality clashes, but for the most part Wild works.  Much to the credit of my fellow moderators and the site admins.

One of the parts of Wild that I love is the weekly challenges posted by our Administrator, ~M~.  An extraordinarily talented poet in her own right, she also works tirelessly to help the members improve their own writing and stretch their creative muscles.

I turn to her challenges, culled from a huge library of poetry books and lessons, when I feel stuck in my writing.

Writing to a challenge or a prompt is an excellent method to get out of your own way.  Challenges also take you to places you might not ever get to without the little push away from your comfort zone.

Here is a piece one of ~M~s recent challenges provoked.  It was a fun write, and a bit sideways from my usual voice.

Storm Warnings
after Rebecca Hoogs

My dear, you are the meteorologist and I,
I am the weather, a cyclone churning off shore,
skipping across carefully plotted points
on well creased maps. To hell
with ratings and reputation. It's not
like you cause the tempest or the cold
shoulder, the run on milk and bread,
eggs. Still, it would always be best
if you waited for me to declare my intentions,
stick your head out the studio window
and agree. Yup, she's a doozy. That's right.
Right as rain. The rain I fell in
this morning while you flirted
with long range models, certain
tools in uncertain systems. No pressure,
but the superintendent's on the line, baby,
and my winds carry the fervent prayers
of schoolchildren everywhere, homework undone.
If you smile into the camera, bet
on a solid six to ten, I'll pout
and head off to sea or maybe just sit tight,
ignore the curses of weary plow drivers hours
from sleep and warmth, strand even you
at your desk. But once in a blue moon, I promise
to track exactly the way you expect.

--LJCohen

The original prompt is here.  If you give this one a go yourself, feel free to post your poems in the comments.  I look forward to seeing what you create.

Attention: Poets in the Portland, OR area!

A public service announcement from me. :) I know the organizers of this conference (waves to M and Steve!) and if I were anywhere near the left coast, I'd so be there!

Please spread the word!

OREGON STATE POETRY ASSOCIATION
SPRING 2009 CONFERENCE

April 24 & 25, 2009
Portland, Oregon

Come by car, train, bus, or plane, but do come to the OSPA Spring 2009 Conference in Portland on April 24 & 25. Our theme is Open Roads. There will be poetry workshops, guest readings, open mic poetry readings, the Spring 2009 Poetry Contest winners presentation, and more.


___________________________________________
LOCATIONS

Friday, April 24
Powell’s City of Books
Burnside & 10th, Portland
6:30 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Mistress of Ceremonies: Sage Cohen, Author of Writing the Life Poetic

Saturday, April 25
The Native American Center at Portland State University
710 S.W. Jackson Street, Portland
8:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.


__________________________________________
CONFERENCE WORKSHOP LEADERS

Paul Hunter
Author of Breaking Ground, 2004 Washington State Book Award Winner

Workshop: Liftoff & Touchdown – Oral Poetry in Public Presentation
Borrowing some ruthless thinking and timeless tricks from the theater, we are going to discuss how to pick what to read, how to gauge your audience, and how to serve up your work so that it makes the greatest impact. How to help the poem and the whole reading take flight and land right where you want it. This will be a frank discussion, offering useful tips, with practical implications for all working writers who read in public.


John C. Morrison
Author of Heaven of the Moment, 2008 Oregon State Book Award Finalist

Workshop: Models, Memories, & Mayhem – The Play of Generating Poetry
What might be a few sure-fire ways to ignite the imagination and generate juicy, compelling drafts? Jumping from prompts presented by sample poems, trolling a guided memory for inspiration, and engaging in a frenetic wordplay exercise, we'll explore and refine pathways to a poem. After an open, dynamic exchange, you will leave the session with some enticing beginnings you'll want to pursue at your desk.


Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge
Author of poemcrazy and Foolsgold: Making Something From Nothing

Workshop: Poemcrazy – Freeing Your Life with Words
Dipping into our hearts as well as diverse books of poems, we’ll bring forth a colorful group word pool (using every color ink). From there we move into “dreamsense” and our own gatherings of words to explore who we are, where we come from, and where we’re going.


__________________________________________
CONFERENCE SPECIAL EVENT

Sharon Wood Wortman
Author of The Portland Bridge Book
will lead a Portland Bridge Walking Tour
Friday, April 24 at 2:00 p.m.

Tour the operator’s tower in the 1926 Burnside Bridge and walk to some of the city’s big Willamette River bridges, with stops at ODOT Region 1 to visit a hands-on bridge museum. We also ride MAX, conduct a test for synchronous vertical excitation on a very flexible tied arch, and more. Participants are invited to bring a favorite bridge poem to share. Total distance walked: ½ to 1 mile on level ground (ADA accessible).


Registration & Details at: www.oregonpoets.org

$45 Members
$55 Non-Members
$25 Students
$20 Bridge Walking Tour

The Art of Critique and the Problem of Ego

On Wild Poetry Forum, the poetry workshop I help moderate, we are having a discussion (actually a series of ongoing discussions) about critique and what is appropriate in response to critique.

Wild has been around for a decade (ancient history for internet venues) and is a robust workshop board with hundreds of active members. It has separate sub-forums for workshopping, light, and heavy critique, and in general, polices itself quite well. In all the years I've been a participant there, there have been relatively few incidents of overt snarkiness or ad hominem attacks.

Much of that has to do with a history of close moderation and an expectation within the community that that is not what we value. Nor do we condone vanity critique. Hearing that your work is the best thing since sliced bread is as useless to growth as a writer as a personal attack.

In the past several months, we have had an influx of new members who don't seem interested in participating in the community, rather, they react defensively to critique and spend too much time and energy justifying their work and not enough time critically examining their own process. There is a small sub group that posts, essentially, for one another's admiration and argues with anyone who thinks otherwise.

I don't understand that kind of behavior.

When I ask for feedback, it is the critical, thoughtful response I crave. What I need to know is what isn't working for the reader and what is. If there is consensus among a large number of voices, I can be more certain of my path to revision. This is not to say I write by committee or agree with every critique. BUT, I do listen. I do take it in. And without defensiveness.

If I can't hear critical feedback with an open heart, then I am denying the creative process. Even critiques I do not agree with are valuable. They tell me how a reader has interpreted a piece of writing. I write, not for my own ego, but to be received by a reader. It is an interdependent process, for the most part, separated by space and time. If I put a poem or a story out into the world, I rarely get feedback from the reader. But in a workshop model, I can bring that interaction into real time.

I am also part of a in-real-life critique group for fiction writing. At our last meeting, one of the members prefaced his comments with an apology for being so 'tough'. To my way of thinking, no apology was needed. What I received from him is what I seek: honest feedback, given in the spirit of improving the work.

In order for critique to provide that essential feedback loop, there needs to be authenticity on both sides: both the writer and the reviewer need to understand that it is not about ego, not about proving oneself smarter or better, or snarkier, but about honoring the creative process.

In that kind of environment, true artistic growth can and does happen.

And isn't that what we seek as artists?

Moving Forward

I've spent quite a lot of time over the past 2 months beating myself up over slow progress on "Heal Thyself." I've been feeling stuck, as if I've been struggling through the final 10+K forever. The truth is, on Feb 7th, I posted a snippet at 88k. Today, I clicked over 93k. That's a net gain of 5K in 2 months. With my unofficial goal of 1k a day/ 5K a week it would be easy to look at this small progress as failure.

The truth is I'm pleased with what I've accomplished. Would I have liked a higher word count? Certainly. But this 5K was hard fought and hard won. And it wasn't the only writing I did in the timeframe. I wrote and edited a short story for the Writers of the Future Contest, edited and organized an ebook on pain for writers, and provided workshop support for poems at Wild Poetry Forum.

In addition, I worked up the idea for a new YA UF and drafted a few scenes for it.

All in all, I'll take it for someone writing in and around the demands of family and a day job.

Which is not to say I don't want to get back to my 1K a day goal.


Goals are wonderful as long as they help move you forward. Slavish adherence to an unrealistic goal can derail the writing process.

May the writing flow smoothly for all of you in writer land.

Writers, readers and critique, oh my

There was a discussion on FM the other day about writing/critique partners. I was talking about the difficulty of finding the right person--the reader who could be the advocate for the book and its best expression while offering commentary in a way that was positive and helpful. Then I mentioned that I *had* found such a reader in my friend, Diane, but that I felt guilty asking her to read my work as she was not a writer and I didn't feel as if I could reciprocate.

The other chatters gave me a 'I could have had a v8' moment. They said to ask her. Ask her if she wanted to be my reader? Wow--what a concept. LOL. So I did. And she said yes. (Whoo hoo! Thank you, my friend!)

What is amazing about Diane is that she reads with the eye of a reader and the heart of an artist. She also knows me well enough to know I don't want things sugar coated and she can tell me *why* something either works or doesn't work for her, both on a specific level and on a philosophical level.

I participate in several critique groups, but there is a difference between critique as a writer gives and critique as a reader gives. Both are important, but ultimately, we are writing for readers not other writers.

Other thoughts on critique. I've been hoping to see more critique posted on Wild Poetry forum. It's a fast moving board, with dozens of poems posted each day. More folks post than offer critique. Some do not because they feel intimidated. Others don't feel as if they have any skill in critique, or that they are still learning the basics of writing poetry.

My feeling is that for the board to thrive, more members need to post relevant critique more often. I'm planning on running a mini-course on poetry critique in the hopes of seeing more participation in the crit process. Otherwise, it falls on the moderators and a few members.

Days of 2007: A Challenge Poem

One of my goals for this year is to write poetry more regularly. One of the ways I can do that is to participate in the weekly challenges posted at Wildpoetry. So, I'm starting the year off with this piece, from the first challenge of '08.

Days of 2007

It was the year my father didn't die,
his kidneys distilling precious drops
of fluid gold. The boys burrowed in their bunks
each night despite my dark imaginings, footage
of scowl-faced teens with acne
and AK-47s. The year my eldest understood
strength could be a weapon. Another
year I sought to put aside fear and failed. The year
my mother was still able to recite the names
of children and spouses, birthdays, anniversaries.
I tried to teach the dog to roll over, emptied
the guest room closet of suits long out of style, folded paper
thin dumplings in the shape of little boats. I counted
backwards from fifty. The number of years between
my husband's age and his mother's when her heart
stopped fit too easily on the fingers of one hand.
It was the year I worried about too much
good luck just before turning
an ankle on the front stoop. The year my children
dragged laundry baskets up and down
two long flights when stairways twisted
into the shape of an Escher print and I practiced
patience, patience, let them ball up socks
and shove shirts into the wrong drawers.
My selfish year. I hoarded
what I loved, counted blessings
like a miser counts his coin, greedy
and grasping for more.

A deep breath

Writing has been more of a struggle the past few months than any time in the past 3 1/2 years. I'm not sure why that is, but I needed to take a break from some of my writing commitments and recharge my creative batteries. Part of that included the break I took from writing "Heal Thyself" in November and part of December. I also took a brief hiatus from my moderating duties at Wild Poetry Forum. We will be having company for school vacation week--my niece from Florida, and my niece and nephew from Philadelphia, which will increase the kidlings here from the usual 2 to 5. Yikes! Fortunately, they all get along and are close in age, ranging from 9 to 15. It seemed to make sense that while the cousins were all here, I would take a break from daily reading and critiquing poetry.

While I miss the day to day interaction with the community of poets I have been part of for the past 5 years or so, I also feel like a weight has been lifted off me. And it's not as if the obligation has been anything other than self-imposed. I have this over developed sense of responsibility and have been pushing myself to read everything on the board and comment on as much as I possibly could. It's such a fast moving board, I was feeling more than a little overwhelmed.

Just taking a few weeks off feels like a huge gift. Once the new year begins, I know I will be able to return refreshed.

I've also been able to pick my way past the block with "Heal Thyself" and I'm just shy of 77K. I have a good sense of where the story is going and how it will end. I've also realized something very important: I'm writing this for me.

I have no external pressures. No agent. No publisher. No deadline. No expectations at all except for the ones I impose upon myself.

This is the time when writing is a completely selfish act. I have the ability and the time and space to create novels because I love them. Yes, I am pursuing publication, but for now, I can write what I wish because I wish it.

Once I step into the world of work for publication, I will no longer have the same degree of freedom I have now. That has made me sit back, relax, and enjoy the writing again. It feels fresh and full of possibilities.

Blogging may be light for this week as well.

Remember to take a deep breath.

And happy writing.

Prose versus Poetry

Every so often, at Wild Poetry, we get into discussion about the differences between poetry and prose. Generally, these discussion happen after someone comments that a poem feels 'prose like'. Often, the original poster will argue, as if prose was something less desirable than poetry.

In fact, I have read many fine, powerful prose poems and the format takes nothing away from the piece.

When I read through yesterday's post/poem, I realized that it was prose chopped into poetic type line breaks, but it was not poetry. It has no imagery, no metaphor (other than the sweepstakes conceit) or other comparisons, little use of sound or meter. Hence, not poetry, but prose.

So I reworked it in paragraph form and think it reads better this way.

Lost in the Dead Letter Office

If I knew that you were dead I could let go of the feeling that your letter waits, nestled amongst offers to refinance my mortgage, credit card pre-approvals, and sweepstakes notifications.

You may already have won.

I did win.

I tried to tell you in a phone call that took more than thirty years to dial. The woman on the line wasn't you. I pray you didn't turn into her. Suspicious crone; she would have been my grandmother except she feared more than she could love.

It's not hard to feel sorry for that from three thousand miles away. I doubt she ever told you I called and now, at sixty-three, you could be dead.

I'll never know when to stop checking the mailbox.

--ljcohen, 2007

"Hell if I Know" Poetry Challenge

I've blogged many times about the poetry community I participate and moderate in, Wild Poetry Forum. It had become a haven and a rich source of inspiration for me over the years. One of the things I appreciate most about Wild is the supportive, honest, and non-competitive atmosphere that exists there.

M, our administrator per excellence, posts weekly challenges. Many weeks, I don't have the time to participate, but when I do, I always find she has helped nudge me out of my comfort zone.

This is a first draft of this week's challenge: "Hell if I Know" in which we were invited to write a poem about something we did not know.

I am an adoptee, adopted into a loving, supportive family when I was only a few days old. Yet, no matter how much I feel I belong with my family, not knowing who I might have been has always had a pull on me. I won't get into any debates here about the merits of open adoption or the rights or wrongs about establishing contact with a birth family. My need and my decision was to reach out and let them know I had (and have) a wonderful life. The event that inspired this piece happened years ago, but I have not ever written about it until now.

Lost in the Dead Letter Office

If I knew that you were dead
I could let go of the feeling that your letter
waits, nestled amongst offers to refinance
my mortgage, credit card pre-approvals,
and sweepstakes notifications. You may
have already won. I did win. I tried
to tell you in a phone call that took thirty
years to dial. The woman on the line
wasn't you. I pray you did not turn
into her, suspicious crone. She would have
been my grandmother except she feared
more than she could love. It's not hard
to feel sorry for that from three
thousand miles away. I doubt
she ever told you I called and now,
at sixty-three, you could be dead.
I'll never know when to stop
checking the mailbox.

--ljcohen, 2007

"fear and hope ill-matched."

"fear and hope ill-matched."

These are the concluding lines from a poem by Christopher T George, a fellow member at Wild Poetry Forum, an editor of Desert Moon Review, co-editor of Loch Raven Review, and all around gracious poet.

Something in this line speaks to me.

One of the joys of belonging to a critique group is the ability to cross-fertilize, to inspire and be inspired by the work of fellow artists. When I read this line, I felt a familiar flutter behind my breastbone. It's the feeling of resonance, the feeling of poetry searching for embodiment. I don't yet know what shape the poem will take, but I know Chris' words have catalyzed it.

"Heal Thyself" at 27.5K and other assorting writing stuff

The writing keeps chugging along. I took today off, dealing with odds and ends and family stuff. Sunday is my busy day for poetry--it is the day I need to finalize my picks for the Wild Poetry Forum weekly Hall of Fame.

Sunday is also the day I realize how many of my weekend 'to dos' have remained undone. So the mad scramble to do as much as possible before monday morning rolls around.

I also spent quite some time tonight giving requested commentary and critique to seven of my son's 5th grade classmates on the poems they had written for our workshop. At 11, they are conscious of wanting to achieve a certain outcome, but still tentative and forming their sense of selves. I feel it is important to be honest in feedback but in a way that doesn't squash their creativity or sense of fun.

"Heal Thyself" is taking a turn into darker territory than I had envisioned at the start. I am in the midst of a scene in which Zev must kill several slave traders in order to free the women they were attempting to sell. In researching the scene, I had to get some information about knife wounds. Specifically lethal knife wounds to the neck. So I googled it. And found this most excellent writing resource for any writers looking to add murder and mayhem to their stories. The Lab: Forensic Community is a site with as much information about forensics and murder weapons as one can handle.

And, as ever, I wonder what a list of my google searches would say about me.

:)

Malicious and Random Destruction

I am one of the moderators at Wild Poetry Forum. It's my poetry 'home' so to speak. So earlier this week, when we discovered that hackers had attacked the site with malicious code causing corruption of files and scrambling of posts, I was angry. It was like coming home and finding muddy footprints in your living room, and your stuff rifled through.

I have no idea *why* someone would want to cause damage to a poetry forum. It's not as if there is big money in poetry. It's not as if all the poets on the board are advocating some radical idea. (Oh, wait--it's poetry--very sub-verse-ive.)

In the end, it was not a major catastrophe, only a huge annoyance as the board admins spent *hours* tracking down the problem and restoring the board. Hair was torn out and sleep was lost, but no (I hope) lasting damage done.

Today I read a post on Absolute Write that the writing resource 'Preditors and Editors' was hacked as well, causing them to lose a huge amount of collected wisdom for writers. I hope and pray they are able to recover from this and move forward. I don't know, but I wonder if these are related incidents. I'm not *so* paranoid that I think some person is targeting writing sites, but there may be some virus that message boards are vulnerable to.

Watch your back, writers. It's a dangerous place out there.

If you post on the net, BACK UP YOUR WORK.

OK, I'll say it again.

BACK
UP
YOUR
WORK

Stupid people are everywhere and someone thought it would be funny to piss in our morning coffee. (metaphorically, of course)

If any of you reading this host a board and have had trouble recently, please leave a comment or email me.

House of Many Doors at 34K

It feels good to be moving forward with this story. Having the support of my critique group has been a huge help. Writing is such a solitary business--there is only you and the blank page (or screen, depending on what technology you use). That is one of the ironies of creating art.

The artist creates in solitude for some imagined or hoped-for viewer/audience, but the two may be separated by impossible stretches of time and/or distance, never to connect except for the work that joins them.

Who do I write for? That depends on what I am writing. I'm not sure I even imagine an audience when I write most of my poetry. The initial push to write comes from some solitary need I have to transform in internal feeling to words. Then, in the editing phase, I think about my poetry community at Wild Poetry Forum and specific poets there whose opinions and talent I admire. I want to craft the work into a piece of art I will be pleased to share with them.

Writing the novels have been a different case. I feel like "HoMD" is a promise kept to my children from the germ of an idea my boys gave me over the Summer. That idea has been shaped and expanded into the story of Langdon Parker and the House that has his father trapped within it.

In each of the three novels I have worked on, there comes a point where the story must be written in order to keep the faith with my characters. They become real to me as I internalize their hopes, fears, and struggles. They deserve to find their way to the right ending and so I write with them in mind.

Who do you write for and why?

Writing is hard work

As a moderator for a poetry community, I am always blindsided by writers who cannot or are not willing to revise. For the most part, the poets who post their work at Wild Poetry Forum do so with an eye toward improving their work. Yet, every so often, someone will react negatively to well-considered critique and state with some pride that he or she doesn't do revisions.

That's like a musician refusing to practice.

I believe that writing is both art and craft. Perhaps the 'art' is an inborn talent. In a musician, perfect pitch or the ability to recreate what one hears. But the craft, the work of writing, for example, is a concious process. Practice, repetition, lessons, exercises, critique; all of these are essential tools for honing the art. Any art--painting, music, writing, dance.

For me, writing is both hard work and joyous play. Perhaps my strongest writing emerges when I am able to balance the two. Of late, it has been all hard work. Both the poetry and the fiction writing has been frustrating. Yet I continue to write every day. Most of what I produce will never make it past the 'bury-it-in-my-hard-drive' folder, but I don't consider any of it wasted. The discipline of consistent work is something I didn't understand ten years ago. And I have notebooks full of unfinished stories and scraps of poems to show for it. Writing was something I did when the muse inspired me. I rarely edited or revised, not wanting to somehow insult the creativity gods.

When I began to participate in internet-based poetry workshops, I had the good fortune to stumble across several skilled and generous poets. They (bless them!) saw some spark in my writing and nurtured it all the while pressing me to dig deeper and work harder.

The discipline of revision and daily practice has enabled me to complete and edit two novels in two years (and stay on track to complete novel number 3 in year 3). I am so grateful for that teaching. Even when the writing is more work than joy, I am able to move forward. I know that balance will restore itself and the words that I am currently wrestling with will soon fly across the screen.

May the New Year bring balance to your life and may your art bring you joy.

Just for fun: "Sometimes when I See You Wearing Mismatched Socks"

Another of the weekly challenges at Wild Poetry Forum. This week, we were provided with a selection of titles all begining with 'sometimes' and asked to write a 10 line or less poem focusing on the small details that make up an emotional connection to someone.

This line in particular spoke to me, as my 10 year old son wears mismatched socks all the time. It's a fashion statement for him, and so, this little poem, for Eric.

Another of my "small 'p' poems." Not meant as earth-shattering statements of great import, just a mindful watching of the individual moments that make up an ordinary life.

"Sometimes when I see you wearing mismatched socks"
(for Eric)

I turn away so you won't see
me smile. We both know the rules
keep changing. I can no longer tell
the story about you dropping a single
marble in each of our shoes. Shy
of three and already trouble. The first
day of fifth grade you slip
on two different sneakers, prepared
to tell anyone who asks: sometimes
you wear the other pair.

Poem Published in Stirring

"Scheherazade's Last Tale," a poem I workshopped at Wild Poetry Forum last year, has just been published in the August issue of Stirring: A Literary Collection.


I hope you enjoy it and the other fine poems in this ezine. Another "wild" poet, Dale McLain, has a poem in that same issue.