how do you really write?

[butters]

really

we all know how we're meant to do this poety sorta stuff, but how many of you are in all honesty thinking ahead, planning, taking into account, weighing up, consciously addressing sound/rhythm/metaphor and all the tricks of the trade?

and how many of you just write, and then tinker?

i'm not judging anyone, as we all have our own ways of doing things and the world would be a boring place if everyone approached things from the same direction ... i'm just being nosy and trying to assuage some misplaced sense of guilt about 'just writing' then seeing where it took me and (hopefully) making improvements after the fact.

have any of you found this [your approach to writing] has definitely altered over the years? will it continue to do so, do you suppose? or have you found your way and stuck with it, through thick and thin? does it vary depending on what you're writing, a challenge, for instance, or a topic you are less than familiar with?




bare your souls, poeteers .... spill the beans

 

[bflagsst]

I don't know that I understand what you're asking.

 

[CharleyH]

really

we all know how we're meant to do this poety sorta stuff, but how many of you are in all honesty thinking ahead, planning, taking into account, weighing up, consciously addressing sound/rhythm/metaphor and all the tricks of the trade?

and how many of you just write, and then tinker?

i'm not judging anyone, as we all have our own ways of doing things and the world would be a boring place if everyone approached things from the same direction ... i'm just being nosy and trying to assuage some misplaced sense of guilt about 'just writing' then seeing where it took me and (hopefully) making improvements after the fact.

have any of you found this [your approach to writing] has definitely altered over the years? will it continue to do so, do you suppose? or have you found your way and stuck with it, through thick and thin? does it vary depending on what you're writing, a challenge, for instance, or a topic you are less than familiar with?




bare your souls, poeteers .... spill the beans

Given a poetic task, I write well to it. On my own? Enh, I pour out my intellect, humour or emotion at best . My best poetry, when thinking about it, is written with a good degree of thought, nowadays. I used to write uninhibited and I used to think (at 16) that writing uninhibited was my best poetry. At 16 it was. Twenty or so years later, it is not. Twenty years later I think my poetry must be smart, intelligent, formed. 20 Years later, I think I lost the whole spontaneous emotional part of my poetry.

 

[Angeline]

I get ideas for what I want to write about (or I agree to a do a challenge), but don't really plan. I may spend some time letting ideas just percolate in my imagination until I feel I have a handle on what I want to say. Sometimes I know in advance sort of how I want to say it--I may have an idea for a line or two, but usually I just write. My first drafts go extremely fast (15 minutes or less) except for form poems which always take me longer. So my draft will pour out and then I'll go back and read it over and over, silently and aloud, tinkering as I go. Usually I will spend about three times as long tinkering as I do writing the draft.

If I spend more than 40 minutes or so trying to write a poem and it doesn't seem to be coming together the way I want, I just stop. Sometimes I return to it and ultimately finish the piece, sometimes not. Usually if I'm really laboring to just get a first draft out, it means I don't have much of a poem.

Oh and when I write jazz or other music oriented poems, I just put on the music and write. It's a powerful muse for me.

 

[hmmnmm]

misshapen scraps floor ever-strewn whence swept shall into corner bushel baskets be put, meaning: tinker tinker tinker, meaning: try this with that and that with another that and mix a this or two into a pinch of whatever; towers of the downright horrid touch the ceiling, seek escape, remodel, recycle, redo much, but throw away nothing, yet also finish satifactorily, nothing, yet, but maybe someday... someday. Someday.

 

[Angeline]

misshapen scraps floor ever-strewn whence swept shall into corner bushel baskets be put, meaning: tinker tinker tinker, meaning: try this with that and that with another that and mix a this or two into a pinch of whatever; towers of the downright horrid touch the ceiling, seek escape, remodel, recycle, redo much, but throw away nothing, yet also finish satifactorily, nothing, yet, but maybe someday... someday. Someday.

Yeah I never even mentioned the times I go back and work on old poems. I find that rather a difficult and unsatisfying experience--not always, but more often than not. Maybe some of my really old stuff is not worth trying to fix. Otoh, I am not above stealing lines from old poems of mine to make them work (better imo) in a more recent poem.

 

[The_Fool]

I get ideas for what I want to write about (or I agree to a do a challenge), but don't really plan. I may spend some time letting ideas just percolate in my imagination until I feel I have a handle on what I want to say. Sometimes I know in advance sort of how I want to say it--I may have an idea for a line or two, but usually I just write. My first drafts go extremely fast (15 minutes or less) except for form poems which always take me longer. So my draft will pour out and then I'll go back and read it over and over, silently and aloud, tinkering as I go. Usually I will spend about three times as long tinkering as I do writing the draft.

If I spend more than 40 minutes or so trying to write a poem and it doesn't seem to be coming together the way I want, I just stop. Sometimes I return to it and ultimately finish the piece, sometimes not. Usually if I'm really laboring to just get a first draft out, it means I don't have much of a poem.

Oh and when I write jazz or other music oriented poems, I just put on the music and write. It's a powerful muse for me.

What she said. Only skip the second and third edits. Most of the time. If I decide to publish or doing something risque with it, I will read it again.

 

[champagne1982]

Sometimes a poem falls free and lands on the page. Sometimes it needs tickling or teasing from the medulla but if I must torment to write then I give up. That's the reason I stopped worrying about survivor last year, the triggers failed to get my muse up so I couldn't struggle as the challenge required and still have fun.

Poetic devices are coincidental many times but they also are worked into a piece since I try not to sound contrived... It's a bad poem (in my mind) if the rhyme or metre sound unnatural. I've had a few failures but in balance there're a couple of pretty fine ones, too.

So, yeah. Write and tinker and fiddle... eventually I wind up with a poem or a scrap piece or two of paper.

 

[EroticOrogeny]

The subject is definately one driver for my writing. My focus gets wrapped around that. If its a form poem then I have to work on trying to get both together.
Don't usually finish a serious poem in a single sitting, but generally work on it a few days. Many of the poems for my wife are quick to come out, but they're really a whole different thing.
I returned to writing poetry less than 2 years ago. I think this forum, especially with the challenges, made me work on them better. Back in college I also had 'chemical inspiration', these days cigarettes and coffee or water.

 

[butters]

I don't know that I understand what you're asking.

and do you now?

Given a poetic task, I write well to it. On my own? Enh, I pour out my intellect, humour or emotion at best . My best poetry, when thinking about it, is written with a good degree of thought, nowadays. I used to write uninhibited and I used to think (at 16) that writing uninhibited was my best poetry. At 16 it was. Twenty or so years later, it is not. Twenty years later I think my poetry must be smart, intelligent, formed. 20 Years later, I think I lost the whole spontaneous emotional part of my poetry.

*smiles* at 16 i think most of us knew best, didn't we? even though we didn't.

it's a bit sad you feel you've lost something in that compromise years force upon us, Charley a little spontaneity can be a good thing ...

 

[butters]

I get ideas for what I want to write about (or I agree to a do a challenge), but don't really plan. I may spend some time letting ideas just percolate in my imagination until I feel I have a handle on what I want to say. Sometimes I know in advance sort of how I want to say it--I may have an idea for a line or two, but usually I just write. My first drafts go extremely fast (15 minutes or less) except for form poems which always take me longer. So my draft will pour out and then I'll go back and read it over and over, silently and aloud, tinkering as I go. Usually I will spend about three times as long tinkering as I do writing the draft.

If I spend more than 40 minutes or so trying to write a poem and it doesn't seem to be coming together the way I want, I just stop. Sometimes I return to it and ultimately finish the piece, sometimes not. Usually if I'm really laboring to just get a first draft out, it means I don't have much of a poem.

Oh and when I write jazz or other music oriented poems, I just put on the music and write. It's a powerful muse for me.

apart from the jazz, this about sums up my approach, too, so thanks Ang we are not alone, either, reading the other replies!

 

[butters]

misshapen scraps floor ever-strewn whence swept shall into corner bushel baskets be put, meaning: tinker tinker tinker, meaning: try this with that and that with another that and mix a this or two into a pinch of whatever; towers of the downright horrid touch the ceiling, seek escape, remodel, recycle, redo much, but throw away nothing, yet also finish satisfactorily, nothing, yet, but maybe someday... someday. Someday.

there's much to love in this poetic reply, hmmnmm

 

[butters]

What she said. Only skip the second and third edits. Most of the time. If I decide to publish or doing something risque with it, I will read it again.

you foolin' with us, dude?

or is it because you make that first edit the one that makes things just so? or at least in one session ...

 

[butters]

Sometimes a poem falls free and lands on the page. Sometimes it needs tickling or teasing from the medulla but if I must torment to write then I give up. That's the reason I stopped worrying about survivor last year, the triggers failed to get my muse up so I couldn't struggle as the challenge required and still have fun.

Poetic devices are coincidental many times but they also are worked into a piece since I try not to sound contrived... It's a bad poem (in my mind) if the rhyme or metre sound unnatural. I've had a few failures but in balance there're a couple of pretty fine ones, too.

So, yeah. Write and tinker and fiddle... eventually I wind up with a poem or a scrap piece or two of paper.

Write and tinker and fiddle. don't forget the tickle and tease

whatever you do, however you do it, it seems to work out fine, champers. *nods*

 

[butters]

Yeah I never even mentioned the times I go back and work on old poems. I find that rather a difficult and unsatisfying experience--not always, but more often than not. Maybe some of my really old stuff is not worth trying to fix. Otoh, I am not above stealing lines from old poems of mine to make them work (better imo) in a more recent poem.

i rarely rewrite old stuff, but when i do it ends up a whole different animal; often it doesn't work out and was better left alone with all its faults. however, like yourself, even from those awful past pieces i will often be able to salvage the one decent line or image, cannibalise quite unashamedly and make something better with it. times have to be slow or hard for that to happen, though


last night i was watching a programme about the Great Rift Valley; i just KNOW i'm gonna get a poem from it about Lit. or if not about Lit, then use the images elsewhere ... the floating dead hippo, the inbred cichlids, flamingos, bee-#eaters, clouds of midges, the monitor ... and a few others i am hoarding selfishly, well, one special one ... special to me, i guess, probably not anyone else but i loved it and am keeping it under wraps. sad, huh?

 

[airblade]

I just write what i think at a certain moment. I do it because I might forget what I was thinking at the moment. It really depends really... for me its more easy to write when I feel down and sad rather (and I also tend to like more when my current state is like that).

I don't really know why would someone write about joy or happiness.. we tend to forget about everything and enjoy the moments rather than write.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

I have a large file full of half baked ideas called "work in progress" that I dip into now and then. Sometimes a poet springs from there but mostly I fall into Ange's camp. Challenges are good for me because I'm forced to finish a poem in a set time otherwise I procrastinate like the devil. On the other hand it's easy for me to over tinker, I'm better off shooting them off under tinkered.

 

[annaswirls]

really

we all know how we're meant to do this poety sorta stuff, but how many of you are in all honesty thinking ahead, planning, taking into account, weighing up, consciously addressing sound/rhythm/metaphor and all the tricks of the trade?

I did not know there was a way we were meant to do this poetry sorta stuff.

and how many of you just write, and then tinker?

is there such a thing as "just" write?

when one is a seasoned writer, the elements tend to come out in the process, then to tinker or not to tinker depends on the poet or poem.

 

[fridayam]

I don't set out to write anything--I don't write routinely at all, too busy doing the day job! But at odd times some words will come to me, a phrase, half a line, sometimes at very inappropriate moments when I have to struggle to remember them (like at work, or just as I am about to fall asleep). Usually I let the phrase sit in my unconscious a while, other times it makes me get out the notebook straight away (I can only handwrite poems: stories I can do on a WP, but not poems). What comes out then is usually the poem--it just sits there fully-formed waiting for me to sketch it. I can't explain that, but it is true that I suddenly see the whole shape of the poem.

Once it is written is another story. I have agonised over some poems for years (decades even), twitched and tivitted them, repunctuated, reworked the line length--you name it: one poem hung on my distrust of one word for years.

 

[Tzara]

really

we all know how we're meant to do this poety sorta stuff, but how many of you are in all honesty thinking ahead, planning, taking into account, weighing up, consciously addressing sound/rhythm/metaphor and all the tricks of the trade?

and how many of you just write, and then tinker?

i'm not judging anyone, as we all have our own ways of doing things and the world would be a boring place if everyone approached things from the same direction ... i'm just being nosy and trying to assuage some misplaced sense of guilt about 'just writing' then seeing where it took me and (hopefully) making improvements after the fact.

have any of you found this [your approach to writing] has definitely altered over the years? will it continue to do so, do you suppose? or have you found your way and stuck with it, through thick and thin? does it vary depending on what you're writing, a challenge, for instance, or a topic you are less than familiar with?




bare your souls, poeteers .... spill the beans

I usually (I think) think and then write, though that probably isn't obvious.

I have said before (multiple times, boringly) about how I think of poems as being kind of like crossword puzzles: you work things out in some kind of formal grid, even in free verse.

When I am writing a form poem, that's pretty explicit. I have to care about the rhyme pattern, the meter, the volta, if it is an Italian sonnet, the repeated lines, if it is a villanelle or triolet.

In free verse, I am thinking about the rhythm of the poem (though, since I am clumsy at that, it may not be obvious), and alliteration, assonance, and the end (line) words.

I'm always thinking about all of that. Incompetently, perhaps, but I'm thinking of it.

I kinda have it in my head before I start. Sometimes that changes, though.

 

[Palba_Noruda]

Given a poetic task, I write well to it. On my own? Enh, I pour out my intellect, humour or emotion at best . My best poetry, when thinking about it, is written with a good degree of thought, nowadays. I used to write uninhibited and I used to think (at 16) that writing uninhibited was my best poetry. At 16 it was. Twenty or so years later, it is not. Twenty years later I think my poetry must be smart, intelligent, formed. 20 Years later, I think I lost the whole spontaneous emotional part of my poetry.

In the last couple of weeks I've been at meetings that are normally not attended by kids... One a writing critique group and two a community volunteer kinda deal.

So these last two meetings, two girls, middle school and high school I guess, have been there. And they were freaking brilliant. Open, outgoing, brave all that. The middle school kid was a really good writer and read this story and used this accent and nailed the performance. And then she proceeded to be the first person to comment on everybody else's work and stole all the stuff that I was going to say.

And then this girl at the volunteer thing was like practically the leader of the group and all these adults are kinda lookin' down pretending to take notes on the notebooks...

Not to say that every young kid is like that, but in the case of these two, I have the feeling that they probably won't be quite the same in 20 years. I was kind of like them when I was a young kid. I was outgoing and cute and dare I say charming... But, well, shit I went through all kinds of bullshit later and experienced all kinds of bullshit pain that I don't think I could even have imagined at age 11 or 16... I don't think most people have enough momentum built up at that age to really get their asses kicked by life (okay... I was rather coddled, too, so probably a lot of people experience real bad pain as kids)... I don't know... I hope it's smooth sailing for those two, but if it isn't, well maybe they'll just be tough instead... or wise... or expressive .... or weird... or assholes... i don't know... Or neurotic poets who worry over their poems LOL Sorry, wildly off topic but I tried to bring it back there at the end...

 

[The_Fool]

you foolin' with us, dude?

or is it because you make that first edit the one that makes things just so? or at least in one session ...

Most of my stuff gets 20 minutes tops. I write it, I edit it. I cut and paste. I read it one more time. I post.

Sometimes I know how the story is going to end. Sometimes I am completely surprised.

I also forget my stuff. Almost completely. Topics I remember. Stories I remember. Words I forget. I go back a month later and say, "Did I really write that shit?" Sometimes said with wonder. Too often said with chagrin.

 

[Bayoububba2]

I keep a note pad handy, and jot down ideas, then when time permits, I make a rough draft, and then if I come back to it still interested, I polish it from there. So far, I have 5 stories that are at a dead end, in different phases of completion.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I've got pieces of paper and bits of this and that on my computer that might come to completion or see the light of day if I do enough rummaging around. I seem to be one of the very few who actually liked the triggers in Survivor they made me think about writing on a subject that would never have crossed my mind before.
How do I write? Well that depends if it's form I dig out all the downloaded sheets and re-read them then I put the basics down on the computer and try and fit my words around what's supposed to go where. I admit to using rhymezone when I am stuck after all that's what it's there for.
Anything else I might start on those little bits of paper jotting down what strikes my fancy, then typing it onto the computer for a while after that I have to start the tittivating, the punctuation, cutting out big lumps and/or moving them around.
I've changed one hell of a lot since coming on here and conversing with the good folks who know about poetry, having been coaxed along, kicked up the backside several times and drawn kicking and screaming into trying just keep on trying new ways. There are people that post the same sort of poetry ad nauseum and those that just post dirty ditties lost my interest years ago. I would hate to be so set in my ways that nobody bothered to read me anymore that's why I love the challenges, they teach me new ways to write new horizons to conquer

 

[bronzeage]

My poems usually start as a core image or line.

I add lines to the beginning or end, until its something worth saving. Most of my poems are narratives. Some kind of story is told. I like to keep notes and scraps. I may go back to something that is decades old and work on it one more time. Some stories need the perspective of many years before one can understand what happened.