As long as we are still at home keeping everyone safe I thought we could talk about that secret place where ideas swirl around in deep places waiting to be coaxed up to the surface. As long as it is still poetry month I will at least come at the topic from an oblique angle. I say this because many of you deeply appreciate
poetry but you get your writerly creds in short story, novel or nonfiction writing.
As long as we are still at home keeping everyone safe I thought we could talk about that secret place where ideas swirl around in deep
places waiting to be coaxed up to the surface. As long as it is still poetry month I will at least come at the topic from an oblique angle. I say this because many of you deeply appreciate poetry but you get your writerly creds in short story, novel or nonfiction writing.
Ideas
Where do writers find them? Is there a secret place? Let’s talk about ideas.
Remember, it is poetry month and I am taking a workshop. In one of the early lectures Ideas are the focus. I am supposed to make a list of ten of them. Later, I
need to expand on them. But the idea of finding and listing ideas is very simple and can apply to your fictional characters or your memoirs, I suppose any kind of creative writing is at risk of forming from an idea.
The workshop suggests a list of ten ideas and to find them we are assigned to make a list of our high points, low points and our turning points. I am still working
on mine because I don’t want to choose a high point that every parent will choose and I don’t want my lowest point to be so tragic I have to do a round of therapy as I explore it.
Turning points seem very interesting to me. What were the major turning points in your life? Your character’s life? Some of my highest points became turning points
in hind sight. Some of my most dreadful points with the passage of time are now things I would now list among my high points.
The list, if you make one will mellow or compost as you consider what it was about the event making it among the top ten moments. What universal truth did you find
in that moment in time? The truths as writers know can be pretty darned messed up. We don’t have to like our truth but we shouldn’t look away from their value. Your reader will appreciate your honesty.
Join us on Sunday for a mini-topic chat on Idea Mining.
While we continue to do our part to save the world, let’s talk about Keeping a Journal or maybe some of you Keep Diaries.
To me, the biggest difference between a Journal and a Diary is the Lock.
While I probably want my old diaries interred with my bones or tossed in with me before cremation, I might be okay if my family or friends came across one of my journals.
Let’s do a mini-topic on the Difference Between a Diary and a Journal.
Many people think a diary is the same thing as a journal. However, there is a difference between the two.
A diary is a book to record events as they happen.
A journal is a book used to explore ideas that take shape.
Learn more about the characteristics of diaries and journals to find out which style is best suited to your needs.
As Long as we are Doing our Part to Save the World
Let's Have Chat
We are making a Holiday Exception and Meeting for Chat this Sunday.
I've been watching some fairly weird things on Hulu. Reading some equally weird things. Hanging out on Social Media and wondering what he rest of you are doing.
Drop by the chatroom at the usual time, 7PM EDT April 12th and see what everyone else is up to.
Watch this Clip from my Favorite Friend's Episode and Laugh Out Loud!
I don't think there is anyone who calls herself a writer who hasn't collected Tools of the Trade.
I just added another book to mine. It is a heavy book, around 3 pounds maybe, almost 1400 pages. I bought it used. And when I opened it I discovered added value. The previous owners of this book of poetry added notes in the margins, highlights and other marks. I can mosey through the pages and pick up on the trails of readers who came before me.
The new book on my shelf is the Norton Anthology of Poetry, the Shortened 5th edition.
Drop in and share the names of your Writerly Treasure Trove.
On Wednesday, April 8th at 8PM EDT
The Poetic Process
I thought I would continue April’s Poetry Theme. The resources for this post are listed below.
I am 95 days into my DH’s retirement. Something that turned out to be very well timed, considering unfolding events. I have been thinking about the turning points
in my life. Those events that make me consider memories as those before and those after something huge. There are smaller things, red flags, ignored hunches, crazy mistakes. There was that day in the hospital, my daughter in my bed and I with a lit Winston in my hand, gazed deeply into her big bright baby eyes and sang, “Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side.” I will never forget the day I committed to leave an abusive relationship and there was literally no turning back because the brakes had
failed on my car as I left town on the old frontage road. The day I watched, stunned as the space shuttle exploded on take off. I remember smiling so hard and long on the day my first novel was accepted and I had the cheekies all evening.
Nothing in my life right now is like it was before. I know this moment is a defining one for many of us. We can use the feelings, visions, fear, happiness, the raw
emotion of this time and place for writing novels, memoirs, short stories and poems.
Poets are tasked not only with understanding language and universal truth, but how that truth feels and what rhythmic words can capture that feeling—harness it in
lines and stanzas—and move the audience as the poet once was moved. To identify such moments, recall the epiphanies and peak experiences that calibrate your life. To do so, you might make a list of highs, lows, and turning points you experienced over the years. A high can be a birth or a marriage. A low can be a death or a divorce. A turning point can be how a low like divorce metamorphosed into a high like re-marriage, and so forth.
The Poetic Process
Most poets choose topics containing metaphysical insights or hard-earned truths—usually drawn from the author's highs, lows, and turning points—as explained in Chapter One of The Art & Craft of Poetry. These truths are conveyed throughout a poem via themes depicted by images and metaphors that build in intensity,
foreshadowing an "epiphany," or universal truth, in the ending. You can vary your truths, using your imagination and envisioning other viewpoints and perspectives.
Poets are tasked not only with understanding language and universal truth, but how that truth feels and what rhythmic words can capture that feeling—harness it in
lines and stanzas—and move the audience as the poet once was moved. To identify such moments, recall the epiphanies and peak experiences that calibrate your life. To do so, you might make a list of highs, lows, and turning points you experienced over the years. A high can be a birth or a marriage. A low can be a death or a divorce. A turning point can be how a low like divorce metamorphosed into a high like re-marriage, and so forth.
In other words, make a list of highs, lows, and turning points relating to love, nature, the supernatural, war, politics, and occasions. Have you experienced an
enduring truth associated with romance, nature, etc.?
Bugeja, Michael. The Art & Craft of Poetry . Unknown. Kindle Edition.
Fundamentals of Poetry Writing Writer’s Digest University.
Chat begins at 7PM EDT at the Writer’s Chatroom
Poetry in Lock Down
It is a strange, new world. It is also a frightening new world. Most of us are Staying Home to do our bit toward saving the world.
For those who can’t work online, remotely, a whole lot of writing time just opened up. Oh, okay, I forgot that some of you also have children. When they aren’t
accusing each other of breathing too loud, you probably have a moment to yourself.
This might be a perfect time to become involved in some online writing related courses. And some of them are offering their courses at a lower price than usual.
This is how I stumbled onto an online Poetry Course.
I know very little about poetry, but I do know how to read it. I cannot tell you how poems are written or judged any more than I can tell you why some red wine
tastes like the inside of a grapefruit peel. The course suggestion showed up in my email and I thought, why not. And I am taking advantage of Sheltering in Place by taking a deep dive into something new.
Join us on Wednesday, tomorrow, April 1st for a mini-topic on poetry.
1 April at 8PM EDT
April
Every year, the month of April is celebrated by the Academy of American Poets as National Poetry Month, in celebration of writing, reading and enjoying poetry and those who make
it.
Poetry is all about exploring the ways writing can communicate to the world. With various poets and more popping up in the limelight, it can be hard to keep up
with the latest in poetry.
From old to new, Poetry Month celebrates the art of poetry in all its forms, appreciating the history behind it. It also celebrates the lives of poets that
inspired it and forming a new generation of poets to change the landscape of the literary world.
