Homework
Between now and the meeting, could you please jot down at least three big questions you are currently facing as a writer OR as a teacher of writing? Your responses need not be lengthy, but come prepared to discuss your ideas with one another.
posted by Anonymous at 6:35 PM
8 Comments:
Outside of peripheral questions (like with publishing, should i keep sending to contests of not?) here are my three:
1) What can I learn from others that I can use myself in my writing?
2) What do I want to say in my writing to the world?
3) Are their concerns, like politics, experimentalism, etc., that I should/must include in or make part of my writing?
Is sending work to contests a good idea? By now I have spent in contest fees enough for a contest prize.
Sometimes I wonder, with so much writing in the world, (print journals, online journals, etc.) if there is room and/or a need for more.
Am I doing enough with my writing? What does enough mean?
Probably you need to answer these questions yourself, but my answers are these:
Don,
1) I think it depends on what you're ready to learn, and the way to ready yourself is by reading and thinking about it and writing and thinking about it. Talking about it might be involved somewhere, too.
2) I think the way to figure this out is to reflect on what your experiencing, and again reading and writing count pretty heavily as experience here.
3) I think your experience combined with your own apperceptual tendencies and the language your writing in will decide this.
Overall, Don, I think you should spend most of your time writing things that will make me laugh!
Nancy,
I know. Personally, I only send to contests I think I can win, but I'm an optimist; so there goes the farm!
No, there's never enough writing in the world. Writing is thinking.
As much as you can is enough.
And enough is when you get that image or sentence or whatever that makes you say, Wow. Then you have to start looking for enough again.
Or this is how I operate.
My three questions are these:
1) What does it take to write a lovely sentence?
2) What are the attributes of a lovely sentence?
3) How can a poem become performative?
4) Is asking a question performative?
5) Where does the sun go?
I think the questions I have I answer by writing.
How to keep writing in the face of the indifference of the world?
That one I have to keep answering again & again. I write because it's a place where things happen that don't happen elsewhere. I imagine an enthusiastic audience. God is absolutely delighted by my songs. Poetry is prayer. There are real people who have enjoyed my poems (& I can think about them). I like reading my own poems; they can amaze me.
What is the point?
This one is one I answer in poems. They are unparaphraseable answers.
This comment has been removed by the author.
As the local deejay says:
"And.....punt."
Let's try this again:
1. Why bother?
2. Will I ever stop writing the same damned poem over and over and over?
3. Is it enough merely to be obsessed by/with writing?
4. Is there more to life than this?
5. Is there more to writing than this?
Hi, Laurel.
I think yes is the answer to each of your questions.
What do you think?
Yes.
I like one-word answers.
Yes.
I agree.
Still, I struggle with these questions alot lately. Daily.
I wonder why I can't see/hear/smell/feel that yes.
Thank you, sir.
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