#NOT posting part one today. i am typing each chapter individually into the final draft doc & then again into the final final draft doc

[daddyplasmius]

yeah i think i'm just gonna do it if no one minds updates being sporadic & out of nowhere & like 10-20k words

[nihilnovisubsole]

a few things i’ve learned from trying to write more in the past couple of years

usual disclaimer that i’m not published and these are things that work for me, when i say “you” i’m being abstract and referring to myself, etc, etc

this is a VERY LONG post, to everyone on mobile, i apologize

- first things first: it’s okay to disagree with things that people offer to you as writing advice. yes, this includes the things that i’m about to tell you about my methods. there are plenty of people who will try to scold you or say you’re not doing it right, but remember, writing is an art. neoclassicists disagree with cubists. that’s just the way it goes

- almost every “don’t do [X]” piece of writing advice has some great counterexample in literature. seriously. write how you want

- okay, now, onto the nitty gritty habit stuff: when your schedule allows it, write around the same time every day. i get up and start writing over breakfast

- sometimes your “peak time of day for writing” will shift around. again, if your schedule allows for it, just go with the flow. you might be able to write after breakfast every day for a month, and then you might start writing at 7 PM for a while

- set your daily quota bar a little lower than you know you can meet. if you stayed up until 5 AM once and binge-wrote 2000 words, you know you can do it, but can you do it every day? really? probably not. pick a word count you know you can hit most of the time, so you’ll feel like you can set goals and meet them, plus avoid burnout

- it’s okay if your goal is one paragraph, or 100 words. there’s a salman rushdie quote a professor told me about 750 words, but salman rushdie is an esteemed intellectual who’s been at it for a very long time. you wouldn’t walk into an expensive private gym for the first time and get mad at yourself because you couldn’t bench press 400 pounds

- you don’t have to hold yourself to it 7 days a week. give yourself at least some kind of weekend, because, again, burnout. i don’t follow the nanowrimo philosophy - i intend to write all year, and if i’m trying to do it for 52 weeks, the breaks feel very nice

- if you’re on an inspiration kick today and you intend to write the next day as well, don’t “drain the tank to empty.” leave some space ahead of yourself. maybe don’t finish that scene, or that conversation - leave yourself a note about where you want it to go. then, when you sit back down tomorrow, you can get right back on the road

- i feel like i should interject something important here: all the things i’ve said so far have been about me trying to build habits, and the thing about building habits is that they don’t happen overnight. when i first started doing daily quotas, i was not meeting them most of the time. when i did, i was exhausted and it took me until late at night, and i probably wouldn’t meet it the next day, or the day after that. it can start to feel insurmountable, but i can’t stress this enough - you’ve got to resist the self-hatred. do not beat yourself up. sitting there and going “i’m such a useless piece of shit, why do i even try” can be comforting and easy, but it doesn’t make you work better. it shuts you down. after a lot of time and hard work, i had to get to a place where i could say, “okay, i didn’t do it today,” and try again tomorrow, maybe with a smaller goal. each writing day is a self-contained unit - you only have to handle one at a time.

- okay, anyway

- coming back to the weightlifting metaphor - eventually, if you keep at it, you’ll notice yourself writing more. this is why i say it’s okay to start at one paragraph, because you’re probably not going to end at one paragraph. that’s just the point where you start to grow. it’s amazing what the combination of being used to writing, and feeling a sense of empowerment with writing, will do. [you also might get faster, whether you intended to or not. it used to take me all day to hit my quota. now i finish it around 2 PM.]

- you don’t have to start at the beginning. you can start where you get your first idea, even if that’s the love scene in chapter 23 or some random dialogue in chapter 4. i know many writers talk about the blank page being the scariest part, so the point is to just make it not blank. once you’ve done that, you can work backwards or forwards from what you’ve got

- you don’t even have to write complete sentences in order, if it makes you more efficient not to. if you want to script out an entire scene’s worth of dialogue like it’s a 2005 RP, then go back and fill in narration later, you can. those introductory paragraphs where i set the mood of a scene are usually the last things i write

- read your dialogue out loud

- actually, if you're able, read the whole story out loud. i’ve never found a more effective way to catch awkward wording and typos

- if you want to work on a bigger project, try to find some type of outline, or at least have some kind of extra document where you write your ideas down. i know there are people out there who can just write novels by the seat of their pants, but they’re rare, and it often involves binge-writing, which goes against the ‘slow and steady’ method i have to follow. i never go into a long project without an outline like the one i explained in this post

- speaking of “big projects:” how people will sort different types of stories based on word count is weird. i’ve heard people say a novel is 40,000 words. i’ve heard people say it’s 50k, i’ve heard people say it’s 80k, which, what the hell? it’s nice to have a benchmark, but don’t lose sleep over it. just keep writing

- word repetition is not as big a deal as i thought it would be. i’ve talked to many other fans who are big readers. they say they don’t notice it that much. if they do, they don’t think it’s distracting unless it’s some irritating thesaurus word like “splendiferous”

- the first draft of everything is not actually always shit. this goes back to the “stop talking to yourself like that” thing i mentioned earlier. some people write drafts upon drafts, and scrap them, and the final product is unrecognizable. some people only have a couple, because they edit as they go. neither type of writer is wrong. you’ll just have to figure out which kind you are

- you don’t have to show people everything you write. if you feel shame about the pairings you like or the types of stories you want to see, and your dilemma is “i would write that, but people will make fun of me,” write it for yourself and just keep it private, or publish it under a different name. it’s kind of good to be able to write for yourself anyway.

- if you feel anxiety about posting your work online, start small. start with posting excerpts if you want, then drabbles, then maybe some oneshots. if you’re posting it on tumblr, turn anon off. sure, it’ll be nerve-wracking at first, but like the daily habits above, with enough exposure, it should feel ordinary. i noticed this when i was posting tgoed

- social media feedback isn’t an indicator of whether something’s good or not. many platforms like tumblr are very image- and instant-gratification based, so pitching something like writing on them can be a hard sell. this may feel discouraging. it’s not easy, but all you can do is press on

- not all crit is created equal. that universal truth about “every individual approaches things from their own place” is never more true than when people interact with art. you may have a beta who tells you something really great and it helps you grow, but people can just as easily have random style pet peeves, or be snobs. you may very well get some anonymous twit in your inbox saying “this is the worst thing ever and your characterization made me want to die,” and you really don’t have to grovel and change your writing until they’re satisfied. if you choose to say, “hey, i’m not soliciting crit right now,” or not even read the comments people leave on your stories, that’s fine. there are many hollywood actors who don’t read reviews of the movies they’re in, and, you know, whatever, they’re millionaires. if they can do it, so can you

- speaking of which, here’s a diagram about ‘brutal honesty’ versus ‘loving honesty’ that may help. i don’t think it was written with writing in mind, but it’s good nonetheless

- this is also a nice post to read when you get down, about how most fanfic writers are better than they think they are

- finally, if nothing else: know your body. you may [and likely will] have to adjust things if you have illnesses going on. i’m a young, healthy person who just has issues with rejection, confidence, and getting up on time. that puts me at a handful of advantages you may not have. just remember that the best is the best for you, no matter how much people tell you otherwise.

[char27martin]

Collecting Poems into a Book: 5 Poets Share Their Method

I’ve been enjoying going through previous poet interviews to see how poets have shared common experiences–often in unique ways. So here’s one more directed around the concept of collecting poems into a book.

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Click to continue.

*****

Ha Ha Ha Thump, by Amorak Huey

Amorak Huey for Ha Ha Ha Thump

“I had written an earlier manuscript of poems about blues music and blues musicians that for a long time I truly thought would be my first book. I sent that out repeatedly—55 times over two years—and it came close several times, but never found a home. That’s probably for the best, as such things usually are in hindsight.

“Anyway, while I was sending that out, I was also writing new poems, and eventually, I had a lot of them, and I put together a manuscript and started sending out that one, too. It didn’t land, either, but I kept writing poems, and eventually had so many that I split that manuscript in two, and one of those was Ha Ha Ha Thump. It went through a number of revisions along the way, and eventually Sundress took it.”

(Read complete Amorak Huey interview.)

Megan Volpert on assembling poems for collections

“Yes, I’ve basically stopped thinking about each piece in isolation. They each have to stand alone, of course, but more and more often I am beginning with the big idea then drilling down to determine its component parts. I know what sort of machines I’m after, so I really proceed more from what the total function of the book will be and then write bits and pieces as I stumble across applications of the project’s main functions in my daily life.

Only Ride, by Megan Volpert

“Only Ride, in particular, is based on a series of constraints. It’s all prose poems between 95 and 110 words, with titles that are complete sentences. My previous collection was the Warhol thing, which was so sprawling and research heavy that I really wanted to work on something more compact and minimal next. I typed most of them on my phone, on the train during my morning commute. I’d let a batch sit in my notepad for a month or so, then revise the whole pile over a couple hours on a weekend. I knew my subjects, so when I reached my target of 66 pieces, I laid them all out on the floor and organized first based on chronological order of the events in the poems then for the right emotional arch within each subject or time period.

“Other stuff can present itself for more obvious arrangement, for example, the 1976 book will report historical events in a straightforward chronological order, one month per chapter. I do prefer organic methods like that. My first two collections still feel well organized, but I agonized over those little piecemeal frankensteins, which in hindsight seems unnecessary.”

(Read entire Megan Volpert interview.)

Todd Davis on assembling poems for collections

“I’m very much a daily writer and thinker. My mind tends to gravitate toward certain subjects based upon my experiences—in the woods, on the rivers, with the books I’m reading.

“For example, yesterday I was deep in on a small stream in the 41,000 acres of game lands above the village where I live. My son and I were taking a long hike and fishing for native brook trout. I came across an amazing caterpillar on the walk—it was lime green with what looked like small spines or quills covering its body. At the end of these spines where bright, vivid colors—red and yellow and blue. I hadn’t seen this caterpillar before, and when I returned home, with the help of the photos I took, I was able to spend time looking through my field guides, discovering that this was the caterpillar that would later turn into a cecropia moth (Hyalophora cecropia), the largest native moth in North America.

“Several years ago at the top of the mountain above our village, I was hiking on an extremely foggy morning. Mornings like this many flying creatures settle to earth because nature’s “ground traffic control” has cancelled their flights. I’ve come across a kettle of kestrel and other beautiful raptors on mornings like this. That particular morning, however, it wasn’t raptors that I found but a cecropia moth clinging to a long blade of grass in a meadow. I spent more than 30 minutes photographing it, studying it, trying to express how enamored I was by its beauty. (Yes, I tend to talk to the natural world!)

“I tell you this story because, like William Stafford whose example means a great deal to me, I go daily into the world simply to be with the miraculous range of human and nonhuman creatures, to observe what is unfolding, to attend to what is too often ignored. Out of this act of paying attention, I write my poems, trying to spend a few hours at my desk each day.

“After a few years I begin to see the patterns of what the act of paying attention has afforded me. Once I feel the body of a book beginning to take shape, I place poems on the floor of my office and start to see what happens when a poem makes neighbors with another poem. It’s a bit like chemical reactions. Just as individual images or sounds in a poem, when juxtaposed with other images or sounds in the same poem, cause a reaction between them, so do individual poems in a collection. It’s fun to see how a poem will be transformed when it finds a particular place in a collection.”

(Read whole Todd Davis interview.)

Hive, by Christina Stoddard

Christina Stoddard on assembling Hive

“I’m not sure the process was at all typical. Most of the poems in Hive are written in the voice of a teenage girl who’s coping with a lot of violence, which in turn leads her to push against the confines of who her family wants her to be and the existence of the God she’s been raised to believe in. But that girl is a persona I discovered halfway into writing the book, not something I was consciously trying to create when I started.

“The truth is that I had actually written two other poetry manuscripts before Hive. I tried sending those manuscripts out to book contests and never got anywhere, so in 2011 I sat down to interrogate and overhaul them after getting some good advice from a mentor. As I did that, I realized there were a few recurring themes and decided to concentrate on those. This adolescent girl kept showing up, too, a voice who would eventually become the speaker in Hive. It’s amazing what you can learn about your writerly obsessions by reading hundreds of pages of your own work in one sitting.

“So when I put together the collection, I did it by choosing poems from my entire body of work over the past ten years. In a way, you could say that the earliest versions of Hive were curated rather than written, but it didn’t stay that way for long. Although I cannibalized my other manuscripts to get material for Hive, as things evolved and I figured out what Hive wanted to be, I ended up throwing out most of those older poems and writing new ones. Only five of the 40 poems in Hive’s table of contents were written prior to 2011, and all of them have been reworked considerably.

“If you’re wondering what happened to the first two manuscripts I wrote, they are moldering away in my file cabinet where they’ll probably never see the light of day again. But I’m okay with that. Even though it can feel impossible to let go of something that isn’t working, especially when you’ve put so much effort into it, sometimes letting go is the best choice. In economics, that phenomenon is called the sunk cost fallacy; people are extremely reluctant to give up on anything they’ve already invested in or purchased, even when it’s unwise or unhealthy not to.

“Hive is a significantly better book than the others. I couldn’t have written it without having first done those practice runs, even if I didn’t realize at the time that they were only practice.”

(Read full Christina Stoddard interview.)

Traci Brimhall on assembling Our Lady of the Ruins

“I feel like the poems cohered as I chose a final ordering for the book, though I didn’t write the poems with a certain structure or overarching narrative in mind. I knew all my poems were about a mid-apocalyptic wandering, but the nature of the poems ranged really widely as I wrote. I cut over a couple dozen poems from the final draft because they didn’t fit with the narrative that emerged through ordering.”

(Read complete Traci Brimhall interview.)

*****

Robert Lee Brewer is the editor of Poet’s Market and author of Solving the World’s Problems. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.

*****

Check out these other poetic posts:

Bryan Borland: Poet Interview.

Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 373.

20 Best Tips for Poets.

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