What do the simple folk do?
...to help pass the time when they're BLUUUUUUUUE?
When I was in high school (and into the beginning of college), I thought that writers (poets in particular) were deranged mystics who couldn't help writing, people who shut themselves away in garrets and chain smoked and drank and toiled over their angst, sculpting their misery... into meaning... and the barrage of complex thoughts that would not let them be... into art.
Then I learned a lot about craft. I learned to set myself exercises. I read and read and read. And I met writers who reminded me of anything BUT Sexton and Dickinson. And so I decided that writers were like everyone else. I decided that writers just work at words. I decided that it was all about sitting in a chair and kicking ass.
But then last year (can you believe it took me so long?) I noticed a trend in my life... that my functional non-depressed periods came when I wrote regularly, and that when I didn't write, I often tipped over into that boiling kettle of sleepless nights and crazed afternoons. So I went back to thinking that writers (not exclusively of course) ARE people who need to write, people for whom a neurotic control over language offers structure. People for whom the loveliness and the awfulness of words... is the most important thing.
I'm embarassed admitting this, but it's true. Writing leads to sanity and sanity is too hard won, when it IS won, to risk losing. So I write when I should be working, and when O should be sleeping, and when I should be walking the dog.
There. I said it.
But at about the same time I came to terms with the validity of my silly, long-last, high school perceptions of writers, I also came to terms with the fact that NOT everything I do is poetry.
I think that this blog (and the last one too) helped a lot. I think it gave me a venue for the things that aren't totally profound or reduced, allowed me to free-write a little more...
Which in turn let me write the kid's novel...
Which in turn let me take my instinct to write for kids...
Seriously.
Which has brought me more pleasure than any of you can possibly know. Writing for kids gave me back the joy, the sheer excitement, that writing was when I was eight and a half. So good.
When I was in high school (and into the beginning of college), I thought that writers (poets in particular) were deranged mystics who couldn't help writing, people who shut themselves away in garrets and chain smoked and drank and toiled over their angst, sculpting their misery... into meaning... and the barrage of complex thoughts that would not let them be... into art.
Then I learned a lot about craft. I learned to set myself exercises. I read and read and read. And I met writers who reminded me of anything BUT Sexton and Dickinson. And so I decided that writers were like everyone else. I decided that writers just work at words. I decided that it was all about sitting in a chair and kicking ass.
But then last year (can you believe it took me so long?) I noticed a trend in my life... that my functional non-depressed periods came when I wrote regularly, and that when I didn't write, I often tipped over into that boiling kettle of sleepless nights and crazed afternoons. So I went back to thinking that writers (not exclusively of course) ARE people who need to write, people for whom a neurotic control over language offers structure. People for whom the loveliness and the awfulness of words... is the most important thing.
I'm embarassed admitting this, but it's true. Writing leads to sanity and sanity is too hard won, when it IS won, to risk losing. So I write when I should be working, and when O should be sleeping, and when I should be walking the dog.
There. I said it.
But at about the same time I came to terms with the validity of my silly, long-last, high school perceptions of writers, I also came to terms with the fact that NOT everything I do is poetry.
I think that this blog (and the last one too) helped a lot. I think it gave me a venue for the things that aren't totally profound or reduced, allowed me to free-write a little more...
Which in turn let me write the kid's novel...
Which in turn let me take my instinct to write for kids...
Seriously.
Which has brought me more pleasure than any of you can possibly know. Writing for kids gave me back the joy, the sheer excitement, that writing was when I was eight and a half. So good.
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