Writing Process Blog Tour

Judy Halebsky, poet and sometime-dweller-in-Japan, invited me to join her in this Writing Process Blog Tour. You can (and should!) read all about Judy's writing process here, where she answers the same four process-related questions that I will answer below.

And here's some information about Judy: Judy Halebsky’s book of poems, Sky=Empty (New Issues, 2010) was chosen by Marvin Bell as the winner of the New Issues Prize, a first book award, and was also a finalist for the California Book Award. Her chapbook, Space/Gap/Interval/Distance (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2012) won the Poets-Under-Forty Chapbook Contest from Sixteen Rivers Press. She teaches at Dominican University of California.


Now, I'll answer the same four questions that Judy did.

1) What are you working on?

My book, The Insomniac's Weather Report, which had gone out of print, recently found a new publisher Isobar Press, so I'm busy preparing for a June launch. I'm working with a different publisher on another manuscript as well (and will make an announcement about it soon).

What I'm writing these days are poems based on my mother's only brother, who at age 22 was lost on Denali (Mt. McKinley) in a mountain-climbing accident. For a number of reasons, speaking of the accident in my family was taboo for many years , and I am writing about growing up with that unarticulated loss.

2) How does your work differ from others of its genre?

My education has been solely in analytical (not literary) fields, and I can't help but use my "quant" schooling to inform my work -- I hope in ways that are deeper than merely the choice of technical wording, playfulness with logic, etc.

3) Why do you write what you do?

I always want to do something I haven't done before to reach the truths I am afraid of. I'm also a big believer that form and voice should serve the poem. I'm less interested in consistent voice and style than effective use of voice and style.

4) How does your writing process work?

I am a compulsive list-maker, in my writing life and in every other aspect of my life. I tend to think about a topic or theme, and make a list of all the images, ideas, and phrases that come to mind. Then I start working on one or several that seem related, or that seem to resonate, or are interestingly disparate. Always, writing the poems generates more items that should be on the list, which gives me more fodder for new poems, so it's a self-perpetuating method. (This is when I'm lucky and have a theme in mind. When I don't, it's anybody's guess what the process will be.)

***Next, I'm pleased to present Tara Mae Mulroy to continue the blog tour here.***

Tara Mae Mulroy is a graduate of the MFA program in poetry at the University of Memphis and currently teaches middle school Latin at a private school. Her poems, stories, and essays are published or forthcoming in Third Coast, CutBank, and others. Her chapbook, Philomela, is out from dancing girl press. Her blog can be found at taramaemulroy.wordpress.com.

***Also, Drew Myron accepted my invite to the blog tour here.***

Drew Myron heads a marketing communications company, and as a journalist has covered news, arts, entertainment and travel for numerous publications. She lives in Oregon, where she leads writing workshops for disadvantaged and homeless youth. She is the author of Thin Skin, a collection of photos and poems.   www.drewmyron.com

***Finally, in a poetry boon, we also have Shawnte Orion's responses here.****

Shawnte Orion is an Arizona poet frequently invited to read at bookstores, bars, colleges, hair salons, museums, and laundromats and published in Georgetown Review, Juked, DASH Literary Journal, New York Quarterly and many other literary journals. He hosts a monthly reading series at Glendale Community College.

Bewitched by Ritual

Onlinecollege.org has an article on the daily rituals that helps/helped 25 great thinkers do their work. Some of the thinkers and their rituals include the following:

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American writer John Cheever wore his only suit of clothing each morning as he rode the elevator down to a basement room where he worked. Upon arriving there, he would undress to his underwear, hang up his suit, and get to work. He would dress to go back upstairs for lunch and again at the end of his day when he would ride the elevator back home.

Stephen King, the famed writer, keeps to a strict routine each day, starting the morning with a cup of tea or water and his vitamin. King sits down to work between 8:00 and 8:30 in the same seat with his papers arranged on his desk in the same way. He claims that starting off with such consistency provides a signal to his mind in preparation for his work.

Whether or not he had heard the adage about keeping the doctor away, the writer of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas, started each day eating an apple under the Arc de Triomphe.

Gertrude Stein discovered inspiration in her car. Apparently she would sit in her parked car and write poetry on scraps of paper.

Ernest Hemingway described his writing ritual as starting just as the sun began rising, then working straight through until whatever he had to say was said. He likens completing his morning of writing to making love to someone you love–being both empty and fulfilled at the same time. Upon completing that morning’s work, he would wait until the next morning to begin again, going over his ideas in his head and holding on to the anticipation of starting again the next day.

When John Grisham first began writing, he still had his day job as a lawyer. In order to do both, he stuck to a ritual of waking at 5:00 and shower, then head off to his office, just five minutes from home. He had to be sitting at his desk with a cup of coffee and a yellow legal pad by 5:30. He gave himself a goal of writing one page per day. Sometimes this page went as quickly as ten minutes while other days required one or two hours. After finishing his daily page of writing, Grisham would then turn his attention to his day job.

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For me, ritual is highly desired but hardly realized. Working freelance means I have to check my email everyday to see what work needs to be done immediately and what can wait, before I can plan my writing time. And I have kids who get sick, need special attention suddenly, etc. So while I adore ritual, it mainly eludes me.

That's why it's important to take into account what Toni Morrison had to say (also from Onlinecollege.org) :

Writer Toni Morrison describes not only her daily routine, but the importance of rituals to writers. Morrison describes her own ritual involving making a cup of coffee and watching the light come into the day. Her habit of rising early was first formed as the mother to three children, but after her children left home, she discovered a routine of her own–that still includes early mornings. Morrison urges all writers to look at what time of day they are most productive and what type of surrounding is most conducive to their work to help form rituals that will promote creativity.

I know how to get into the writing space in my head, but it takes me about an hour to get there, so that's not very efficient, and given my lifestyle, not realistic. I need to pay more attention to what makes me productive other than the one way I already know, so that I can work without such an extended detaching time. That might mean finding a different time of day, or a different way to signal to my brain that it's time to write. Hmmmm...So much to think about from all these great thinkers. Click on the link at the top of the post to see what other thinkers' rituals are/were.

Ocean's Process

So you've probably heard all your life that writers should get up early, every day, day after day, and write. This is the discpline most often cited as eventually leading to great writing. Just being there in the chair, making the commitment, that's the key--it must be true, as everybody says so.

Well, almost everybody. In stark contrast to this conventional wisdom, poet Ocean Vuong describes his own process during an interview on Blog Talk Radio's Blood-Jet Writing Hour with Rachelle Cruz.

Vuong discusses his earliest attempts at writing on a daily basis, which he found to be a difficult method. Eventually he learned that, for him, "...writing a poem is a very rare occasion. I write very slowly....one poem every two or three months." In fact, Vuong says that for him, writing more than often than this is a distraction that dilutes the strength of his work. (And anyone familiar with Vuong's intensely evocative work knows the potency of his lines, which in no way could be described as diluted.)

Vuong compares writing a poem to pregnancy. For months he walks around with the poem inside him, nurturing it constantly without bringing it into the world, without putting anything on paper, until the right day comes and he is seized with "a frenzy of creativity after months of idleness." At that time, Vuong writes 10 to 25 drafts in the first sitting, which can last for hours, and within about three days, his poem is complete.

Vuong doesn't "believe in writer's block." He thinks what passes for writer's block is really just fruitless attempts at writing under the wrong process. Vuong encourages writers to experiment with various methods until finding what works for them.

Check out the entire interview (with readings of poems) here.

And read some of Vuong's poems here at Vinyl Poetry, here at Diode, and here at PANK Magazine.

(And by the way, despite the familiarity of the title of this post, I don't know Ocean Vuong personally; I was just enjoying his gorgeous name.)

Patron Saint Against Writer's Block

Sometimes I just have to remember that everything I do is writing. It may not look like it to anyone else (it doesn't even seem like it to me!), but what I am doing when I'm doing nothing is writing. And when I'm doing something other than writing, somehow that is writing too.

Take this week, for instance. All week I tinkered with the wording of two lines of a poem that is essentially finished. But I just kept messing around with it, because trying to start something new was getting me nowhere. The notes I had jotted down in my notebook didn't connect, didn't start any synapses firing. So I tinkered with the old poem. And felt frustrated, like I am getting older (which I am) and not getting anything done in the meantime (which I wasn't).

Then I did have an idea. It involved the Patron Saint of Gravel, something I had jotted down in my notebook. So I thought about that awhile, and went online to get some background information that might inspire me. That's when I learned that the actual title was Patron Saint Against Gravel. Well, that was problematic. I mean, who is against gravel?

So I took some time looking into the matter. I never did find a definitive answer, but I did notice that the listing was often Patron Saint Against Colic, Fevers, Gallstones, Gravel and Kidney Stones. Which led me to believe that we aren't talking about gravel, as in gravel pit or gravel road. I'm guessing that this gravel is the tiny stones or sludge that builds up in the kidney or the gall bladder prior to the actual formation of kidney stones or gallstones. (But I'm just guessing, so if anyone knows, please tell me.) Anyhow, it did seem likely that this gravel was a medical condition.

Needless to say, there went the poem.

However, sitting there at the computer rueing the loss of my gravel inspiraton, I suddenly recalled the Facebook status of a friend this week that had involved a fox. I don't know why it popped into my head just then as I was despairing over gravel, but it did. And it reminded me of my own two incidents in life involving a fox, and then I was suddenly writing one of those down quickly in verse and it paired with a line in my notebook that I have been saving to build a poem around, which had nothing to do with foxes but still fit perfectly. And then, after a week of feeling like I was spinning my wheels, I suddenly had the first draft to a poem about foxes but not about gravel.

And that's how writing goes. I can't get to what I need to write without periods of being unable to write, without days (or weeks) of being stuck first. So being stuck is part of the writing process, which means that when I'm not writing, actively not writing as opposed to avoiding writing, I really am writing.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

(And I saw the funniest quote about writer's block this week too, from Quotes4Writers on Twitter: "Writer's block: when your imaginary friends won't talk to you." Anonymous)