12 hours till class (8 of which I plan to sleep through) and all I have is a few scraps of lines, none of which I like. Part of the problem is that today seemed like a great time to start rewriting my Costa Rican saga. I'm tempted to hand in one of my old poems, because otherwise, this is all I got:
the trees
grow more tangled
smoke leaks
from small tears in the skin
the jungle grins
firelight in her mind, she feels
every bone on the road
to San Carlos
Tips on “how to write” from the latest Listener:
Owen Marshall: “To those people who say that writers are born, not made, my reply is yes, but a good many more are born than you might think, and in most cases their progress can be accelerated, and chances of achievement increased, by writing courses.”
Bill Manhire: “People who think they know everything are tiresome. Poets who think they know everything are even worse. This is why it is so dangerous to begin writing with a fixed idea or theme.”
Margaret Mahy: “I find it helps to read aloud to myself what I have written. There I sit, once again muttering and declaiming, picking up stumbles, repetitions and flat statements, which, once heard in the outside air, don’t say what I thought they were saying when I wrote them down.”
None of this really helps with the assignment for tomorrow. However the fact that all of these writers have surnames begining with M is somewhat reassuring.
Posted by Fionnaigh at January 6, 2005 10:34 PM | TrackBack