Sunday 25 March 2012

The making of a born writer

I'm a natural, me,
a born writer. No,
that's a lie. Let me, then,
atone with the truth...

I think I'm becoming a good writer within the bounds of my repertoire. That is, I am pleased with some of my writing when I later go back and read it afresh. This is an accomplishment.

It is, however, only a start. And it has come at the expense of much time and effort: the dozens of how-to books, books on viewpoint, on style, on characterization, on editing, on dramatization, on genre, on grammar; the prize-winning or short-listed novels, poems and short stories I have read and taken as my benchmark; the hundreds of pieces of writing I have reviewed on YouWriteOn in return for sometimes invaluable feedback from other writers and, occasionally, from editors (several of my works have made the coveted No 1 spot); the hours spent with fellow writers at Original Writers and with fellow members of the Poetry Society at Stanza Groups or in performance at the Poetry Cafe, and all the support and encouragement they have given me; the writing courses - Open University, Faber Academy, Arvon Foundation - that have brought me into contact with successful writers who have generously shared their insights and encouragement; the bale of rejection letters that has helped me keep everything in perspective.

And now I am chronicling the year - this year, 2012, the year of the London Olympics, of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, of global recession - in rhyme as the Slush Poet, a project that is stretching my abilities and keeping me safe from the 'Shiny New Idea Syndrome' (thanks to Ryan Graudin for the diagnosis!) that has previously afflicted me.

And taking up nearly all of my time.

Yet when the poet Katrina Naomi, who is my tutor at the OU, recently recommended to her students a couple of books that she said had inspired her early in her career, I didn't hesitate to buy a copy of both. 'Writing Down the Bones' by Natalie Goldberg is about letting go of the inner critic and just creating; 'The Artist's Way' by Julia Cameron is a twelve week course on inspiration. They sit before me now like fresh margaritas on a parched man's garden table.

But when the heck am I going to find to savour them properly with all my other commitments?

Aha, I have a plan. On 31 December 2012, when the Slush Poet posts his final poem, I will be free sip those margaritas, pick up some of those shiny new ideas and give them a jolly good rub. And here's what I'm going to do: the first three months of 2013 will be given over to reading them both, in parallel, all other work put on a back-burner while a relight my inner furnace. And to make sure it happens I am going to set up a new Twitter account called 'MyLyingSelf ... hold on a second ... there, done it. Now I'm going to tweet at myself (using Hootsuite to pre-schedule tweets en masse), so that my best-laid plan is actually impressed freshly upon me on the 1st of January - like a waiter appearing out of nowhere with those lovely salt-rimmed drinks on a silver platter.

Thursday 15 March 2012

In the vale of Slush poetry

I am almost three months into this project, writing as the Slush Poet to chronicle 2012 through the medium of poetry, so now would seem a suitable moment to pause, to set down my thesaurus, my rhyming dictionary and my fountain pen, and to take in the view. (That in itself is fanciful: I write almost exclusively on a computer using Google Docs, with frequent nods to Dictionary.com and B-Rhymes; but that's okay, we'll call it a metaphor.)

I am breathless. I keep falling behind; by the time I've wrung a poem out of my fickle muse, the world has moved on and there are new news events to versify. Today I am up to date, tomorrow I will begin once more to fall behind.

What can I see from my resting place? Poetry surrounds me, as does life itself; but what I'm most concerned about is the trail of poems I have left behind me. So far, I have written thirty-four poems, most of which I have published on the Slush Poet blog site. That's about one every two days. I've tried to vary the form, the timbre, the length, the voice. I want the poems to be enjoyable as a continuous sequence capturing the essence of, if not the year, at least my year, 2012 as I lived it and as it touched me.

But are the poems any good? I think some of them are. I've had a lot of encouragement from readers, not just from my friends but from people I previously didn't know. Some of the poems have had a better reception than others, but that doesn't mean the others should be omitted. Would you really want every day to be your birthday?

Who am I kidding? We all know it takes time to craft a good poem, a long time to craft a great one. It takes more than two days. So, why go on? Perhaps because the pressure to produce a poem every few days is what I need to make me grow. I'm realizing that deadlines (even self-imposed ones, maybe especially self-imposed ones) are a creative spur. Without that pressure to produce not just another poem but a different poem, would I really be so varied in what I write?

So where is the Slush Poet heading next? Like you, I'll have to open the papers tomorrow to find out.

Thursday 1 March 2012

The Zen art of literary Ex-Lax

We’ve all been there, squatted upon the same spot staring at the same blank space for hours on end while words and forms back up behind the strangulating sphincter of premature self-editing. Commonly known as writer’s block, straining to do the rewrite before the rough draft. It’s like trying to squeeze Mother Mary from your arse.

Last night I spent over three hours rearranging pairs of slant-rhyming words, trying to write a poem about, as it happens, the riots outside Bagram airbase. Result: flatulence. It stank. Every artefact I strained onto the page was a monstrosity. Eventually, more from frustration than from wisdom, I set about writing something completely different, a poem about my father, and this time the words flowed smoothly onto the page and then seemed to arrange themselves into lovely eight-line stanzas while I watched agog.

The difference, of course, was that I knew exactly what I wanted to say – and that I said it without a great deal of constipating thought. I won’t strain the metaphor as far as I might here, but be assured my writing was fluid. The lesson? It is so easy to criticize what you have written, but for heaven’s sake wait until you’ve seen what it is!

So relax. Now wait patiently, sculpting knife in hand, for the raw materials. Hail Mary!