So, it's been a while since I made an entry here. I've been busy making art and making myself get up and go to work (that curse of curses). It's been so cold and windy and generally snarky weather-wise that I haven't been able to get out with the camera, so I have no new pictures for you. I thought I'd go through my gallery and pick out some older pics so you at least will have something new to look at.
As far as my poetry goes, well, it isn't at the moment. I feel like I've been forcing it, and as a result I've taken some backward steps. I've been trying to get my muse to come out of her coma since last July when she died on me due to burnout by Napowrimo at PFFA. She has revived for short spurts now and then, but she's relapsed every time I think she's finally come back for good. I find this extremely frustrating, but I guess eventually this writing block will come to an end. In the meantime I'll just have to satisfy my creative urges with my art.
posted by Unknown at 10:32 PM
8 Comments:
Ditto on the writer's block for me, Cookie. Apart from a couple of 'potty-humour' style pieces for Sunken Lines, I haven't written squat that's worth mentioning in what feels like ages.
Sucks, don't it?
oh yeah! it's to the poiint of depressing me. I love making art, but I need to write, too, and dammit I miss my muse. hope all is well with you, Scotty. and thanks for stopping in!
These are beautiful photos! Thanks for giving a cabin-bound Chicagoan something bright to look at.
The muse is elusive during the winter months. Best wishes to you!
Angie
"I guess eventually this writing block will come to an end. In the meantime I'll just have to satisfy my creative urges with my art."
Hi Cookala, let's do some calculating. Napowrimo that time in April when one writes 30 poems in 30 days,and you've done it two years running, plus I'm pretty sure that you continued through May of this year- so that's 91 poems. Now, your friend, Seamus Heaney rewrites his poems up to 70 times, Mary Oliver does about 30 rewrites. So let's say you do 50 rewrites of 91 poems that's 4,550 rewrites. 4,500 divided by 365 (days in a year)=12.465 years worth of rewrites, if you work at them 24 hours a day, which you won't- lets make it 4 hours. So, 12.465 x 6 =74.79. Even if you never think up another new poem, you have nearly 75 years of rewrites in front of you, more if you include poems that you have written for various boards. This is
a lot of work, of persperation. And you know old saying writing is 1% inspiration, 99% persperation- So, I'm sure that muse will reward with new poems in that 75+ year period. :)
David
Hi, G and welcome. thanks for visiting my blog! I'm glad the photos brightened up your day. Winter brings the blahs down on all of us. Will have new pics soon- finally got out today with the camera.
Heya, David! How nice to see you here. Thanks so much for your encouragement. I miss being as active as I used to be at PFFA, and I miss you and the rest of the guys there, but I've been in a bad place poetry wise for months now - and it's getting worse.
Hopefully someday I'll write again. Right now, though, it doesn't seem like it. I don't even have the desire to tackle those 91 revisions. In my mind, they're all crap and not worth the effort. I've sunk so low I've convinced myself that most all my poems are crap, too.
I tried forcing myself to workshop two poems recently and both of them got very negative reviews. I've lost my muse, and it shows.
I can't tell right now what's worth working on and what isn't. I feel like everything I've learned in the last 6 years has up and left my brain, and the confidence I once had in my writing has eroded to nothing.
I'm a poet going through a dark, dark crisis.
I know this all sounds ott, but this is what I've been going through for some time now. *sigh* ah well, che sera sera. (gee, sort of went off on a tear there, sorry about that, David.)
Read this.
thanks, David! wonderful blog entry with some good advice and good ideas for kick starting myself again - and I especially liked this part - Read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, because she reminds you to be kind to yourself and treat yourself like you would a worried and upset friend who's trying to do something important and hard, not some evil demon spawn in a workhouse in hell who must be beaten with vicious whips because Today's Writing ISN'T DONE! Because you are SLACKING OFF and it's NOT GOOD ENOUGH! Die, hellspawn, die! You must suffer and DIE! Raaaaaaaaaah!
heh, that made me LOL. thank you.
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