A diatribe about supposed writers who complain about the writing process |
Prompt for: Jan 3, 2016 (Fyn) Subject or Theme: A Diatribe Word(s) to Include:stifle, breathe, suffocate (or any derivatives of these words) Forbidden Word(s): : freedom, feel, create (or any derivatives, compound or hyphenations of these words) Additional Parameters: At least 40 non-rhyming lines. Remember, do not use forbidden words ANYWHERE, including title or the brief description. Growing Up Into a Writer I no longer have patience for misguided muses who complain constraints impede authorial growth. Writing is a process. No way round it. Once, long ago, I rebelled against those wiser than I, certain, I knew more than they. I didn’t. Forms stifled me. Being forced to fit my thoughts to parameters someone else set stole the very breath from my lungs, squeezed the juices out into bloody puddles to lie rancid on the floor of my psyche. Pantoums, sestinas, sonnets sent fear levels into overload: my mind refused to wrap itself around required elements of meter, rhyme and verse. Yet, I had no choice: the almighty grade reared its ugly head, teeth gnashing, to leer and taunt. My teacher suggested, far more gently than she might have, that all the potential in the world becomes, (her word, not mine) stifled when boundaries aren’t pushed, when we cease to be open minded, when we chose to fail by becoming constrained, trapped by our own thought processes. Writers cannot write within a bubble. To be a writer we must be read And read by those who have the depth and knowledge to feed the beast within rather than pander to it. Constructive criticism feeds the soul, the heart regardless if it be a yay or nay. Not every effort, every exercise births a stellar result, yet what is vital, is that we learn, we stretch, we venture into the uncomfortable. It is not, she said, a matter, purely, of ‘my way works for me.’ When we refuse to continue to learn we box ourselves into a coffin; in effect, our writing dies a slow, unread, unheard death. That day was a wake-up call, a bugle blasting a reveille to get out of my rutted bed and fear not to embrace that odd sestina. Now, it is my favored form. I tear my hair out every time. I fight the words, the phrasings, I find the metaphors, and then I defeat the form. Metaphors. True poetry is rooted in them. Regardless if we write about a landscape, a paper bag, a failed pot roast or deceit or whirling dervishes, framing a poem within one scenario does not negate writing (on a deeper level) about something else entirely. That was a lesson I needed to learn. All the potential in the world is worthless if we don’t avail ourselves of possibilities. The woodcarver envisioning a box in a split black-walnut log still is constrained by skill and grain, by tools and imagination, by time and energy. Suffocation is not an option. It is a choice, whether through a fear of not succeeding or not wanting badly enough or a refusal to grow. It is a giving up, a giving in to an insecurity. Not the opposite. Much of this I’ve learned the old fashioned way: by trying and doing. By being determined not to fail. By getting my butt kicked by many a teacher and by being a teacher myself. I once likened poetry to being trapped in a narrow cavern, when the walls closed in and I could go neither forward nor back. I was utterly helpless, my flashlight died. Locked in darkness so black that the lights I saw when I squeezed my eyes shut seemed blinding. Panic overwhelmed shutting down cohesive thought. I was forced to calm myself and breathe, To figure out a way out of an untenable situation. The alternative was unacceptable. Writing is a bit like that, for to me, writing is the very air I inhale. Cut me; I bleed ink. I can’t not write. So I do what I need to do to push the boundaries while conforming to the required or the necessary. Society restrains us all – retrains- for it places demands, constraints. Rules exist for reasons… Actions, consequences in writing, in life. In one form or another: hiding around corners to pounce and maul, lingering in darkened shadows to chew and feed, vulturing above me, ready to descend and devour. Writers must be visionary. Revisionists beyond the pale. Always in search, always a seeking for the perfect word or phase. Eager to amend. Willing to follow when the poem takes the lead and the writer can merely transcribe words to paper. There is no keeping track or count of changes made: it doesn’t matter. The true writer, while keeping prior versions, knows that revision only brings the vision into focus. Writing is a craft, an adventure. No wordsmith worth his salt ever skipped the apprentice phase. We all write to an audience. Not to ourselves. Whether it be judge or teacher, a favored reader or faceless entity it is to them we aim our words, our voice, our heart. Rules, mores, judgements. They simply are. No getting around it. The wise one learns to make them work. The wise one never fails to continue to learn. In that, there is no place to whine. Or cry foul. In that, there is success. In that, there is triumph. In that a true writer, finally, is born. |