It's one of those nights when with every key I type, one more drop of motivation runs from my fingers, flows among my words, and drowns out all sense of meaning. It's when the glaring numbers of the clock are watching me, and questioning me, and measuring just how much longer I'll be able to stay awake. It knows that my ELI on poetry has been pushed back on a dusty shelf in the parlor of my mind with no hope of reappearance until at least the weekend. Its glare is similar to the Wissner stare that floods your brain with guilt and then suddenly motivates you and you don't in fact blow everything off and stare out the window in hope of seeing a completed blog entry fly by.
Here is a list of things I would like to be doing right now in order of priority:
1. sleeping
2. catching up on YouTube
3. listening to really loud music while eating chocolate and reflecting on the meaning of life
4. watching slam poetry online and pretending that I have written just as good a poem lately
5-136. doing some variation of the above pastimes
137. eating a cucumber
138. writing this blog entry
139. writing a poem
Oh, the irony.
To put it simply, writing is really hard and I don't really know what I'm doing. For a while I had the illusion that by the end of the semester this wouldn't be true, like there would finally come a time when there wouldn't be 138 other things I would probably choose to be doing instead. This misconceived notion was murdered in the first thirty seconds of my mentor meeting.
Robert Wrigley is well-known poet. He's won all the awards you're supposed to win when you're a well-known poet. This was proof enough to me that this guy was a pro and writing was a breeze, however he decided to kick off the conversation by saying the following monumental and dream-crushing line:
"Writing is hard."
[Dramatic sigh]. I will admit this resulted in meltdown within the confines of my skull, but as the hour progressed so did the re-congelation of my cerebral solids. Though Mr. Wrigley never let up on his topic sentence, he did illuminate the way to hope (and did so in the most poetic and metaphorical language I have ever heard used in speech).
First of all, “writing is the easiest thing in the world to not do.” For this reason, having a somewhat systematic approach to the process can help make it far less daunting and facilitate a more consistent output of products. Some poets and authors have a specific place and time that they sit down and write at each day. Others simply vow to write for half an hour at some point during the day. Given the inconsistent nature of a high-school schedule, I have found that going on writing sprees on weekends is the best fit for me.
Another way to decrease fear of the blank page is to develop the mindset of “I am doing this for myself.” This piece of advice was bestowed to me by poetry professor Ron McFarland. This concept is still applicable despite the fact that the majority of us do not write beyond the horizons of our English essays. Though we are writing for a grade, we are also ultimately writing to learn to effectively express ourselves in the written word. For this reason, it follows that internalizing the attitude that writing is an act of self-exploration will result in better writing with less frustration.
Once when preparing a choir solo in the 5th grade, my conductor told me to pretend I was Hannah Montana. This was because distancing myself from the solo would allow it to exist with less insecurity. The same is true in writing. Third person narration, for example, largely excludes the author’s voice allowing room for those of the characters to surface. Alexandra Teague, also a professor of poetry at the University of Idaho, recently published a book of poetry written from the perspectives of historical figures. She says that this allowed her to have more freedom in her writing and to look beyond her immediate self.
There are still 138 things and counting that I think to do before I write a poem. I still rate writing as the single hardest activity that I engage in. However, what has changed over the semester is that its prospect is not quite as daunting as it was at the outset. Vacansopapurosophobia is the fear of a blank page. Though I still share the common sentiment that “writing is hard,” and though I know that this is something that I will never surpass, it is possible to develop the skills needed to not let writing turn you away, but to instead embrace it as the ultimate challenge of expression.
~Luisa
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