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Unread 04-07-2021, 08:15 AM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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Join Date: May 2016
Location: Staffordshire, England
Posts: 4,420
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Hey Sarah-Jane

No, I've never tried any sort of poem-a-day or Poetry Month Challenge things. Apart from the analogy with being blind, which doesn't quite follow through, I think I recognise Kevin's approach as closest to my own. What happens is I spend a lot of my time vaguely thinking, daydreaming, musing and fretting about poems and poetry, like I'm constantly trying to kind of 'plug in' to something that feels creative. This isn't a conscious writing technique though, it's just how my brain works these days. Sometimes it pisses me (or other people) off because it makes me distracted. But I don't write anything down. Then, when a poem comes it seems to come from nowhere, and it comes fast, and it's usually written to completion within a few hours, or overnight at most. Then I show it to you guys and you tell me what's wrong with it ha. So I don't really have those notebooks of half-finished ideas and random lines, I just have what feels like dead time, but clearly isn't, that lasts anything from a week to a couple of months and then suddenly BANG! A poem. Some of this routine is probably due to lifestyle. I can't find the time to set aside daily exclusive writing time. I mean, I write a lot of rubbish here on GT, but I just do that on my phone as I'm doing other things. It doesn't need the same mental space as poetry.

As I say, it isn't a conscious approach, it's just what my experience of writing has always been since I was bitten by the poetry bug. And because that was relatively recently and relatively late in life, I've had a, perhaps superstitious, reluctance to mess with it. Occasionally I've self-pityingly whined to poet friends here that I'm blocked, that I'll never write again. And they've given me a title or just forced me to write something. I quite like that. Being affectionately bullied into writing haha.

All the sensible people say write every day/force yourself to write/do writing exercises. It's just not what I do. Perhaps I'm missing out!

Last edited by Mark McDonnell; 04-07-2021 at 10:25 AM.
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