Sunday 16 August 2009

Dry spell

The book release and completing my dissertation has left me poem-dry. I am in that I don't have another poem in me frame of mind, which I loathe. The dissertation isn't due in for another three weeks and I finished it at the end of July but I keep on fiddling with it - titivating the layout and changing odd words. I think it's displacement activity; once I hand it in, I'll have to get myself in gear and start writing again - somehow.

I know it will come back, it always does. Usually, poems return slowly with just a hint or a taste of one long before any words come back. In the meantime though, I have a sense of mentally flailing around, looking for anything that might trigger the start of the process.

I can do the exercises, keep on writing something, responding to online challenges and themes - but actually, I suspect my best work has usually come from quiet periods. Maybe all that is needed is to be open to the possibility of a poem forming, maybe I need a fallow period after working flat out for a couple of years.

It's easier said than done to accept it though...

7 comments:

  1. Don't worry about it. What matters is quality, not quantity.

    Everyone seems to think they need to publish a book a year. If it were more like a book every five years, wouldn't the books be better?

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  2. Thanks for commenting, both :)
    I'm not thinking about a book - it's far too soon and I want to let 'Occupation' have its day before I think about another (though the disseration portfolio is about half a book). I think 3 - 4 years is a good space between books.

    I just loathe the feeling of not having something brewing in my hind brain. Normally, there is always something there that I can take out and poke at, to see if it's ready for writing yet. I know it will come back and I think I probably need a fallow period - but I don't like it!

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  3. I think whatever your craft, there are down times. I think of them as gathering times now, times when you stuff thoughts in your pocket for later. One of my first mentors told me when I was still working,juggling a complicated life and lamenting having little time for art that I should "remember that one doesn't have to be at an easel to paint... to see and save, to think about what you've seen, let it nag at you a while before you begin".

    I suspect your muse is weary, too...after this great year you two have had!

    She'll be back soon. : )

    Pat

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  4. I try not to fight these fallow periods and just let them happen. Sometimes I find a new, totally out of character topic to read about and explore, or do something I wouldn't usually do, just to shake things up. Then I journal about these new things...not with any expectations of poems, but just observations, silliness, doodles. It IS hard, but productive in its way. Good luck...and try to enjoy it.

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  5. Thanks Pat & Marybeth.
    I know it will return so I'm not panicking (well maybe a tad as I will be enrolling for the PhD soon). I am used to letting things brew in my hind brain and don't worry too much if I can't actually write; I have to work that way because of all the other things that eat my time. I just really don't like it when there is nothing that I'm aware of brewing back there. It will pass.

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  6. "I have a sense of mentally flailing around, looking for anything that might trigger the start of the process."

    I know the feeling so well. You're not alone, Angela.

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