I'm just wondering under what conditions the most of you find your inspiration.
Is it as simple as one passing thought, or is there always a theme in mind?
Do you sit infront of this very screen and wait for the versus to come, or do you curl into a dark corner and meld out thoughts through scratches to arrive at a prolongued notion?
Do you have set conventions to meet with every poem? A realization and a solution? A dawning with a passing?
Perhaps your methods can help break somebodies block, so do please share.
__________________ What do you expect after this? Applause? Your name on stone?
You will have nothing but me and in a worse way than before -
Dissolving and reforming so quickly I seem only to flicker.
Well I hardly ever write poetry, but when I do, it is at the spur of the moment, whatever is on my mind is what comes out, and I often don't have the courage to show other people what I write because it's me in my weakest personal moments.
but yeah most of the time I sit and write it down as the versus come to me, which is often the ingredients for a bad poem that doesn't makes sense to anyone but myself.
first of all, thanks for being the first person out of 12 with the guts(?) to express yourself on this subject.
It's disheartening to hear you say it is your weakest personal moment. I'd like to think that one day you'll realize you are merely impowering yourself with your own compellations of how this world works. Sharing your work is a choice, yes, but you will never know if those ingredients are indeed for a 'bad poem' until you share them.
Find your Spiral.
__________________ What do you expect after this? Applause? Your name on stone?
You will have nothing but me and in a worse way than before -
Dissolving and reforming so quickly I seem only to flicker.
I do both things. Sometimes I just write to write, and when I do that it usually turns out no good.
If I want to write a good poem, I need to think more or less what I want to convey in my poem. I did this is this poem: http://toolshed.down.net/opinion/for...ad.php?t=12353 . Unfortunately I don't know what people think of it. I decided I wanted to write about myself, and nature. I wanted about 20 lines, and I pushed myself into not using more than five adjectives/adverbes. I spent about 30 minutes writing it. But it definately needs revising - like almost all poems.
I think writing like that will eventually make me a better writer, even though the results may vary.
I usually have to incubate the idea for awhile and choose my lines carefully. Of course, I've had moments where everything just flowed (not as many as I'd like, though), but generally, it takes quite a while to see a work to its fruition. Jury's still out on whether or not this is a good method; I only average about two poems per year.
It differs a lot for me. Somtimes I'll think of some really good lines and then try to form a theme around them and turn it into a poem. Other times I have an idea in mind and I just sit down and try to write. Generally I have music playing, to help generate emotions. Specifically Tool and APC. If I'm writing a song expressing rage or disgust I'll listen to "Judith" or "Pet". If I'm writing about inner struggles "The Package" works very well. Music plays a very important role in my writing. APC and Tool really inspire me to create, and I use the moods they convey and try to capture the emotions. When 13th Step came out, I wrote constantly. I wrote more the first week it came out then I had in the past 2 months.
Last edited by AnemicRoyalty; 11-04-2003 at 09:37 PM..
Writing is such an intangible thing. For me, it may start with something I hear on the tv. Something someone says which catches my attention. Other things cling on to this and then bam! you got something pretty decent.
Other times, you might be sitting there, with a pen and notebook in your hand, and you just write what comes to mind. Some good things have come out of that.
Often the thought or concept I start off with ends up buried in some other stream of concious drivel. I'm never happy with the finished product only because I don't think that I ever adequately express the feeling that spurs me to write. But sometimes what ends up being the finished product, to me at least, takes on a life of its own. I don't give thought to 'proper' poetry with rhyme and meter. If I do, it's definately to the beat of my own enslaved drummer. I read some of my shit out loud and I thought it just fucking barfed. Perhaps I wasn't taking the time to vocalize the inflection that I read in my head. Either way, I think I'm going to lean more towards spoken verse just so I can get a better idea of flow
Ulitmately though, as far as inspiration goes, that stuff just sits in the crock pot and simmers. When shit inside stagnates and overflows, it's pretty much an outpouring of various emotions that I'm never able to reproduce in the present world. It's the shit that I keep bottled up with no social means of output.
In that I keep myself strangely detached from what I write. After the puking is done, it pretty much considered ejected and buried. So I suppose in a way, it's not formal poetry. Rather, it's the way that I prefer to vent emotion instead of kicking someone's head in or vandalizing some hapless object that happens to be in my way. The source of that emotion is whatever was pent up for the weeks, months, or years prior to the last outbreak.
I do hold a conceited perspective on the whole thing. In a sick way it's really like puking whereas I come back later to what I've tossed out and dig through it with a stick for the more interesting chunks. I guess it's just personal therapy. *shrugs*
I get in these moods...
so inspired but yet Its hard for me to get calm and find the hole into myself....
I write for me...
thats why a lot of things ive written arent on here...
actually sss when you said
" do you curl into a dark corner and meld out thoughts through scratches to arrive at a prolongued notion?"
I thought you were talking directly to me ;)
I just write little lines and verses... and occasionally they form nicely into poems... and sometimes they just sit in the numerous notebooks I have lying aroung waiting for me to get inspired again and elaborate on them.
I have so many half poems.. or single lines that Ive written and I love but I cant capture the moment or the feeling again.. and it sucks! :(
I do find that its so much easier for me to write from a place of pain than a place of happiness... pain or anger are stronger emotions... and so its easier for me to express them.
I mean.. im a very loving person and alll but... I have an outlet for expressing love...
so... love poems dont often leak from my hand ;)
every tear of mine is a poem in itself.
Hahahaha, that's the story I'm sticking with until I get an explanation as to how it all works, Source.
As for myself? Up until recently, I've started with a closing line, or couplet, or something along those lines. This closure is generally linked to a thought or an idea, and so I work backwards. As Tant says, it often takes on a life of its own; I have far less control over my writings than I would like. However, this is starting to change with some of the verses I'm playing around with at the moment. They have much clearer ideas driving them, and I'm being very very fussy about what I'm trying to get across. It's much harder, this way. Takes a lot longer. *Sees Cry_Ouroboros far down the road of chronological-poetic inefficiency and runs to catch up.*
__________________
So they built as men must build
With the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other.
I write about situations that are happening or have happened in my life. Sometimes, I just write to write though, like just write about something that has no particular significance to me, but the writing itself. Also, I don't try to rhyme in poetry at all, I just let it flow, and don't really think about it, until it's written.
I'll mostly, just write on inspiration. The words just spill out
That's at least with poetry.
I'm more of a steadily creative person when I work on my long story/novella/hopefully novel (goddamnit I have to retype the first 40 pages of that). I can just sit down, type out some stuff, may only be a couple paragraphs, or a few pages if I have a good idea, but it gets it somewhere slowly.
I usually am just sitting at my computer desk ( I always write my songs in notepad) and I am thinking about how iI feel. Not all emotions are easy to interpret in words, so I try to think of a line that can manipulate itself into my feelings and thoughts. Usually it is very abstract, as it is only representing an idea by means of interpretation....and then that interpretation can give others a different feeling or idea, and then maybe inspire them to do something with it. Usually it is the first line for me that is the stem of the rest of the song or poem. It sets a basis for me, and I can add to it and react to it and turn it into a whole other idea that I originally never had or thought of. This is why writing music is very constructive mentally and emotionally because it is ongoing, and it develops just like we do in life, as it progresses.
Imagine the earth without a sun,
Dark and gloomy and filled with no one.
Fathom a hand with no thumb,
Empty and useless and surely no fun.
Take for granted all that has been given,
with no thought or immediate punishment.
You are careless and still you're livin',
Ignore the government.
Wishful thoughts of a new day,
empty promises to brush away.
Staring down the falling rain,
Follow the covenant,
you've been trained.
Whistle and point your pistol at me,
I'll turn around with my hands in my pockets,
why don't you shoot me?
You can point but you can't talk shit,
it seems as though this is irony.
Vulnerable and compatible yet very unstable,
you're looking to steal me to make you,
Peal the label off your forhead dude,
We're equal and I want to live too.
I usually write down what comes to my mind.
I suddenly get an idea. If I try to just sit down and write, because I've decided to, it rarely gets any good.
Alright, speaking of how you write, and I've noticed this
I'm taking a creative writing class at school, and I've kinda began to see that there is always room for improvement in a piece of writing, and all it takes is the ability to find the inner editor within you.
So my idea is we treat this place more like a workshop instead of a show-and-tell room ... i.e. we print off pieces we want to critique, write our comments/type them out, and tell the person anything and everything we feel they can do to improve their writing.
I can't print however, so feel free to call me a hipocrite (spelling).
Another thought:
I've noticed that not a lot of poems here seem to go through drafts, i.e. if someone gets feedback, I never see them post a draft 2 ...
An idea forms from an expirience I felt. I think about it until I have to write it out. I sit at my computer with my negative ion candle and just type away at the different aspects of what I feel. I analyze and then try to put all the sides of it up there. It's like grabbing a cube, pulling it apart until you have 6 squares, and hanging them up for myself to see.
- I have to be down, having a really bad day and stuff.
- Need inspiration from something... idea's have to flow through me.
- I write when I am alone, mostly when I am on the computer late at night.
That's not true... I like most of your stuff, though when you write something bad, you do it good (or bad), anyway... when it sucks, it really really REALLY sucks.
But yeah... I like your stuff.
P.S. Have you wrote any new stuff these last weeks?
"Asking a poet about poetry is like asking a flower about gardening"... I have no idea how I write.
Sometimes I need a perfect environment, my feet on my desk, my cat and my keyboard on my lap, a mug of warm coffee within reach, and a good feeling of what I want to write. Sometimes I'll be scribbling on my forearm with a ballpoint pen in the subway. Sometimes I write freeform, dozens of pages at once and never look back. Sometimes I go back and edit half a dozen times, spending minutes deciding between two words which is the best. Sometimes I'll rather write on paper because it's slower and when I type it up on the computer it'll give time to reread. Sometimes I'll rather just jolt everything on the keyboard at 120 WPM.
There's really no pattern. It's probably why I have such a hard time writing... It's so much easier when I compose music, which is still one of the hardest things for me to do.
*sigh*
__________________ « She's very old yet many think she's young
One kiss from her and you know your time has come
Good times for all time Sandoz »
im writing again actually, i posted my last work, i needed to write to get it out, but apparently nobody wants to comment on it, oh well, thats not why i write anyway.
I don't think I've ever set out to write a poem. Usually the first lines just pop into my head when I least expect it.
Depending on how I'm feeling, or how that line relates to my current mood/situation, I could pump out pages in an hour or so...or I could add a little bit at a time for weeks or more. I have a very disconnected / stream of consciousness writing style.
__________________ "You snooze you lose, well I have snossed and lost." - M Doughty
Usually the ideas come to me as I stare at the screen waiting for them. I usually struggle to make it sound right, so I take quite some time. Even then it doesn't quite sound right, as you will see if you have read any of my poems...
It's different all the time. Sometimes I sit with a notebook and force a line out. Then I can elaborate on it and sometimes make it rhyme. Sometimes I'm walking around campus and I think something, then I rush to find a place to spill my feelings into my notebook. Sometimes I rock the gonj and work on my epic.
Most often I write journal entries. Sometimes I (try to) write poetry. Almost never I write fiction.
EDIT: Also, I think it's important to mention that I never consider any of my works a 'finished' product (unless I stop believing the message. Then I can't edit without dilluting said message). I consider it an important artists' freedom to be able to change a work in order to expand on a feeling or thought and make it more pure.
__________________ "Painting a picture, composing an opera, that's just something you do until you find the next willing piece of ass. The minute something better than sex comes along, you call me. Have me paged. For sure, even the worst blow job is better than say, sniffing the best rose...watching the greatest sunset. Hearing children laugh."
-Chuck P, Choke
Last edited by pacifister; 12-02-2003 at 01:43 AM..
writing is like jerking off; if you keep brushing over what's in your mind, eventually something will come spurting out. if there's nothing there in the first place, you're just going to dry-heave until it hurts.
not everyone is a writer, and not every writer is good. sometimes what you see really is comparable to the mess left in the wake of a coughing unit.
It's a rare occurance ,for me.I only write about two poems a year, if even that.I'd like to think that everything I wrote would take time,gestation and incubation before I'm satisfied.
Things float into my head I cant tell what they are inspired by, personal matters, funny things about life etc, they usually all get melted together into something new.
__________________ A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery
writing is like jerking off; if you keep brushing over what's in your mind, eventually something will come spurting out. if there's nothing there in the first place, you're just going to dry-heave until it hurts.
That was beautiful.
I have occasionally tried to force myself to write, and the dry-heave analogy is perfect. It does hurt, and I almost invariably find myself disgusted with whatever I manage to retch onto the page. But I need not go to the other extreme to escape this disgust. Sometimes total spontaneity can yield something worthwhile, but other times a more gradual process is equally rewarding. As the tide comes in, each wave passes further and further over the sand, building and growing, reaching towards ... nothing ... and everything. This is most often the way things go when I write; I think something, I feel something, and it for a moment it is mine before it recedes again beyond my reach. Each time it returns it pentrates deeper, I feel it more intensely, it more fully consumes me, until finally it fills me entirely and spills over the edges.
I almost never write about happy things, likely because I almost never write when I'm happy (although there is often an undercurrent of optimism, especially in my poetry). I don't know why this is; I know that I feel joy with just as much overwhelming force as sorrow, that when I am at peace with myself and the world it is just as complete a peace as the turmoil it so often gives way to. Why, then, can I only seem to write in the bad times? Perhaps because they seem to last longer. I remember them more often. And whereas I usually must struggle not to forget the good things, I must fight even harder to drive the bad thoughts away when they do come and threaten to stop me altogether.
i think that most writing seems negative because writing is a way to exorcise those particular feelings. if you think about it this way you can see what a positive thing writing is, even if the words are harsh and bitter. who wants to write away the good feelings?
the tide analogy is true of me, though lately i haven't been visiting the beach.
i dont know how someone could listen to something as intense as tool or apc while they generate their own "original" thoughts. especially songs with lyrics. which would be most songs. ahh well. wonders will never cease..
i write in many different ways. started out with stupid crap with just simple words put together ( here's a sample: 'today we've got a substitute / hey that rhymes with prostitute' ). absolute lameness. that was early 2003. over the summer i developed new strategies and coherance, and by now, things are coming together quite nicely.
it usually helps to read something first. i like reading the tool lyrics on down.net. there's something about the white on black isolation that inspires me :P. burn some insence, play some ambient music.. and think. then write. i do it pretty introspectively a lot of the time, which i am definitely not proud of. but, for what im going through these days, i find it near impossible to climb out of the box sometimes. :(
I've got a few different ways. The latest one I tried, with "Victim of Choice," was sort of odd. I just felt like writing something, anything. I had no clue what. I just wrote the word Victim in the title box and thought a little bit. Then I just typed a few lines. I had sort of a scheme at first. I would have nine syllables in the first two lines of each verse, then about five on the third line.
I just typed stuff. Took it line by line, constantly checking a thesaures. I was pleased with the result, especially since I had no goal predertermined except to write "something."
Sometimes I'll think of a few lines while I'm falling asleep or reading a book. If I remember those lines, or at least something I can work with, when I wake up, or when I'm done reading I'll write them down. Then I'll throw in a couple more lines here and there.
Most of what I write doesn't come out as more than 10 lines, but maybe I'll post something on here if I find some old stuff.
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