Originally Posted by Any Old Ghost

you rack disciprine.
your emotional intelligence is your strongest suit, however, if the products of it are told to us, instead of of painted or sung, we tend not to find sympathy for your ideas and find you either whiney or preachey. i have difficulty connecting. you take it for granted that we are supposed to give a shit. we don't and won't. i hate to say this, since i dialed off on an English teacher once for her vehement, ignorant endorsement of this same statement being the most important thing in the world for writers, but "show us, don't tell." the immaturity of your voice kind of excludes you from the world of storytelling, at least for the time being. don't be afraid to beat around the bush. people will make the appropriate connections. if they don't, fuck 'em all the same. never take the reader for granted, but assume them to be logical, sensitive beings. don't talk down to them. don't pretend your experiences are magical uniquities, sufficient enough to stand alone and raw for others to revel in, or give a shit about. show us threads of the experience, expect us do some work knitting it together. it's like court in reverse. we're on trial and you're the defendant. keep writing, but be prepared to put in a lot of fucking work before anybody sees and hears everything you taste and smell when you write. develop your tools. know your tools. once you have a few, your voice will start to come out. accept this if nothing else: right now you are a dog chasing a car and every single writer starts off this way. in the beginning, which is where you are right now, focus on what information you want to convey instead of making any attempt at style. draw the form out of your subject matter. knowing your character will teach you how to dress him, what kind of walk he has, where he grew up. get somewhat familiar with why you are doing what you're doing. writing poetry is an utterly frivolous and pointless endeavour, and that is the only justification required for why it is such an important way for humans to spend their time. a little less action, a little more conversation, baby! do NOT pretend to be clever, especially if you have the unfortunate situation of actually being so. any attempt at being clever in your circumstance will only be percieved as douchebaggery. enough of this douchebaggery. there will never be a new poem. every poem is the same poem, except for poems that aren't really poems. be as simple and honest about everything as you possibly can, since poetry is basically lying. "Once a plan gets too complex everything can go wrong. If there's one thing i learned in Nam," it's that as you grow, the tools you build will give you the freedom to relax and wander. at some impossibly distant point, you'll put down the pen and say, "fuck, that happened almost by accident." IT DID NOT. TRUST THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND OF AN INTELLIGENT BEING. do we sit down and do differential calculus every time someone throws a stapler at our heads? no, we react and catch it. the art of writing is often rewriting. you must keep reminding yourself of this.
a lot of people say that they're their own harshest critic. 90% of the time that's a load of donkey shit. 90% of the people who say that fall in love with their work just like a bad gambler does with his cards.
DO.NOT.FALL.IN.LOVE.WITH.YOUR.CARDS.
you tend to ramble. it's ok, i do the same thing. problem is, once again, lack of maturity. you cannot break rules that you aren't aware of. you cannot break rules that you aren't aware of. study more writers. read stuff outside your comfort level, and as often as possible. i also strongly reccommend you read as much Charles Bukowski as you can get your hands on. he was a terrible cunt, but also a genius. also know the classics. there has always been a concept that the writers of any day have held fast to: every writer before them was a dumbshit who played by too many old, stuffy, pointless rules. Joyce broke the rules, especially when he started writing about people taking shits and shaving and doing all the mundane things we all do. before him it wasn't really done. books were like films: life with the bad or boring parts taken out. ironically, the narrative of Ulysses works much like a documentary lens constantly rolling and changing hands. without this decision to concern his work with such things, writers like Vonnegut and Selby might never have existed. and i wasn't kidding when i said you should read Faust. Poor wee Homunculus, just fucking wants to get born... Goethe was a vain, rambling idiot. but he was also a genius and a master. Louis MacNiece (sp?) made an abridged version, cutting some 11,000 lines out for a BBC radio presentation on the Faust bicentennary. read that version and read the unabridged version. it's interesting to see what MacNiece cut out and why, especially since his stated aim was to "make Faust accessible to a new generation..." know what past writers changed about writing, what trends they set and their reasons for bending that way. some of them were "fashionable" decisions, while others have a much deeper importance: they were revolutions. you seem to bend towards "free verse", which doesn't fucking exist, but for the sake of advice we'll pretend it does. free versing your way along can be dangerous if you don't know the rules. know the rules, then break them. lots of people called Schumacher a reckless driver. honestly, he was over-aggressive, he was a cunt, but he was a very, very good driver. equally important was his technical knowledge of his vehicles. sure he ran people off the road and might have actually killed a fellow driver, but he knew exactly where the line was, the wheel, exactly where to tuck the nose. compare this to a 15-year-old who just ganked a school bus. aspire to be accused of recklessness, not of being a smarmy imbecile cunt rolling in a beat up and stolen schoolbus along some hack boondock road. honestly, most cunts who defend their so-called right to use free verse are just lazy dipshit cunts. kill as many of them as you can with your vehicle, such as it is. good poetry is a lot like good jazz. knowing what notes or steps were skipped is essential to understanding what notes and steps weren't skipped. anyway, the biggest thing is developing maturity.
also i have no idea what i'm talking about and you're an idiot if you listen to me.
also also cocks.