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This may sound unimportant but I am interested about how most writers compose poetry (as opposed to prose). Do you use a pen & paper, quill or some form of document preparation system like Open Office?
I used to write everything down with a pen or pencil in notebooks that I had purchased especially for the task. As I have become more confident with my typing ability & found that I can type much faster than I can write longhand I have started to compose poetry using Open Office or Abiword rather than my notebooks.
Is this a good thing, or a retrograde step? What do you think? -
Writing is a more flowing action, akin to a flow of thoughts...but if your thoughts arrive like a flock of birds, pecking, then typing is a good way of putting them down.
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You can be spontaneous on a WP though. Plus it's easier to edit & play about with ideas.
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often word processors try to do too much
like capitalizing the beginning of each line -
I tend to use pen and ink when I am journaling, freewriting, or brainstorming. I tend to use Word for pieces I am going to share - like poems or critiques. It is just so much easier to edit and revise.
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I think that goes for a lot of people. I often scribble 'brainstormers' down on paper. However I have noticed that I seem to be gravitating towards Open Office more & more for scribbling these days.
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When I write longhand, it feels like a first draft and, if I transcribe that to the computer, changes often happen.
Today I tried a free writing website for the first time and really got going on it. Not sure it was any good. I printed the hard copy out to revise, and may continue it in longhand, it it spurs me to do so.
The free writing website is called just that - freewriting. I think. It's something new and that always gets me going. -
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By 'freewriting' do you mean stream of consciousness?
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Freewriting isn't "new". I had a 10th grade English teacher who made us do it everyday - he called them "five minute writings" and we couldn't stop. It is a habit that I got into and I use it all the time. I think a lot of my rhymes come "automatically". free verse and prose start out that way but I end up tweaking them.
Anyway, there's a freewrite function right here at AP: Look under My Account and then
Your activity
Contests you've entered
Freewrite practice
I might enjoy, or similar poets
Latest views on your poetry
Your lists, contests, columns, backgrounds, images, guestbook, journals, or drafts
Comments on you or by you
RSS of new poems (?)
Mass-Delete or Un-delete poems
Want to give someone points?
My last contest was for spontaneous freewrites and that's how I used to run all my contests when I was first on. I think the fast stuff, the unconscious stuff, when you really let yourself go, is a great discovery technique.
Anyway, yes, the surrealists were into it and Madame Blavatsky - the whole automatic writing team. LOL.
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You say tomato, I say tomato...
It's probably idiomatic.
Webster's recognises it: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/freewriting
However Chambers doesn't: http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/features/chref/chref.py/main?query=freewriting&title=21st
It is probably not used in the UK as a term as it could probably be confused with 'free verse'. -
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The Webster's definition is exactly what my 10th grade teacher was doing and I am sure it was an offshoot of Jack Kerouac's great success writing "On the Road". It influenced that whole generation of English writing types before me and spilled into the classrooms of America.
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I've read 'On The Road' & I wasn't really that into it. Kerouac reputedly took a copy of a Dostoyevsky novel with him on his road trip. I don't know which one though. Dostoyevsky is one of the finest writers ever. There has always been some form of conflict between those who prefer Salinger's 'The Catcher in the Rye' & the 'On the Roadies', well at least there seems to be in England anyway. There again the English are fiercely tribal about everything.
I am more a 'Catcher in the Rye' kinda bloke.
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Yes, I definitely agree with liking the " the fast stuff, the unconscious stuff".
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yes, I think it is pretty much the same thing but "freewriting" is the term used in writing workshops of which I have taken several over the years. You write without stopping, whatever comes to mind, and there's no worry over grammar and spelling. That part is enjoyable but hard to get used to, hard not to stop and fix the mistake.
Sometimes the person conducting the workshop is there to give you a prompt but, when I'm not doing it in a workshop, I use all kinds of devices to set me off writing. -
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Yeah, I think we tried something like that at university. I believe the surrealists were 'into' that kind if thing. I can't say that I rate it particularly as an idea but it may have its uses. I suppose it is one way to tap the unconscious. It wouldn't work with me however as I had my unconscious surgically removed years ago as a precautionary measure!
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lol I think you're a realist, not a bad thing. Doing the freewriting can lead to a lot of meaningless junk and I will see, when I look at my freewriting page from today,it it has any meaning at all!
When it comes to stream of consciousness, I find Virginia Woolf hard to read. Joyce is easier because he is more poetic. And there is another lesser known writer, Dorothy Richardson; I enjoyed her a lot. -
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Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Yes, I have always found Woolf difficult. Her novels can often sensitively emblematise the forms of the inner consciousness, but they seem to be heavy going to me. I have a copy of 'Orlando' somewhere that I bought several years ago & that I have never read. I'll get around to it some day I reckon. I did find 'Mrs Dalloway' to be quite a bit enjoyable. Mind you, I wasn't quite feeling myself when I read it LOL.
Ulysses has often been touted as Joyce's masterpiece &, after all, someone had to write it, & that person had to be Joyce. For my money though, 'Finnegans Wake' is the real masterpiece. I admire anyone who can pun in Hebrew & English at the same time.
I can see the parallel between 'Wake' & Dylan Thomas's 'Under Milk Wood' when it comes to portraying the workings of the unconscious mind.
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I have been at page 54 of To The Lighthouse for years; I'm not even sure I still have the book in my possession. Got 1/3 of the way through Ulysses about 30 years ago, and don't expect to get back to it in this lifetime.
Remembrance of Things Past: is that considered stream of consciousness? I don't think I will be tackling it either. My current reading project is a murder mystery. Not feeling intellectual these days, I'm afraid. -
Paper. PAPER. ALWAYS THE PAPER. It's easier to carry around and you've no idea when an idea will hit.
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Good point. I'll make a note of that in my netbook.
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Do it. Do it with the golf pencil you carry round in the band of your hat. Or perhaps that's just me.
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That must just be you. I often come up with a line or two when I'm in the middle of nowhere, with no pen or paper, & I work on the theory that if I forget them they were not that good in the first place.
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Really? I'll have to disagree - I say some ideas, good or bad, can only be conceived and/or recalled in certain environments. And if an idea isn't all that great to begin with, at least you can work on it later.
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Luckily I have a good imagination. I have never been convinced that you actually have to be in the environment that inspired the poetry. Just as long as you have an imagination.
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I have always meant to read Proust's In Search of Lost Time all of the way through. The newer translations are really good if your French isn't. I don't think I got past 'The Guermantes Way part two'. If you can find a copy of Alain De Botton's marvellous little book How Proust Can Change Your Life ISBN 0 330 35491 4 (1997) it is well worth it.
I don't think that À la recherche du temps perdu is stream of consciousness, it's just that Proust wrote in ridiculously long rambling sentences. C. K. Scott Moncrieff translated the novel as 'Remembrance of Things Past', which I believe is a quote from Shakespeare's sonnet 30. -
I use a word processor unless I am away from my desk, then I will resort to paper, but much less prolifically because I have always been more self conscious about writing on paper - like it has to look and be more perfect. I think the computer allows for freewrites much faster, too, and it's appealing in that way.
There is a difference between stream of consciousness and automatic writing, where the writer goes into a trance like state to produce the work. Desnos, of the surrealists, was known for this. I would say that most of my work, I have an inkling about it, or I take the prompt and run - it is not truly "automatic" (though sometimes.) Neither is it stream of consciousness - it just sort of builds on itself, the rhymes especially - they just drive the write. I have no idea what I am setting out to write when I start, often - I just see what developes and whether that will be rhyme or prose, I often don't know at the start. I also am not a big believer in rewriting. -
I scribble with pen & paper, then if I think I've got something, I'll sort it out on the computer
I don't know 'if it's a good thing' or not - as long as you've backed-up your files, I don't think it matters 'how' you write, it matters 'what'! -
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I actually can't read my henscratchings later so over the years I have come to the conclusion, why bother? And I just try to remember things that hit me when I am away from my desk.
I had a poet friend in college who told me he threw out his pencil and little paper pad that he carried around in his shirt pocket, to be rid of the tyranny of that.
I can see his point.
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I like tiddling at the keyboard
instantaneous satisfaction, instant gratification as I punch out words tap tap tap
but I also like writing in journals
there is nothing quite like taking pen to paper and scrawling it out.
It's all good. Except maybe on the back, you don't want to be scratching your poems out
on someone's back, messy and painful, moreso even then the actual poem itself! Eh? Wot? *laughs* -
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You had better make sure no one tries to use you as a set of quills Beaky!
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Good point! heh heh
I am worried. I would make a fine quill, pointed and direct!
They say a poem written in blood is the best poem of all. Filled with your very essence oh how oh how can it fail!
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I don't often write in blood. It makes a mess on my laptop. Tomato sauce is better.
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Or is it ketchup?
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Probably Catsup! Oh what a crazy world this is...two spellings for ketchup. Who'dathunkit! I've never written in blood myself, but I've written in sweat and tears a few times or two!
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According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology 'ketchup' is derived from the Dutch translation of the Chinese literally meaning 'horrid smelly fishy stuff that funny wide-eyed foreigners will pay a load of spondoolies for even though it tastes a bit like cat piss to us & no one in their right mind would even possibly consider eating ever'.
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ever had a catsup pizza?
I did coming down the mountains into Virgina
stopped at a gas mini-market
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The great thing about computer keyboards is that you can wipe so much effortlessly, often without a hope of retrieving it. A pocket dictaphone can also be helpful. It takes more effort to wipe out your creation.
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Cynewulf
Sep 28 4:12 PM
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