POETRY LESSON 10:
POETRY WRITING CLASSES
YOUR WRITER OR EDITOR IN POETRY?
* CREATIVE SIDE YOUR WRITER * CREATIVE SIDE YOUR WRITER IS ALSO SHY OR SENSITIVE* YOUR LOGICAL EDITOR SIDE * HOW TO MAKE WRITER AND EDITOR WORK TOGETHER* SOLUTION SOLUTION SOLUTION Have you ever been taking a shower or bath or shaving and suddenly your Creative Writer Side starts dictating a wonderful poem, story or even novel! Yipes. Why does this happen?
* CREATIVE SIDE YOUR WRITER
Your Creative Writer Side chooses these moments because you are relaxed. These are routine activities and from your Creative Writer's point of view--it's down time. Downtime means, she can download a poem or novel to your consciousness.
What to do about this? Keep a pencil/pen and pad of paper to write down the ideas. Keep a tape recorder present and charged up to speak the ideas into.
These brilliant ideas are core or even the emotional center of your future poem or story. They are not the entire poem or story usually.
The longer the work, the more likely it is the emotional center/core of the fiction work. You'll have to go back to her for the rest of the story later on in planning, plotting bits and pieces.
She is your Bad Girl-Crazy Side.
* CREATIVE WRITER SIDE IS ALSO SENSITIVE AND IMPATIENT
Your Creative Writer Side has one goal--get the story into the computer or on paper somewhere. She doesn't care if its full of typos and inconsistencies of pronoun and antecedent agreements, or on a paper bag. She does not even care if you understand the big picture she has in store for your characters. Just Do It. Just write it down as fast as you can! She is impatient.
If you stop to correct spelling and other Logical Editor Side work during the Creative Writer Side's time, she will throw a drama tantrum and stop dictating her story. Then your Logical Editor Side will say, "Oops! I now have no story or poem or novel to work with!"
* YOUR LOGICAL EDITOR SIDE
Your Logical Editor Side, normally, doesn't become engaged in wanting to work until something has been put down on paper or computer screen. But She won't wait too long when enough text is on paper or on the screen before she wants to work too!!
She is fantastic at little details and has patience with revising, restructuring, and how a cold outside reader might view your poem or story or novel. She is your first cold read! If you've studied grammar books, she'll be up to speed and edit even faster.
What she won't do is make your novel more creative. Her purpose is to bring clarity and coherence to your text.
You might think of her as your Good Girl side.
* HOW TO MAKE WRITER AND EDITOR WORK TOGETHER
Let's refresh. Every writer has two selves. Writer is the creative self. She's emotional, intellectual want to shout, scream, tell someone one what she felt, saw, heard or experienced. This is the self that will put an entire novel down on paper without punctuation, if punctuation has never been learned. If punctuation has been practiced and is felt okay with, the Creative Writer Side will pen as fast as she can with punctuation. This is why studying punctuation is important. Because eventually your Creative Writer Side will become comfortable with punctuation (having cross-trained with your Editor Side) and it will not hinder your Creative Writer Side one bit.
Your Editor self is nitpicky, detail oriented, wants to see if anyone else can understand what your Creative Writer Side just wrote in her rash of emotional Bad Girl frenzy. Your Editor Side says, "Well this imagery about the ball and the spear is rather obtuse, no one will understand it, get rid of one or the other. Let's put some correct spelling and punctuation in this freaking poem or novel." Your Editor self will try to complain about these issues while your Creative Writer self is creating, busy, looking head tilted toward the clouds. DON'T LET LOGICAL EDITOR SIDE DO THIS! TELL YOUR EDITOR GOOD GIRL SIDE TO SHUT UP! TELL HER NICELY, SHE'LL GET HER TIME TO FIX ALL THE PROBLEMS WHEN YOUR CREATIVE WRITER SIDE IS DONE!
* SOLUTION SOLUTION SOLUTION
Structure time between the two sides you write with. You can alternate however you wish. But in general, let your Creative Writer self-indulges in what's to be put on paper creatively; what the overall message of the poem, story or novel is. When you're deep into the story you could, when working with her, keep notepad open and jot down what your Logical Editor Side has to say.
Then after the creative content is down on paper, let your Editor self-indulgently tears away the nonproductive stuff, put in punctuation and so forth. Then turn it back over to your Creative Writer side to see that all things important emotional, crazy things are still there. When you're deep into editing you could, when working with your Logical Editor Side, keep notepad open and jot down what your Creative Writer Side has to say.
So yeah, as the poem nears the finished product you might have your Creative Writer Side and Logical Editor Side working together. That's always a good thing when they get along.
You've completed the poetry course. Congratulations. Now the fun part can begin as you write your own poems. Good Luck.
SO GET OUT THERE AND PUT PEN/PENCIL TO PAPER OR COMPUTER KEYBOARD TO SCREEN AND WRITE YOUR POEM!This page was last updated: August 31, 2009
Writing Lessons
Poetry Lessons
CupiderosBooks Blogs
This page was last updated: August 31, 2009
An entire weekend with Lisa Williams¿Medium and Clairvoyant, star of Life Among the Dead and Voices from the Other Side, where she will share with you the techniques and skills that will help you connect with the Other Side, in Santa Monica, California, May 15-17, 2009 and October 16-19, 2009. In a relaxed environment, you will have fun with many ESP and psychic exercises, which will leave you speechless!
