Loose Leaf Notes

– The following are answers to questions from a writer’s blog hop that I was invited to participate in by Polly Brown from A Year to Think it Over. 

What am I writing/working on now? I recently finished a feature on a woman who hiked the Camino, a 500 mile pilgrimage through Spain and France. The piece involved an interview, some research and lots of time at the keyboard. It was a lot of work but reminded me that writing stories is a fun way to learn and an outlet that appeals to my natural curiosity about people and human nature. As an introvert, it also gets me out of the house and engages me.

More recently I attended the first Style Revolution fashion show at Floydfest. It was a take-off on The Hunger Games and a showcase of handcrafted designs and organic clothing from festival vendors. I took pictures and video clips and wrote a short narrative for the local paper. It was a fun experience that fell into place with ease, the kind of coverage that gives balance to the more in-depth, time consuming profiles I do.

Prose is like my day job and poetry is the rest of my life. Currently I’m tweaking a few four-lined poems that were inspired by the moon. I probably have about 100 moon poems, which caused me to once refer to myself as “a night shift stenographer hired by the muse to take down the moon’s business.” When it comes to my itty bitty moon ditties, they are short and almost interchangeable, like a wardrobe being built on and mixed and matched for new looks. I’m thinking of doing a moon poem collection, like the short homemade booklet of haiku-like tea poems that I did in 2008 (samples HERE).  In 2004 I self-published a perfect bound collection of poetry and essays on writing in 2004 called Muses Like Moonlight. 

How does my writing differ from other writing in its genre? I’m more like Leonard Cohen and less like Sylvia Plath. I heard Cohen say in an interview how he doesn’t think his poetry is as elegant as that of other poets but that he has: “done the best that I can with it and I’ve worked as diligently as I can.” I relate to that plugging away, and I have said, “If you spend time developing whatever it is you’re compelled to do, it will eventually come to fruition, even if it takes thirty years.”

As a fledging poet, I recognized my poetic line in the work of Richard Brautigan and the performance art poetry of Yoko Ono. My influences range from Rumi to Erma Brombeck, a humorist/columnist who I recognized as a teenager listening to Bob Dylan as someone who had something to teach me. I like to incorporate the gestalt of the inner life and humor into my writing.

I was raised on jump rope songs, nursery rhymes (which might explain my love of wordplay) and rock and roll rather than classic literature. I strongly identity with my Irish storytelling roots and the oral tradition of that heritage, which I think explains why I don’t punctuate my poetry, preferring to use spoken rhythm and the breath to determine line break pauses. A period feels confining to me, like the overuse (or over intellectualization) of language feels oppressive. It’s always been important to me that poetry is accessible, which is why I like Billy Collins.

Why do I write what I write? I think I was made to translate life into words as a way to better understand it. I’m a documenter at heart, feeling that our stories are what endure after we’re gone, so we might as well set the record straight. I recently wrote, “I like to touch on our human commonality and tell the back story of life. When I’m writing a story about someone, I’m not looking to know what they don’t want to tell me, but I am interested in the inner life that drives their outer story.”

I like the balance of going from the accuracy it takes to document or report, to the freestyle self-expression of poetry. I’ve described writing poetry as taking my psychic blood pressure. I use the pen to get a diagnosis as well as for the treatment. There’s something satisfying in distilling a feeling or thought down to an essence.

How does my writing process work? It’s like eating. It’s not a matter of whether I’ll eat, but what I’ll eat. I’m the type who finds what I like and eats that over and over. But then one day, I’ve had my fill and start with something new. For me, the writing process is about paying attention, putting a pen in my hand and having the discipline to drop everything to take notes when an idea comes through. Inspiration is hard to recreate, and a phrase or line may never be as pure as when it first comes to you (even if it need editing). Writing is a way of thinking, and I do a lot of that. I’m a scrap paper note taker who hates to lose things. Writing them down is a way not to lose them.

I recently read a quote by a writer saying that poets are spies. I like that, but I feel more like an explorer, taking field notes as I go. – Read about why I gravitate to writing short poems HERE.

What are my future blog plans?  I’ve been blogging for 10 years, so I feel a bit like a dinosaur (and my blog feels about as big as that). I’ll probably continue to blog until an ice age or climate change pulls the plug and forces me to stop. On the other hand, I continually play with the idea of not writing anymore. I remember my first interview for a story with Ruby Altizer Roberts, a past poet laureate of Virginia who was born in Floyd and grew up in nearby Christiansburg. She was 93 years old at the time, and I asked her if she still wrote poetry. “No. I have my life back,” she answered.

When I first started blogging, it was more popular. It’s sometimes harder to justify now, but it still has the benefit of providing a forum and an incentive to write. It’s been a great venue to repost my published writing and give it a longer shelf-life, and I’ve met some very good virtual friends from all over. I like the directness and self-sufficiency of not having to submit work or look for publishers. It’s like having my own magazine that I can post to every day, a poem, a photograph, a commentary, a formal or informal piece of writing.

One of my favorite things about blogging is that it acts as a writer’s filing cabinet. I can access everything I’ve written by searching a word or clicking on a category or date. I’ve called my blog a virtual scrapbook, a writer’s petire dish, a canvas and a one man band, and it can be all those things.

I always keep in mind that each blog entry posted is a published document. I do my best to make sure I can stand behind it.

Post Notes: I tag Tabor, Pearl and Ron to answers the above questions on writing and blogging, if they feel so inclined. The photo posted is from a page in one of my son Josh’s collage journal pages.