I’ve been struggling with a poem lately. I keep adding lines, tweaking words, messing with metaphors. It’s not working and all of the tinkering I’ve been doing hasn’t helped elicit a breakthrough. My ah-ha moment remains elusive.
The funny part about this brick wall I’m banging my head against is that this poem is just for me. I have no current intention to publish it anywhere or submit it to a contest. It’s just something that has seized my brain and it brings me joy to work on it. Yes, even as I struggle, I’m enjoying the challenge of it. I’ll enjoy the finished product even more, even if my eyes are the only ones that read it.
You may be asking why I’d put so much effort into something that I have no intention (as of now) of getting published. Why would I spend so much time on something that I’m not going to cash in on?
Well, I’ll tell ya, Mert. I played that game of only working on projects for the purpose of gain. Only writing stories and poems that I could submit to contests or zines or anthologies or self-publish or put on Patreon. There is nothing wrong with wanting to get paid for my work. I like to get paid for my writing. I’d like to get paid more for my words, if I’m going to be honest.
But.
I think a big part of the creative wasteland and writer’s malaise I experienced for several years was because the end goal was purely to get paid. How can I profit off of this pile of syllables? There were a lot of other contributing factors in my life at the time, but that was a pretty large vibe killer. What helped to bring me out of that funk? Writing something that was just for me, something that seized my brain and wouldn’t let go, and the whole point of me writing it was just to write it. That’s it. No goal beyond getting it on the page.
And lo, I felt the chains I’d wrapped myself in fall away and the joy returned.
Now I’m working on three fiction projects, two of which are for myself, with no thoughts beyond just finishing them. The third is for a contest, and it’s the first short story I’ve written specifically for a contest in a long time.
In the past few months, I’ve found a real joy in writing poetry. I’ve always liked doing it (Bad Poetry April is my testament), but this new emotional high has made me want to experiment and invest in the craft of it. I default to free verse when I write poetry. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a very cromulent form of poetry. But I need to broaden my play palace. So, I wrote seven poems in seven different forms about seven characters from a movie I love. I had a blast doing it, too. I found a couple of new poetry forms that I enjoy working with and the courage to continue experimenting with new ones.
No one is probably going to read any of these poems, but that doesn’t mean they’re pointless or a waste. First of all, I like them and I like to reread them and I may continue to tinker with a few of them until I get them just right. That’s not time wasted. That’s craft. Craft is important. So is the creative process. Sometimes you need to get a little ridiculous -like writing poems about movie characters- as part of the process. Wonderful things can happen when you have that freedom to be silly without any pressure.
As for the poem I’m working on right now, I think the trouble is that I’m once again defaulting to free verse when what this poem might need is more structure.
Maybe a septet really will help.
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