Sunday, August 12, 2012

Writing on Writing – Entry 002


Poetry and Free-Writing

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I write poetry. However, many times my poems begin with my wanting to write an essay (or a blurb if you will) about something I am thinking about that has come to me through conversation with a friend, my life experience, or through some other media that caused me to think philosophically about some subject or other. As well, I often free-write in my journal, and thoughts sometimes appear on the page that eventually turn into a poem without my intention.  

When I free-write with the use of paper and pen or pencil, I do not sit down with any clear idea of what I am going to write. It is a sort of meditation in which I clear my head of all thought and simply begin moving my writing instrument across the blank page. At first, I might write a string of disconnected words. Yet though the words seem random, as they don’t form sentences, they have a sense of clarity in informing a thought or idea or that I was not aware of when I first sat down to the task. In other words, free-writing informs me of ideas that have not quite surfaced to the forefront of my conscious thought. Now that is not to say that I come away from every free-writing task with a poem, or that I don’t have to work out any details of the poem at hand, however, free-writing is a very useful task for me in the writing of poetry. Yet, this is not the case when it comes to other writing tasks, such as writing a solid story whether the story is fiction or no-fiction.

Thanks for reading. ~ Yvonne

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