Date Posted:06:51:31 08/21/11 Sun Author: Lady Morilka Subject: Option 2 In reply to:
Esther
's message, "HOMEWORK for 09-05-2011" on 12:36:09 05/09/11 Mon
Why do I write. At first I thought that was an easy one, answered in one sentence. But than I thought about it and figured it was not that easy.
The first answer would have been "therapie". I transfom the jumble of thoughts that I have when moved strongly (good or bad) into poetry. I started with a diary but that didn't work out for me. It just led me to drift deeper and deeper into miserie while te good stuff was jotted down in a few words.
I am a person who can draw herself into emotions again and again just by thinking of long lost situations. So for me poetry is a good thing, I need to sort my thoughts instead of dwelling in them. I get to the core of my feelings and that helps me to overcome.
BUT it became more. By starting to write poetry I saw how I can capture feelings way better than simply writing them down. By now my inspirations are numerus, it can be the line of a song, a picture, a landscape, an inscription or personal memories and emotions. I think THAT is what made me a writer.
But it is in many whays harder than writing novels. You can't force inspiration, you don't have loose ends at which to begin and you don't have an outline of a story or a charakter. But ist makes the writing itself easier I think since I only write when I have an inspiration it can happen that the words just flow, some of my best poems have only taken minutes to write. The hardest are those where I have an image in mind and no clue jet as to how to describe it.
I allways write in a notebook since writing by hand allows you to revisit things that got scratched out at any point of the process. And flipping through it can provide inspirations, or a started poem (or noted insiration) may suddenly come to a close by revisiting it. I wouldn't have that feeling sitting at a computer.
And when I started thinking about this assingement I realised once again that I have allways written poetry, starting in elementary school, when the main idea still was that it needed to rhyme. Just the themes changed and matured as much as the thechnikes. By now I reached the state where I can write songs, which for me is a new level since not only do the words have to fit and make sense but the verses need to have a certain repetetiv charakter to fit the melody.
I don't write often but i never stopped entirely and I don't think I ever will.
I've read some beautiful poems here on the LIT board. I've also greatly admired those that can write poetry, and not just because it is something I have never been capable of. I've stated before that I just don't get poetry, and I now suspect it's because of the way I look at things.
The great thing about your post is that I have a clearer picture of the process now, and while I doubt I'll ever be able to put my thoughts into prose the way you do, at least I have a better understanding of where you are coming from.
You, my dear, have a poet's heart.
I had a few revelations while reading your post. You are so right - it's not the character that's involved in a poem. It's an emotion. And emotion, those true feelings, cannot be engineered or written into being. They just are. Characters and stories can be judged, manipulated and conjured from a blank page, but emotions, the way someone feels, can not be made into being. And that is what makes them precious and real. That is the power of a poem. It's immediate and the why of it isn't as important as the fact that it just is.
Inspiration is all around us, and it is indeed writers that do more than merely observe what is happening around us. We put that inspiration into words. It takes ability to do so, and I must say it's a talent you posssess in abundance.
Thank you for taking the time to share your insights. I appreciate it!
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Glad you got something out of my posting as it was actually quite personal and I was hesitant to post it at all. -- Lady Morilka, 03:08:55 08/25/11 Thu
