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^ Really, hit that link above. It’s important.
Thinking of starting a spoken word project on Instagram, and I put a poll out on my Story to gauge some interest. If you’re moderately invested in what you want to see out of my page, gimme a vote, maybe a DM. I’d love to hear your opinion.
Check out today’s post on Instagram.
At the last poetry reading I went to, someone asked about the process of prewriting – how and whether or not the featured writers mapped out their ideas pre-write and turned them into finished products.
One of them made a really good point about the formative stages of a poem, though – often, you don’t even really begin with an overarching meaning, or set acts, or talking points for a piece. Often, it’s just a line that sounds sonically pleasing that leads you to generating a piece of work with depth.
I liked that a lot.
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I asked on Instagram, but I figure I should ask you guys too.
I’m a little drawn on the version of this piece that I like more. There’s a prewrite of this that ends “I like my chaos how I like my / sunsets, crashing from the distant / sky to meet me”.
Which do you like more?
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Sometimes I think that the phrase “cog in the machine” is giving ourselves way too much credit. By their nature, one cog will be absolutely integral to the functionality of the ones right next to it. They can be replaced by any other of similar size, sure, but without a cog in its specific spot, things actually do just stop moving.
We’re not so lucky.
Or hell, maybe that is lucky. But more for everyone else.
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Starting to roll out some collaborative work after sending the call out last week. I’ve always thought it’s important to work with other people on pieces now and then when it comes to poetry. When you’re coming out with near-daily content to post every day, it’s a little too easy to get caught up in your own rhythms, your own talking points, your usual topics. Granted, your the collabs that you choose to pursue might even still fall into those veins. But they allow you to introduce a secondary voice to the mix, one you’ll have to put a little effort into harmonizing and weaving with. It’s something that you’ll grow from as an artist, without a doubt.
I’ll link over to Nathan’s Instagram here – make sure to show him some love.
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Starting to catch a little more momentum by prewriting with pen and paper before I go to the ‘ol keyboard. I don’t usually do that – for the longest time, I’ve been more of a write only via a word processor kind of person, with a pocket notebook only around for those occasions where I can’t pull a file up.
I think it’s less about the old “laptops are rife with distractions” argument, though. When I find myself plugging away at a piece, I’ll often go back and forth between it and other things regardless of the medium I’m working on – it’s just the way I tend to operate when I’m creating. There’s just this sense of deliberacy and tactile satisfaction that goes along with scrawling out a few pages of ideas that gets a flow going I don’t usually get to see when I’m on a keyboard.
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So, this weekend I found out I might be allergic to something in Negronis.
Luckily, it’s a pretty straightforward cocktail, so I know for sure it’s either Gin, Sweet Vermouth, or Campari.
Not so luckily, there’s a one in three chance that I’m allergic to Gin.
Even less luckily, there may be an astronomically low chance that I’m allergic to alcohol.
Halp.
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Yikes, these are getting a bit longer.
I’ve always been more at home writing longer pieces – I started out writing fiction and short stories before I even considered throwing serious work into poetry. Instagram definitely favors work that’s concise enough to fit within their medium, though – so I tend to post my shorter work more and leave my longer pieces to magazine and publication submissions.
I feel like I sound like myself more when I give myself room to work, though. Wish I could post these on Insta in a way that feels a bit less clunky.
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I feel as though reading different authors has a tendency of snapping me back to the point in time where I read them religiously.
I used to eat, drink, and sleep Bukowski while I was just starting to post my work online, but for the longest time, he was really my only influence. I picked a collection of his up in a Barnes and Noble once and went crazy over it, and I’m pretty sure that bled pretty heavily into a lot of my earlier work.
But then I think I started drawing too heavily on ‘ol Hank and felt like I’d dried myself up somehow. Writer’s block kept hitting every time I’d sit down on the keyboard, which is never a good feeling for someone who really wants to get their best work out there for people to see. Granted, I think it was also the fact that I was keeping a three-poems-a-day schedule back then, and didn’t know that was a fast track to burning myself out completely.
Anyway, this is all just sort of a long winded way of saying that I borrowed another Bukowski book from my girlfriend the other day and, well – it was weird. It was almost like burying myself in that book caused my brainstorming process to revert back to maybe eight-ish months ago, and while I was enjoying what I was reading, I was completely at a loss as to what to write for myself. What little I did get down felt dry and not quite up to my usual standards.
Thankfully I had the good sense to step back and pull up a few other authors I’ve been delving into lately – a little bit of Ross Martin here, a bit of Ben Purkert there. Fixed me right up, and I ended up with this bit of stream of consciousness. It’s definitely not complete, but it’s a start, and a start is a goddamn godsend after you’ve been floundering for an hour in front of a keyboard.
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Hey there. Deeeeeefinitely not dead, I promise.
Been on a bit of an odd morning schedule lately, so I’ve been able to pound out my usual Insta posts during the week, but I’ve been lagging behind a bit on my site. Nothing’s changing – just needed a couple extra hours here and there to fix up a few things on my end. Keep expecting posts on the usual schedule here.
[T h e B l u e N o t e s] 