This is hilariously late, but I post it nonetheless.
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NaNoWriMo has finished, and I thought since I posted at its beginning and middle, I should post something at the end too. Here, I’ll make a few comments as to how I found the experience, what I took from it, and maybe share another poem or two.
Of course, some days were harder to write on than others. I knew this would be the case; to some extent, it’s kind of the point of NaNoWriMo—to help people stick to their writing, to keep a schedule, to learn a habit, all in the company of many others doing the same thing.
But the thing that struck me about those difficult days was not that they were difficult, or that I didn’t feel like writing. Just sitting down and writing wasn’t the hardest part. As I said, I expected those days, and I’m not a stranger to making myself do things I don’t feel like doing (in reality, none of us are). What struck me as more difficult was that whenever I didn’t feel like writing, I could force myself to take time to write, but then the issue became, what do I write? If I wasn’t feeling like writing, it was much more difficult to come up with something to write.
This, of course, is another valuable lesson to learn. And I found a few things that helped. Just taking time helped; I slowly could work into the mood, as it were. As G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “Nobody seems to consider the conditions under which poetry is manufactured. It is done by doing nothing.”
Reading over my past writing also helped a lot to get the “creative juices” flowing. Along with this, the decision to sometimes work on things I’d already written, rather than start something new, was a boon, for two reasons: one, it was easier to start, to get into the headspace, when I had something to work with. Two, it helped me actually produce finished work. I still have a notebook almost full, but I feel like I can’t claim nearly so many finished poems. But taking time to work on ideas already in various stages of completion was both rewarding and productive. In addition, this allowed me to revisit old poems, often half-finished, and realize anew that they were good, which was fun, and to bring them to some kind of final version.
Now, I realize that just being “in the mood” isn’t a prerequisite for writing. I believe there is also a place for raw technical skill, elaboration, editing, etc. However, I am by no means an expert in anything literary, and I’ll take all the help I can get.
I do wish I had written more prose during NaNoWriMo. I went over one short short story I had begun a long time ago, but when I read over it, I barely changed anything. I’m not sure it’s totally finished yet, but I was pleasantly surprised at the state I found it in. I may share it on this blog at some point in the future.
I almost forgot, but I also tried working on another story I’d barely begun. There, I got some words down, but I started to second-guess whether I was keeping the mood I wanted, and whether I was going on too long. This is a classic beginning-writer problem, I realize. But there’s a funny sort of triple time in writing (music as well as text), where there’s real time, the time covered by (that section of) the work, and the narrative or artistic timing and flow. All three of these may be entirely out of sync; in fact, they usually are. You can cover the span of years or even centuries in-story in seconds of real time, and you can do the exact opposite and describe a few hectic seconds of action or emotion in multiple pages (and real-life days). Or the narrative flow and function of a single in-story moment can be devastatingly important to the plot and theme, looming much larger in the story than its pure temporal duration might suggest. Simultaneously, it may take days or weeks to write and rewrite, or it may all come out in a rush.
Incidentally, this is one area where I think my education in music composition is particularly applicable, cross-media, to writing. I was (and am) interested in spare, slow, minimal music, and questions of pace and timing were crucial in much of my composition—these concepts, I think, are similarly important in writing poetry.
But I digress. I hope to continue writing, and at a much more frequent and less sporadic pace than I have in the past. I don’t think I’ll hold myself to writing every day, though, unless I find myself just not writing otherwise. Maybe I’ll dictate that I must write a few days a week, or something. We’ll see.
I leave you with a poem from near the end of November. It’s perhaps a little rough yet, and may get some minor editing in the future, but the main shape is there, I think.
The sun like a battleship
sinks in fire, dyeing
the very air like
art, clouds in contrast
the blue of souls and gunsmoke still
brighter than the night
dark-drifting in lockstep
with the water, black
above, black below, a horrible
mirror like symmetry like
there is nothing but
nothing but nothing
but nothing
But
voices faint, despite the dark
—nearer—
voices raised, somehow in song
—my God—
melody high, strong as the sea
—to thee—
song serene, holding out hope,
a secret deeper than the night,
darker than the sea:
the black will be blotted out,
the red reversed,
and I shall once again ride
the battleship of the sun.
An Unending Suicide Note 