Where Bad Writers Turn Good
Mark Twain famously advised writers to "write what you know." While this isn't bad advise, it isn't the only advise writers can benefit from. Read for ten more pieces of great advise on what writers can and should write about.
What Is It Doing? Writing Nature and Landscape by Fiona M Jones Here’s a little story, “How to Write Nature Poems,” that first appeared in Hey Mrs. Winkler as part of a series of meta-fiction micros. Hannah wrote stuff about nature. Not poetry, exactly—just stuff. She’d walk through the rain and ask what the rain... Continue Reading →
In reading numerous works on the writing process and receiving advice from other writers based on their own personal writing habits, I have heard numerous renditions on what up-coming or potential writers must do to cross the threshold into actualized writers. These examples tend to take a dogmatic approach to the process. For example, an established writer will say one, absolute method exists in order to write, which usually just happens to be the method that particular writer uses. I disagree with this. Even if I find the advice helpful, I disagree with the necessity of strict adherence to any singular process.
So, you want to write a poem, but don’t know where to begin. Should it rhyme? Does it even have to rhyme? What about the different rules and poetry forms? Shrouded in more mystery than a school cafeteria lunch, it’s no wonder that writers can be somewhat hesitant to explore poetry.
What is the purpose of poetry, the ultimate end game? The goal is to invoke a feeling, conjure an image. Anyone can spat out what a meadow looks like. Your goal as a poet is to draw your reader in with your visual descriptions. As poets we are given the gift of creating emotions for readers that perhaps even they don’t understand, we can be the ones that open the window to insightfulness. And with as dark as the world is at the moment, I find this an incredibly empowering coping mechanism.
Poetry is the ultimate baring of the poet's inner thoughts. Not to say all poetry will be deep and serious (just as our inner thoughts can be lighthearted and fun, so can poetry), but that regardless of the tone the poem, you can always be sure that it is a reflection of the poet's mental state when they wrote that particular poem. As such, the poet must carefully construct each poem with full consideration of tone, word choice, and structure.
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