![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msagaraI started my writing life as a poet, published a few pieces in University reviews, and then embarked on my life as a professional liar -- which is to say, a writer of fiction.
Every so often, however, I have the same compulsion that used to drive me into the corners of crowded rooms, with scraps of paper and a pen I stole from some bewildered stranger, and I write poetry.
KP and I were discussing poetry tonight. Or rather, we were discussing a collection of poetry which I thought should have been severely edited before it saw print -- because had it been, I would have loved it. I know that poetry is hard to edit -- but oddly enough, while I would not touch a single word of the same writer's -prose- (or most prose, really, as I'm not a line-editor for other's work), I would fiddle all over the place with other's poetry, if allowed.
I'm not sure why. In fact, I'm not sure why I write the poetry, because there is not only no intent to have it published, there is an active intent to have it buried.
Anyone else?
Every so often, however, I have the same compulsion that used to drive me into the corners of crowded rooms, with scraps of paper and a pen I stole from some bewildered stranger, and I write poetry.
KP and I were discussing poetry tonight. Or rather, we were discussing a collection of poetry which I thought should have been severely edited before it saw print -- because had it been, I would have loved it. I know that poetry is hard to edit -- but oddly enough, while I would not touch a single word of the same writer's -prose- (or most prose, really, as I'm not a line-editor for other's work), I would fiddle all over the place with other's poetry, if allowed.
I'm not sure why. In fact, I'm not sure why I write the poetry, because there is not only no intent to have it published, there is an active intent to have it buried.
Anyone else?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: welcome to lj!
Date: 2004-06-20 06:26 pm (UTC)How have you managed to have kids _and_ keep writing?
Truly? Because we needed the money. Had there been any way at all that I could have avoided writing for the first year and a half of my son's life, I would have avoided it. He was a very, very fussy child, and he couldn't be put down until he could crawl -- unless, you know, you liked being deaf. He slept poorly for a long time; did not, in fact, sleep through the night until he had all his teeth. BUT there was a block of time between 2 and 5 every morning in which he could be depended on to sleep.
So I'd write then.
I was a wreck, though, and don't recommend it; it doesn't make for happy parents, and the lack of sleep really does make you -- as you probably know much better than I -- a bit crazy.
Also: consider. I can get up from the keyboard at any time. If the flow of the work is broken -- and it often was -- it's heartbreaking, but it doesn't destroy the book. Get up at the wrong place in a water-colour wash and you can lose everything.