Never Alone

As writers we appear to create apart, by ourselves. Yet we are never alone. Our body of work is like one ongoing Poem. That Poem may be our pet, or long-term lover, or even spouse, depending on how passionate or uncomfortable we feel at a given moment. That Poem is jealous. It spurns distraction, demanding our full attention as often as it can. Seductive, unrelenting, it dances ahead. The highs of its writing are as sweet as a swift, tight embrace; its release, the exhausted satisfaction of having wrestled a last line into place in our 24th draft. How can anything compare to that intensity, that communion with something no one else hears, sees, or feels until, through our skill with words, we make it known?

Just write. Whatever the Poem needs to do, let it—sing, or holler, or whisper, or fall flat. Shake off critical eyes burning holes in the back of our heads. Always there will be fashion or theory to judge or disagree. The Poem has its own music and shape. It is its own master and justification.

Such autonomy does not mean abandoning craft. On the contrary. Form and tone and word choice and rhythm and all the other devices matter—but not in the initial drafts. Only once the Poem discovers how and where it is moving can we begin to refine and clarify.

Who knows our Poem best? The Muse. A hard mistress, her x-ray eyes pierce puffed-up egos. She knows when the Poem is “good” and disdains “just good enough?” Listen... In an hour, a month, a year, she may whisper inside our ear: “Yes!” (but all too often, “No,” and sometimes—oh dear—“Never.”)

Till then, the writing itself is what counts. That’s all there is to go on. Write for the sparks to fly. Then listen…