How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with?
I am one of those people who believe in making an effort to write every day. Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way and several other books, recommends “morning pages” where you write 3 pages of whatever, every morning. I’ve been doing this on and off for several years, and I generally find this approach helps to excise some of the noise that circulates within our heads – what some people refer to as our “monkey brain”. And after a page or so, sometimes two, something starts to take shape: an idea, a sentence, a phrase, and I just follow that and watch it germinate into something that will eventually become a poem.
Yes, I have a writers’ group that I am part of – in fact, I’m the current president of the Brooklin Poetry Society, and in addition to the larger group, I do have a few poets and writers I like to discuss my work with. I’m not comfortable sharing ideas as I like to let my ideas ferment a little before sending them out into the world, but over the years, I’ve become much more comfortable sharing a work in progress, especially if there are things about a piece that I’m unsure of, or feel I’d like to establish some kind of gauge for.
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