Writing Poetry

Pause. You should probably go and take a little break. Get insperastion. Most of the time good things just come to you. It depends on the poem you are writing. If it’s happy think of things that make you happy. Go do them and write it down. Or if it’s dark then think of the things you never want to encounter. Just know, you can always go back and change it or add on to your poem. :List down everything that you love and hate and just go from there.

Good Luck!

Write from the spirit. Let it flow out. Don’t second guess each word or thought. And let your first thought/choice, be the one you write down. It’s usually spontaneous thoughts and feelings that form poetry the best.

Take it from someone who has been writing poetry for over 40 years… Write because you can’t stop writing. The words find their way to the page even though rejection, critics or self-doubt try to stop them.

Study, read and write. You never know when or where inspiration will strike. But if you’re doing it to become rich or famous… Well, that’s a gold ring most never grab.

If you’re a poet in your heart and soul, you’ll write. The rest is up to fate and luck.

I wish you well.

I have problems with my self-confidence when it comes to poetry as well. For example, I wrote recently a poem that most people liked, but a friend told me it was shallow, mediocre. And it was the friend’s opinion that counted most…
Just write…. keep writing… I write for myself mostly, but I feel really down when close friends are not pleased…

My sixth poem isn’t all that far back in time; I’ve been writing for only a couple of years, and I’m not especially driven to write by my inner wuzzit. So I remember quite plainly the obstacle that trying to write a longer, slightly more ambitious poem presents, and the corrosive effect on my confidence that the string of little technical defeats had–oh, no! it’ll never be done!

That reduced confidence manifested in a poem of pretty low quality, standing out as ‘ucky’ even in the uncompetitive company of the bad poems that had preceded it. I’d gone downhill. I had a poet’s problem to solve.

I had plowed my way through it, and that had turned writing a poem into a chore.

I REALLY didn’t like that sensation, so I went back to short poems, modest technical gains, and so on, stuff I could handle with pleasure, even if the gains were modest. I was willing to settle for being a ‘minor and rather mediocre poet’ in the footnotes of history.

Eventually I had restored my confidence, and I tackled another long project on a whim. And I moved smoothly through this one, because I had adopted a ’strategy for the project’ that made it possible for me to stop work on that project any time I should hit an obstacle, and to create a mini-project that dealt with the particular problem type on a small scale.

A completely artificial solution–and it turned out to be almost unneeded, because with that ‘job plan’ in place I stayed relaxed, knowing that this poem didn’t have to be done today; I didn’t have to smash against the wall again and again after a technical failure. I could do something else until my technical skills were equal to the task laid aside.

For me, that ’something else’ was ‘write a crappy sonnet in the Shakespearean style,’ or ‘write a poem with a REALLY ridiculous rhyme scheme,’ or ‘find a better metaphor for X’ . The ’something else project’ was prescribed to be ‘related somehow to the problem’ in the balky project. It wasn’t all pure aimlessness and sensitivities; there was minor aim and low demand on my energies.

You’ll always get better at whatever you do long enough. You’ll never get better as fast as you want to. Who does? Only those with very-modest-want-indeed. It might be YEARS before you can tolerate the rate of growth that’s natural to you.

I stroll along in my development; practically anyone with normal drive can pass me by in a year or three. Doesn’t bother me; I’m in no rush to become a good poet while being a crappy poet is still fun.