I had a little “eureka!” moment I’d like to share with you. Something we’ve all been told countless times, but I keep conveniently forgetting. It has to do with the inner critic. Some days, it’s more like a panel of critics, isn’t it?

While working on a story set in Merritt, I felt compelled to write about a country music festival that used to happen there. For the life of me, I couldn’t come up with any rational reason to include anything about the festival in my story. Even a free write on the subject seemed like a waste of precious time.  After a few days, I’d made no progress on the writing, so I put it away. The chapter sat gathering dust for a month, and I was desperate to get back to it, so one morning I coffee’d up and let fly. Wrote down everything I could remember about the Merritt Mountain Music Festival, from the night Johnny Cash played to the “Walk of Stars” and buildings plastered with murals of smiling country stars in the nearly abandoned downtown core.

Out of this exercise came multiple esthetic and thematic ingredients for my piece, and what do you know, the festival itself did find a place in the story. Maybe it will be cut later. Who cares? Self-critique stopped my writing cold, and taking a risk paid off in spades. Duh.

Post by Carleigh Baker (TWS 2012).

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Ride your bike, lie on the grass in a park, go for long walks around the city or the forest. Visit new places, observe the things you see, jot down some notes. Fresh air and quiet observation are excellent tools for writing.

Post by Laura Matwichuk, a Vancouver-based writer. She holds an MA in Art History from the University of British Columbia and is currently working on her first collection of poetry.

Photo courtesy of the author.

Sit in your quiet room at night. Take out your pencil and notebook, listen to the clock click. Not so quiet anymore, is it? Begin listening to the sounds that float up in your body. Before they rise up and away, take your pencil, write them down:  wrench, riddle, rust, mantle. Rumble, rent, harbour of bliss. Blunder. Play with the sounds. Welcome them onto the page. Hear the rustling in the background. Get curious. Who’s out there? Why? With whom? Write it all down, let your pencil glide, explore. Take a swig of tea. Sigh. Celebrate. Keep writing. There’ll be time for editing later.

Post by Barbara Kmieć, TWS 2012.

Photo by the author.

When I heard published authors joke about spending all day in their pyjamas, I knew I had found a kinship. Later, I would discover that it is precisely this quiet state of doing nothing where inspiration for creative thought emerges. Try lying in bed for a few hours longer than usual in the morning, and think of an area where you are stuck in your writing. You’ll be surprised at how your mind begins to tie the threads together. And, if you are a writer who views sloth as one of the deadly sins, try thinking of it as strategic discipline instead.

Post by K. Lorraine Kiidumae, an adjunct in TWS 2012 and a writer of both fiction and non-fiction. She shares her time between Vancouver and her home in Nanoose Bay on Vancouver Island.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

During Jami Macarty’s Sounds Like, Looks Like, and Feels Like Poetry, a core course of Southbank Writers’ Program, Claire DeBoer, a program mentor, and this blog’s coordinator, asked the following excellent, multi-part, and compelling question:

“On the few occasions when I have felt moved to write a poem (and have been afraid to do so because I had no clue about process) I have worked from the emotions I felt at the time and built words and images around that. What I am left with is lines on a page that don’t seem to reflect any particular type of poem or process. So – do I continue with this method and then try to shape my first draft into a processed poem (sestina, free verse, whatever format I choose)? Or do I leave the poem as is instead of trying to force it into a particular format?”

Here’s Jami’s response:

As I got half way through my response to Claire’s questions, it occurred to me that other writers may be interested in this topic. In fact, Toni Levi, another Southbank mentor, had a similar question a few days after Claire’s. With that in mind, though I am addressing Claire and her question directly, I offer all of you my response:

The way you describe the beginning of your process “when I have felt moved to write a poem” is, as far as I’m concerned, the perfect first step. That is, to allow for an arising movement within you to lead you to words and then paper/screen. And, yes, it’s often par for this course for fear to debilitate that movement.

Fear is one of the many manifestations performing the Inner Critic’s biding. When you “feel moved” to write a poem in the future, I invite you to focus as fully as you can on the energy within that feels “moved.” Write from there. If fear crops up, respectfully ask it to come back later for tea, because right now you’re busy writing a poem. Say it as loudly and as proudly as needed to get the critic to back off for a bit. I’m serious!

Now, it seems to me, dear writer, that “being afraid” to write a poem because you “had no clue about process” is in the category of putting the cart before the horse. It’s pretty common for writers to worry about process and form before they have material to process or form. From my point of view, as a creative writer, your number one and most important focus is to get the material out on the page/screen as authentically felt as possible. That’s first and foremost. So, your “worked from the emotions… felt at the time and built words and images around that” is exactly right.

Then, right! What you will be “left with is lines on a page.” That’s just the first movement. The process continues as revision occurs. Again, worrying about what’s there—”that doesn’t seem to reflect any particular type of poem”— sounds a lot like you’re putting high expectations on yourself to know what’s there before you know what’s there. This takes time. You cannot write a Shakespearean Sonnet (14 lines in iambic pentameter) before knowing what you feel compelled to say. Put the horse in front and let it run.

So, yes, I vote for continuing with the method you’ve been following. I urge you to go as far as you can with the content—getting it to be as true to heart as absolutely possible before the focus shifts to form. I believe content shapes form. In Black Mountain poet Robert Creeley’s words, “form is never more than an extension of content.”

In a way, the writer doesn’t have to concern herself with form. Content takes care of it. I don’t think there’s a “trying” to shape. I think that happens organically from within and out of the poem. I don’t believe the writer chooses a form for a poem.

What if the writer takes as her first task to listen, patiently, for the poem to assert its form and shape? Now, that’s not to say that you can’t create a formal constraint for yourself, and say, choose to write a sestina, as an exercise—to get to know the form experientially. This is an excellent practice. Much is learned about the form, and in the process, the left brain (the Inner Critic’s territory) is highly occupied, which frees the right brain to run and skip and jump and cartwheel as it so desires.

It’s probably clear by now that I am not a proponent of “trying to force it [the poem] into a particular format.” A poem is like a butterfly caught in the house and cupped in the hands to set free outdoors. If you close your hands or hold too tightly, you’ll crush it.

Lastly, reading broadly, exposing yourself to as many different styles and types of poetry will offer you examples of and possibilities for form. Through reading, you’ll gain a sense of how form and content work with and for each other.

To your world of words,

Jami Macarty

Faculty, SFU’s Southbank Writers’ Program

Image credit: AJU_photography flickr.com

The Southbank Writer’s Program in Surrey has been underway for 3 weeks now and we’ve been picking up some writing germs along the way.

Instructor Nancy Lee taught us that great writers are born, for the most part, of thousands of hours of writing practice rather than a God-given talent. She helped us to see that by worrying less about perfection and getting it right the first time, that our best writing comes from exploring our imaginations freely on the page.

Lois Peterson introduced the concept of ‘germs’ to us. Germs are those ideas for a writing piece that come to us when we’re driving down the highway, sleeping in our beds, reading the newspaper, or when we overhear a conversation. The trick is to make a note of these germs as soon as we think of them and then to spend some time watering and feeding them until they are ready to grow. “Don’t judge a germ”, Lois says, “just record it and start asking questions about it.” Don’t write until you are ready. You should feel so pregnant with the story that you will burst; that’s the time to begin writing.

Poet Jami Macarty showed us to look for the germ of a poem through a writing exercise than began with a most unlikely seed: cataloging the start of our day in reverse order. Simple sentences came out of the exercise, such as,”grab keys from counter,” “get up and feed the cats.” But once we focused on those words, sounds, images and letters that meant something to us, we began to find the germ to a poem and the unexplored seeds that lay dormant inside us.

We’re looking forward to some great insights from Jami this week before we journey into the world of non-fiction with Bryan Payton this weekend.

Post by Claire De Boer —Mentor, Southbank Writer’s Program

Claire De Boer is a fiction writer and graduate of both The Writer’s Studio and the London School of Journalism. She is the Wellness Editor and regular contributor for SheLoves Magazine and also provides professional writing services.

Creative commons image courtesy of flickr.com.

Truth, in writing, is at the heart of it all. Whether you’re writing a memoir, poetry or a sci-fi harlequin, truth is truth—in the way we feel and touch, in the way we fight and love—in existence (on Mars or Earth-bound). The inherent responsibility of every writer should be to make the reader see what they’re seeing, to believe its authenticity and feel its guttural yawp. I write with that intent because I expect my poets and authors to do the same for me.

Truth, in essence, comes through our ability as human beings to bear witness to each other’s struggle—to engage and listen and understand. The most literal self-centrist has got nothing on the fantastical writer who lives life with empathy and patience.

So I truly believe that if you want to be a better writer, you’ve got to shut up and listen.

Post by Calder Cheverie (TWS 2012), who, when not busy living the dream, owns and operates a small factory that produces tiny machinery for other small factories. Visit his website here.

Photo courtesy of the author.

Night thoughts are different from day thoughts. The late-night mind is less constrained, less rational. Not everyone rises early and writes for hours before noon. Let your mind slip into an altered state, and riff. Let your hands type lists of images, metaphors, one-liners, drafts. Then, in the logical light of day, choose ideas you can build on. Trust day light for the clarity to revise and edit your draft. Trust the night imagination to generate–when your inner editor is too dozy to stop the flow of sensation, emotion, and thought.

Post by Tanja Bartel (TWS 2012), a poet who teaches English at an alternate school and trades college in Mission, BC.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

When Alice Walker was the editor of Ms. Magazine in New York, she began to feel there were characters inside her who needed to talk to her. But they refused to open up to her in New York. “‘What is all this tall shit anyway,’ they would say.” So Walker took a leave from her job and found a rustic cabin in Northern California. She sat and waited. Walker said there were “days and weeks and even months when nothing happened.” But eventually the characters began to visit her. They would sit down across the table from her and talk. She wrote down their stories, and these became the novel The Color Purple.

Never underestimate the power of sitting and waiting.

Post by Cathy MacLean, TWS 2012.

Information and quotations from “Writing the Color Purple,” in Delighting the Heart (1989; Susan Sellers, ed.)

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Ideas come from everywhere. They come from past experiences, conversations, something we’ve read or heard about, or something we would like to know about. But the best ideas often seem to come out of nowhere. I seem to get my best ideas when I’m:

• taking long walks;
• sitting on the bus, or on a park bench;
• people watching and eavesdropping in cafes and coffee shops;
• being around water: swimming and taking baths;
• daydreaming.

Regardless of where you get your ideas, make sure you write them down before you forget them. You never know, they might just turn into your next great piece.

Post by Erica Simmonds (TWS 2012). Erica’s best ideas seem to come out of nowhere, but not as often as she would like.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.