Re: Writing

I writer full-time as a freelance writer, but it is still vital to take time out for myself to be able to write about anything I want, no matter if I will get paid for it or not. 

Re: Writing

I write in order to articulate. I’m what’s known as a “kinestetic learner,” which means I learn things by doing, more than seeing or hearing. So writing for me is a valuable way to process new information through my body, and integrate it with other things I’ve learned. I write while I read, I write before important conversations, and I write most of my projects out longhand before I start working on them.

Is there anything better than that moment in writing where you find just the *perfect* way to express a thought you’re having?

Re: Writing

I write anytime something strikes me. Anything might spark my interest. I  like to take moments in time and dig deep and discover everytyhing about those one or two moments and write about it. I also use my writing to express deep emotions that would be burried forever without the self-discovery of writing them down and digging them up.

Maybe I should label my overall wrting style as…

Excavation Writing.

I like it.

And so, this is how my mind works. Dig, write, dig, write, excavate, write, pause, examine, write, discover.

Re: Writing

When I was a child, writing was about expressing emotion without inhibition, which was helpful and therapeutic at the time. Now, in my poems, I aim to balance that same instinctual burst of language with careful craft and form. I try to write a bit every day, even if it's just a sentence in my journal or a line of poetry. I'd love to get into a Stafford-esque rhythm of writing a poem each morning, even if it's a crappy one that needs my attention later.

Writing, to me, seems to be largely a matter of practice, not always inspiration. As Joyce Carol Oates says, “In a sense, the writing will create the mood. If art is, as I believe it to be, a genuinely transcendental function–a means by which we rise out of limited, parochial states of mind–then it should not matter very much what states of mind or emotion we are in.”

Re: Writing

I write for the same reason that a paleontologist meticulously uncovers the fossilized skeleton of a dinosaur.

Maybe it's because I feel that I have something to show the world.  Or maybe it's just that I want to see what the thing looks like, as a whole, after it's been dug up.   Who knows?  I guess the only fact of the matter is that I know there are fossils inside of me, and with time and persistence I can reveal something formerly unseen.

Re: Writing

Sometimes I feel like I write because I have a tremendous sense of vanity about my handwriting.   Or maybe the shapes of letters.  I love to just watch the ink leave trails of meaning across the page… 

 When it comes to the content of my writing, though, I write lots of fantastical stories that come zooming through me from some outer zone of imagination.  My characters come alive and keep me company.   I just wish I could develop the discipline to work more consistently on writing.  (I'm working on it now.)

 I also write to clarify things in my own mind.  Typing or writing with pen and ink can help me to fully process events, information, or emotions.   I understand things better when I have written them. 

But really, I think I do a lot of it because I love my own handwriting just a little too much.  ;)

 Keri