resolved

Jackie ♦ December 29, 2007 ♦ Leave a Comment

I’m working on my writing resolutions and goals for 2008. I got this idea from the writing group I’m a part of, and I always try to mix more abstract goals with very concrete ones. For example, I’ve got one article idea on my list, with the steps outlined that I want to take to try and flesh it out, but I also have, “Poetry is hard work.”

I got that quote from a passage in Alice Sebold’s Lucky, where she talks about taking a poetry workshop with Tess Gallagher. One day a student comes in and says he has no new poem because he simply wasn’t inspired to write one, and Gallagher looks at him severely over her glasses and says, “Poetry is hard work.” I also just finished rereading Anne Tyler’s Digging to America, and in the Q & A at the back she says she never waits for inspiration. She just goes into her writing room and starts to write and hopes that the routine of working will save her.

I think we all have this poetic idea about the muses who will visit us and shower us with divine inspiration, but even when that does happen– when you happen upon a scene or image or fragment of speech that you just know is the seed for something marvelous– actually fashioning that embryonic spark into a piece of writing? A piece that will transmit everything you mean to say, that will become indelible for your reader? That’s incredibly hard work, and we as writers should never forget that.

So that’s one of my resolutions for the New Year. Expect to see postings on this subject over the next few weeks.  Once I’ve made my list, I expect to make them their own separate page along the bar up top there, so I can track my progress through the year and add and remove resolutions as I go along.