Staring Into Space

It's muggy in the house today; it's hard to breathe. I can't seem to get fully awake, and every time I look out the window I'm reminded of what a grey, overcast day it is. How depressing.

There's a meditation in Walking On Alligators that speaks to me today. It's about getting down to work. "To set to work right away, without dallying, is ideal," Susan Shaughnessy says. "But it doesn't work for everyone. Some writers need a time of pencil sharpening and staring into space." That's me, usually. I was working on some computers in here yesterday and so before I sat down to do serious work I took a few minutes to pile the stuff up in the corner to reduce clutter. Clutter disperses my creative energies and makes it harder for them to coalesce. I periodically go through the study and tidy up (or at least throw piles of papers into storage boxes) to reduce the clutter factor. Yes, in a way, I still clean my room like a teenager. No wonder I'm always running out to Staples for more boxes. Eheh.

Other days I sit down but don't get started until my tea is steeped and honeyed, my cookies are sitting beside it, and I've checked my e-mail to make sure nothing important has come in overnight. That's a little silly, I suppose, and probably counterproductive: to start off by indulging in a distraction. But if someone's changed their plans or needs something from me first thing, I need to know that. Not that it usually happens that way. Also, the Writer's Almanac comes in my e-mail every day, and I frequently need it to inspire me and get me going.

How do you cope with distraction? Do you go to work straight away or linger a bit before getting down to things? May your week be productive this week! Make and do awesome things!

Poetry Kick!

I seem to be on a poetry kick this morning. I've written three poems about recent happenings and despite the fact they don't really follow a form, I think they're okay. The last one I did is an epistle poem, basically a poetic letter:

To the dog owner across the street:

 Your dogs are in danger
 of being run over
 whenever you let them
 wander out into the street.

 Also, they bark at me
 while I am standing in my own yard.
 This is not their territory.
 You should teach them that.

     Your Neighbour

I just read it out loud and realised I have a near-dactyl foot in the first stanza. If I take out the word 'wander', it's dactyl with a leading unaccented syllable. You've heard of iambic pentameter. The iamb is the description of the rhythm of the syllables: in iamb, it's one unaccented syllable followed by one accented syllable, notated like this: - / . Dactyl is one accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables: - - /. So by removing the word 'wander' I tighten my line and preserve the unintentional dactyl foot:

 -     /   -   -  /   -
Your dogs are in dan-ger
 -  /  -   -  /    -  
of be-ing run o - ver
 -   /   -  -   /    -
when-ev-er you let them
 -   /  -  -     /
out in-to the street

It has a nice flow to it. The dactyl sort of 'runs', a way of saying its rhythm pulls the reader/speaker forward in a way the iamb doesn't. I favour the quicker styles of poetry, like Skeltonic verse. Skeltonic is fun to write. The trouble isn't in the starting, though, it's in the stopping! :) I wrote a Skeltonic verse poem for Associated Content the other year: it's here.

I don't know what to do with the rest of that poem now, though. I'll keep it in my notebook and see if anything pops into my head at a later date. If you're interested in more information on poetic forms, I heartily recommend The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms, which I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before. Poetry doesn't have to be something only crotchety old fogies and dried-up literature professors revel in. Check out The Writers Almanac, linked in my sidebar, sometime. It's five minutes of literary and poetic inspiration that can help jump-start your day.