The Prose of a Poet

I write every day.

And no, I don’t mean that in a pompous “I am better than you” type of way.

I don’t set aside hours of my life dedicated to creative writing (those hours are strictly reserved for academia). When I say that I write everyday I mean that file cabinet inside my brain labeled “WRITING!” is constantly thinking up ideas and phrases on what to write. It is constantly storing words said by my professors, friends, and family that can be used as inspiration to write. This is how I write every day, or rather how my process of writing works every day.

Inspiration to write is everywhere, it is just a matter of paying attention to your surroundings. Like in class when your professor is explaining the theory behind this amazing book and they say a sentence and something clicks and then you’re not paying attention to lecture anymore and words are exploding into your mind like little popcorn ideas and and AND… you have to write this thought down now. Are you finished? Good.

Now to move on to my specialty of writing, I’m a poet. **insert mocking smirk here** My pieces tend to be cultural and political by nature. The 2016 presidential election and pretty much anything coming from Number 45’s mouth is a breeding ground of inspiration for me.

Often times, I’ll hear a word or an opinion someone has said, and I’ll write a line or two based on how I perceived it. Then I leave it alone for days, weeks, and sometimes months. When I’m scrambling through my notes during finals, I find these lines and think “Oh yeeeah, I wrote this?” Then I’ll either use it as a distraction from studying and write a poem or scrap it because I forgot the feeling it gave me when I wrote it. If you lose a connection to the words you have written, that’s called writer’s block, so either come back to it later with a fresh pair of eyes or scrap it (creative writing pieces only).

I am one of those people that writes on whatever is closest to me, like assignment papers, in-class notes, phone notes, word docs, post-it notes, birthday cards, break-up letters, you name it. Perhaps, I would suggest being more organized than this, but who am I kidding? When inspiration strikes in the middle of the night or the middle of a class, you take what you can get.

When I do come back to these lines and feel that inspiration once again, I’ll focus all my energy on finishing that poem as soon as possible. Sometimes it has taken me ten minutes to write a 15-line long poem. Other times, it takes me a few hours to come up with a few lines and I am forced to come back to it on a different day. But, even when I think I’ve finished a poem, I will change it a few times before I share it or after I share it or as I am reading it to an audience staring up at my double chin.

One of the best things I could have done for myself and for my writing process is to let other people, especially other writers, see my work. The way I got comfortable with this was when I participated in a poetry workshop and was forced to write a new poem every week and bare my soul to a group of five strangers who soon became close friends. Having people focus on the words laid out on a page, as opposed to reading it to them helped me to understand my style better and form my poems to fit my needs.

Lastly, for all you aspiring writers and poets out there: Read your work out loud for someone else to hear! It will set you free. It will help you find your voice even more. Asking one or more people I know and trust to hear me recite my work is pivotal to my process. I say recite because poetry is my performance, I write my poems to be spoken on stage. I give my pieces rhythm, pacing, and music. To make sure these things align with my poem’s purpose, I need to read it out loud.

Once I receive feedback, I either change some funny word-choices that do not flow or leave it as is and am satisfied with it until I open it back up in a few months, think about rewriting it, show it to another friend, and then decide to submit it somewhere.

I write every day, and you probably do too. You just do not see it that way, because your pen has not physically touched the paper yet, but your mind has begun the process. Give yourself some credit! Jeez!