my husband, baby, toddler and I are swapping illnesses this week (a continuation of last week), but I managed 1300 words today. an essay theme is emerging.
meandering without a plan until I see a word count around 1000 is definitely not the most efficient way to go about writing anything, but it beats not starting at all.
Thanks Jami for this mini 1000! It again came in exactly when I needed it. I am plowing through with my last ( almost last ) story in my collection of short stories. Wrote 1000 and 1200 ish words yesterday and today. Ah, the power of collective writing !
Day 2, 1236 words that aren't very good, but felt very good to write.
"Because with these words we can surprise ourselves. And we long, with our creative minds, for freshness and originality. But also just to entertain ourselves."
Day 2 1178 words. I am writing a memoir and was not sure what to write but found a subject for today that will fit with one of the many threads that have appeared.
1436 words. Thank the heavens. Not so easily pried out of myself but done. Thank you for sharing Jericho Brown's letter and poems. Affirming and empowering.
1088 and now I'm off to work on some edits. Hope it's going well for everyone!
Here's a favorite of mine!
For The Young Who Want To
By Marge Piercy
Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.
Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.
Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don’t have a baby,
call you a bum.
The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else’s mannerisms
is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re certified a dentist.
The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.
Marge Piercy, “For the young who want to” from Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982).
Thanks for sharing. I had forgotten about her poems
Surely! She’s so great, right?
Absolutely
my husband, baby, toddler and I are swapping illnesses this week (a continuation of last week), but I managed 1300 words today. an essay theme is emerging.
meandering without a plan until I see a word count around 1000 is definitely not the most efficient way to go about writing anything, but it beats not starting at all.
Thanks Jami for this mini 1000! It again came in exactly when I needed it. I am plowing through with my last ( almost last ) story in my collection of short stories. Wrote 1000 and 1200 ish words yesterday and today. Ah, the power of collective writing !
Day 2, 1029! Grateful to be here with all of you.
One of my favorite poems, from Patrizia Cavalli:
Someone told me
of course my poems
won't change the world.
I say yes of course
my poems
won't change the world.
1116 today. Thank you for this opportunity to write together❤️
Zero words so far today but I'm about to open my notebook and get to it. A favorite old poem of mine. The ending gets me every time.
Rednecks // Martín Espada.
At Scot Gas, Darnestown Road,
the high school boys
pumping gas
would snicker at the rednecks.
Every Saturday night there was Earl,
puckering his liquor-smashed face
to announce that he was driving
across the bridge, a bridge spanning
only the whiskey river
that bubbled in his stomach.
Earl's car, one side crumpled like his nose,
would circle closely around the pumps,
turn signal winking relentlessly.
Another pickup truck morning,
and rednecks. Loitering
in our red uniforms, we watched
as a pickup rumbled through.
We expected: "Fill it with no-lead, boy,
and gimme a cash ticket."
We expected the farmer with sideburns
and a pompadour.
We, with new diplomas framed
at home, never expected the woman.
Her face was a purple rubber mask
melting off her head, scars rippling down
where the fire seared her freak face,
leaving her a carnival where high school boys
paid a quarter to look, and look away.
No one took the pump. The farmer saw us standing
in our red uniforms, a regiment of illiterate conscripts.
Still watching us, he leaned across the seat of the truck
and kissed her. He kissed her
all over her happy ruined face, kissed her
as I pumped the gas and scraped the windshield
and measured the oil, he kept kissing her.
670 words done! On my way to finishing up 330 more!!
A favorite poem, this English translation by Jack Agüeros
TO JULIA DE BURGOS
by Julia de Burgos
Already the people murmur that I am your enemy
because they say that in verse I give the world your me.
They lie, Julia de Burgos. They lie, Julia de Burgos.
Who rises in my verses is not your voice. It is my voice
because you are the dressing and the essence is me;
and the most profound abyss is spread between us.
You are the cold doll of social lies,
and me, the virile starburst of the human truth.
You, honey of courtesan hypocrisies; not me;
in all my poems I undress my heart.
You are like your world, selfish; not me
who gambles everything betting on what I am.
You are only the ponderous lady very lady;
not me; I am life, strength, woman.
You belong to your husband, your master; not me;
I belong to nobody, or all, because to all, to all
I give myself in my clean feeling and in my thought.
You curl your hair and paint yourself; not me;
the wind curls my hair, the sun paints me.
You are a housewife, resigned, submissive,
tied to the prejudices of men; not me;
unbridled, I am a runaway Rocinante
snorting horizons of God's justice.
You in yourself have no say; everyone governs you;
your husband, your parents, your family,
the priest, the dressmaker, the theatre, the dance hall,
the auto, the fine furnishings, the feast, champagne,
heaven and hell, and the social, "what will they say."
Not in me, in me only my heart governs,
only my thought; who governs in me is me.
You, flower of aristocracy; and me, flower of the people.
You in you have everything and you owe it to everyone,
while me, my nothing I owe to nobody.
You nailed to the static ancestral dividend,
and me, a one in the numerical social divider,
we are the duel to death who fatally approaches.
When the multitudes run rioting
leaving behind ashes of burned injustices,
and with the torch of the seven virtues,
the multitudes run after the seven sins,
against you and against everything unjust and inhuman,
I will be in their midst with the torch in my hand.
Day 2. 1031 words.... thank you... hoping I can keep the momentum through the weekend!
My fav poem: Song of Myself, 51 by Walt Whitman
The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?
Thanks for resharing the Jericho Brown letter (and his poem). I am ready to go write with that attitude!
Day 2, 1236 words that aren't very good, but felt very good to write.
"Because with these words we can surprise ourselves. And we long, with our creative minds, for freshness and originality. But also just to entertain ourselves."
Day 2 1178 words. I am writing a memoir and was not sure what to write but found a subject for today that will fit with one of the many threads that have appeared.
Good to be here !
1436 words. Thank the heavens. Not so easily pried out of myself but done. Thank you for sharing Jericho Brown's letter and poems. Affirming and empowering.
Just let yourself sound self-indulgent. Then own the experience, whatever it is, of feeling like you sound self-indulgent!
a favorite poem that I return to: Phase One by Dilruba Ahmed,
https://onbeing.org/poetry/phase-one/
Wonderful poem! Thank you for it.