Tag: motivation

Angst/

On staying motivated

Quote by Charles-Bukowski-—-8

It’s one of those tricky periods right now. The poetry honeymoon is well and truly over. I’m existing on a handful of acceptances (for which I am humbly grateful). I’m surrounded by talented, prolific poets who all seem to be successful and getting noticed while I seem to be not writing anything that people want to read. I need the Spring the get going, dammit – I know a bit of sunshine would help. I also know this feeling will pass.

One saving grace right now is that I’m not a US citizen. Which must sound monumentally trite, so I must explain that in 1999 I was living in the US and was (I thought) not coming home, ever, to the UK. Just as my lawyers gave me the good news that my Green Card application had progressed to the next stage, and just as I was several thousand dollars the poorer, my job was reorganised. So I was back in the UK quicker than the time it took me to unlearn how to say ‘water’ in such a way that people understood me.

Anyway that’s all by the by, and now I’m thinking of my former colleagues and old friends and feeling embarrassed about comparing the plight of a poet who’s temporarily lost her mojo with a mighty nation living out a disaster movie.

I started the year very positively and I can’t really explain why I’m digging a trough for myself nor why my skin feels so damn thin right now.

However I’m so glad I picked up a copy of Charles Bukowski’s On Writing in the library the other day.  I’m only a quarter into it and already it’s making me laugh, and more importantly I’m getting a sense of perspective.

The book is an edited accumulation of extracts from his letters, not a writing manual. This makes it all the more raw, and for me it’s exciting to get such an insight into what we might in a workshop call his ‘writer journey’ – although I can imagine what he’d say to that. It’s also seeing the evidence of a writer losing patience, losing their rag, and basically just losing it. “I’ll be honest with you. You might as well keep those poems for as long as you want to because when you do send them back to me I’ll just throw them away” (to a magazine editor after a long wait).

In a calmer state of mind – “Writing is a damn funny game. Rejection helps because it makes you write better; acceptance helps because it keeps you writing.”

He can be pretty cutting – for example, of the ‘littles’ – editors of magazines who he’s lost patience with for quickly losing interest and folding – “What have they done but camouflage themselves behind the facade of Art, think up the name of a magazine, get it listed and wait for submissions from the same 2 or 3 hundred tired names that seem to think they are the poets of America because some 22 year-old jackass with a bongo drum and a loose 50 dollar bill accepts their worst poetry.” Ouch! But who can read that without smiling?

Bukowski is a popular source of soundbites – there’s even a Pinterest page for them. I think I may need to turn to him on a regular basis.

Angst/

Thank you, Dr Upadhayay

lift off

I was one of those lucky people who enjoyed school, and whose English teachers (and I will name them, by way of a belated thank you – Dr Upadhayay and Mr Jennings) believed I had some writing ability and encouraged it. But I couldn’t see what they saw and thought it was utterly ridiculous to have any kind of creative writing ambition. Looking back on this in my forties I was ashamed of how I’d refused their encouragement, and (perhaps by way of atonement) decided I would try to find out if I did have any talent for poetry.

So I set myself a deadline – get a poem published in a ‘serious’ poetry journal before my fiftieth birthday, or … or what? Stop writing? Stop submitting? Keep writing ‘for pleasure’ and always wonder if any of it was any good? Get to my old age and feel bitter for not having really tested myself? I don’t know – but I made the deadline (just!) so I never had to find out. If it had all gone pear-shaped I like to think I would have just set a new deadline, and not ‘settled’, but who knows?

I guess I’m not one of those people who has to write, like having to scratch an itch. The world would still turn for me even if I never wrote another poem. But I get great satisfaction from doing something well. In fact, anything I do I want and expect to do well. I know I’m setting myself up for disappointment. I know it’s not fashionable, wanting to excel, especially at something creative. “It’s all subjective! We shouldn’t set store on the judgements of other people!” OK, but there are standards on which many people agree, and I don’t see the point in pretending there are not. If there are standards, I want to at least reach them. Then there’s the school of thought that says you should only write for yourself, and if you admit to wanting the affirmation that being published or winning a prize can bring, then you are a bit sad and probably not especially talented. I understand that viewpoint, but it is in itself judgemental.

Getting a single, unremarkable poem published in respected poetry magazine was important to me. I needed that one thing because it provided the motivation to get me going, to start me off – which is of course the bit that requires the most effort (I’m thinking rocket launches here).

Then a funny thing happened. After the honeymoon period of getting some poems into magazines, winning a few things and thinking I was going to conquer the poetry world, I’m now more realistic, and I’m strangely OK with that. I have goals, but they’re reasonably modest and they feel attainable. Writing poetry is part of my life, but I’m no longer on a one-track mission. I’m enjoying all the other aspects of ‘taking poetry seriously’ – being inspired by people I meet and work with through poetry, other people’s writing and all the great poetry I’ve yet to discover. I still have goals and I set myself deadlines, but they’re not all-or-nothing. Or to return to the rocket analogy, I haven’t reached the moon and maybe never will but I’m comfortably in orbit.

Importantly I also feel I’m delivering on the promise my teachers saw. I wish I could tell them how I still remember and appreciate the push they gave me, and although I couldn’t act on it then because I was too timid and immature, I’m doing something about it now.