So I've been writing poetry again. Not just "The Darkness Cleave," but also "Shards of Heart," "we dreamless keep" (thank you, lithiumlaughter!), and "A Lady and a Dragon" (which I probably should have called "A Lady in the Dragon's Court."
After spending so long immersed in fiction, I'll admit to discovering an oddity about this recent bout of poetical bent: they're all from characters. "The Darkness Cleave" was Pyro from The Returning story arc and "Shards of Heart" from Kitty in the same. "we dreamless keep" managed some straight up cummings inspiration but only attached to the story lithiumlaughter told of her student moved by it. "A Lady and a Dragon" is from Vardin character Jhemet, who really was a lady in the dragon's court.
I'm not sure why I'm writing poetry right now, except sometimes I still want to evoke and not smother in details of worlds too well formed, sometimes I want to layer in concrete, vivid images and ideas instead of just more words, words, words. I love words, but paint them spare as often as you paint them rich. I want to capture the essence of these characters at those exact moments and prose isn't cutting it because I'm not after a moment in time. I'm after an emotional moment, an inner state, a cusp of transition, a cold remembrance.
This is not to say I've been proseless. "Breath from a Stone" headed over to in_the_blue and bounced back with appropriate amounts of editing to be done. ( :headdesk: ) In short, it is my usual over and over again, but this one I expected. More. This more had a direction for me though and I'm more glad than ever that I have a wonderful beta.
Y'all writers out there: if you can stand it, get a beta who loves you and understands your writing better than anyone and won't cut you slack on a single comma or sentence fragment they think detracts from the story. Get a beta and a backup beta. She will be your favorite person very, very quickly.
In Breath, I've just discovered a whole new part of the world with a whole new mythology and perspective, and let's face it, every time I'd revisit Vardin, the story was deeper and richer as I was less afraid of throwing the reader headfirst into the world and telling the mess out of it. (Don't believe who ever said show, don't tell—it's show and tell, y'all.) So I ship off Jaguar and my beta ships back questions, good questions, the kind that tell me all the things I left out—some because I didn't know and some because I was afraid.
And that's just it: the balance I'm striking between poetry and prose right now did one of those stark unveiling moments for me. I'm afraid of my short stories in fiction, that it won't be enough, that it will be too much, that no one else will love it, that there won't be the heart that moves people, just a story, dead story, written in dead words on the page. And fear doesn't belong anywhere near my fiction.
I haven't succeeded at Nano-Lite yet. I've got so much more to write, to accomplish, though I do have words to add to that counter on my sidebar. But... If this month has helped me face my fears and just get. work. out. there—(2 shorts | 3 poems)—then this month has done its job. I need to let go of fear and trust the process, write and trust my beta will tell me when the heart is not painted on the page, write and edit and ship out those stories and poems and let. them. go.
So there you go. A bit of poetry and prose and which and why and wherefore the scribbler writeth.
Has your writing challenged you recently? Helped you grow as a person and not just a writer?
I love the way you're always so intentional with your works. I don't write poetry, but as I was putting together some notes this afternoon for a story set in Blackburn, my memory threw up a poem I'd studied in school ages ago. When I pulled it up and re-read it, it was spooky how much of the themes and imagery of that poem had made it into my Blackburn world. Still feeling shivery about that--as if my subconscious is this hidden black pool, whose depths I cannot even guess it, full of the submerged detritus of old memories.
I'm never sure if I am intentional about my writing. I like to dig out the intention of my subconscious though. Your (quite poetic) description of the subconscious seems to be very much what mine is. So...
Share the poem?
It's T. S. Eliot's Rhapsody on a Windy Night.
Oooh! Love it. It's a shivery kind of poem.