Tag Archives: inspiration

Struggling Still with Time

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Buzzard

I had another acceptance. I’m now about to enter a lean streak with just three editors to reply – one I’ve never submitted to before, one is a new editor with a magazine that normally turns me down and the third is a guest editor in a magazine with which I have mixed results. And that final one is the one I submitted as the only submission of this month. With everyone cutting back on frequency of publication, and with them all operating on different schedules this sometimes happens. A few years ago there were several who published every month but both of them have now gone to publishing just six issues a year.

I now have more poetry to write, so I had a quick image search for Crowland Abbey. It’s been an interesting subject over the years, and I just wanted to look at some photos for ideas. I found a great picture, and a quote I recognised from John Clare’s sonnet about the abbey – Wrecks of Ornamented Stones. It’s a good quote and, I thought regretfully, a shame that someone had already used it.

Donkey watching . . .

Then I looked harder. It seems I’m being immodest in calling it a great picture, as it’s one of mine, and it was me who already used the title. Sometimes I’m just so prolific I forget what I’ve written. February 2017. We’ve seen a few changes since then. Like the old abbey I am “struggling still with time”.

Having appropriated another line of Clare’s poem I am now going back to my previous (pre-Crowland search) activity – reading tanka and stealing ideas to help me write poems of my own. That’s the T S Eliot method isn’t it?

“Good poets borrow, great poets steal.”

Captain Cook and a seagull

Unfortunately, as usual, it seems to be a misattribution. What he actually said was  “mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” I know that because I just lifted it from another blog. I could research it myself, but it was easier just to cut and paste and then post a link.

It’s pretty much the same, it’s just that the second quote is far too complicated. I look through a poem and extract something that sets me going. It’s not plagiarism, or outright theft, it’s seeking inspiration and understanding. Think of an opal miner. They take a stone from the depths of the earth, and give it a wash. It’s a thing of beauty in its own right. Then a stone cutter cuts and polishes. Still a thing of beauty, but different, as it is after a jeweller has set it.  Theft is probably not the right word, it’s just a well-travelled idea, and I’m about to take a few of them on a new journey.

Wren

 

Quick Progress

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After writing that I had no submission plan for the coming year, I thought I had better get on with it. It seems I have quite a lot to do. There are 13 possible submissions to 9 different editors at five magazines, plus three possible competition entries.

They require 57 poems to make their selections. I have little prepared and just 12 days to do it in. I should really be writing poetry now, not blogging. Or thinking about breakfast. Mainly, I must admit, I am thinking about breakfast.

Last night I wrote ten tanka before bed. I have rewritten four of them and they are enough for two of the submissions (one editor requires three to select from, the other wants a single poem). I will let them stew for a few days, as it’s always good to go back with fresh eyes, but at least I have two of the thirteen done.

It is also possible that I won’t waste my money on the haiku competition, so that’s three done. It’s beginning to look a lot more manageable.

Now (having finished breakfast) I am going to set to and write the remaining 23 tanka. They will be reshaped by the time they are submitted but getting them all done will be a weight off my mind. After that I am going to sift through the pixelated pile of rejects and half-started prose poetry. There must be a few things in there that I can recycle. And that means that by this evening I will be  starting to write more poetry because I will be forced into it. Inspiration comes in many forms and has many names.

 

Sixteen Swimming Swans

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Mute Swan – Rufford Abbey

This morning I thought of several poems whilst I was on the way back from dropping Julia off. This is the same time frame where I used to have all my best ideas. My brain is awake but the task of driving on a fairly clear road is not too demanding. At that point thoughts come into my head. I actually had my first idea before we left home, had a second as I dropped her off and had several more on the way home. No pad, no voice recorder, just me repeating things to myself.

When I reached home I noted the ideas down and wrote the prose sections for five haibun. That’s more than I did in the last months – the ones I’ve submitted have all been written for ages and I have merely worked my way through them without originating anything. They have had a few tweaks, and have needed a haiku or a tanka here and there, but generally all my recent acceptances have been written for months. That, of course, is how it is supposed to be. People who know these things advise leaving work to mature.

Mute Swan at Clumber Park

I just looked back and realise that I have had three months this year when I have submitted nothing and that everything I have had accepted since March has been, and been rejected, at least once.

Since this morning I have had two more ideas, though I have not settled to write them yet. Even poets have to wash up and drink tea. One of the ideas is actually about drinking tea.

Swan at National Arboretum

If you’ve ever followed my creative process you will have noticed that things change and I’m more of an artisan than an artist. I don’t really have a creative process, despite what I just wrote. In three months it’s quite likely that the reflections on drinking tea will have become a poem about eating sandwiches. That’s how it goes. That’s how my poem about two swans flying by became a poem about sixteen swans swimming, and was eventually accepted and published as a poem about a cormorant.

If a poet’s studio is a serene place of beauty where words flow and great thoughts are written in flowing calligraphy, mine is more like a backstreet workshop where power tools scream and where things are bolted together roughly and beaten into shape with hammers.

Eventually I will rewrite the one about the two swans flying by.  I liiked it and it contained an idea that didn’t work with cormorants.

Guess what the theme of today’s photos is . . .

 

A Sudden Panic Begins to Grow

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This morning I made a special effort – omlette for breakfast, made Julia’s sandwiches, did the washing up . . . then I tailed off. Finally, i managed to write the prose section of a haibun. As I made lunch (cheese on toast with tomato relish) I was struck by more inspiration and my lunch went cold as I typed two more. It’s hardly comparable to actual work, but I did feel that I’d made a breakthrough, and celebrated by falling asleep in my chair as I watched the news on TV after eating cold cheese on toast.

Considering  that I haven’t written anything new in the poetry line for three months, two of my recent acceptances date back to last October, and some are probably older than that, this is a promising  move forwards I have written some Facebook pieces for the Numismatic Society and quite a few blog posts, though even there I have been far from firing on all cylinders.

Visit of the Russian fleet to Toulon

Centenary of the Railways

I am also trying to do some longer pieces on collectables for the blog. It’s practice for magazine articles, which I intend to write when I retire.

Reverse of the Boy Scout Medal

Then there’s the presentation in September. That’s actually very close now and I have done nothing for the last two weeks. I am now feeling scared about that – it’s only about three weeks now and I’ve been frittering my time away without noticing. Three weeks is nothing, considering that I’ve changed the emphasis of the presentation several times and still don’t have a proper idea of the way I want to do it.

Miniature medals of Superintendent Tacey – Nottinghamshire City Police

Better finish this and get working again . . .

Glorious Losers and a Glorious Winner

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How about this for a story? Athletes who meet the standards for Olympic qualification have been denied entry by UK Athletics, who have imposed a series of higher requirements. If we were an all-conquering nation of athletes with talent oozing out of our ears this would make sense. But we aren’t. We have produced some great performances from people who have given their all (and established records and personal bests on their way to defeat) but they have left us with great memories rather than medals. These days this is what it’s all about.

My best performance in athletics was qualifying for a 2 Star certificate from the Amateur Athletics Association. That’s 2 out of a possible five. The previous year I had got one. But it had made me try harder for the second year, and I was planning on trying even harder for the next year.  They were discontinued and my interest in athletics fell away.

The moral of that story turned out to be that people are motivated by awards and that I am shallow. It was meant to be that I have no skill in athletics and am trying not to criticise individuals. However, it is undeniable that we have been soundly beaten in many events. It has not, in many of the cases, been that the athletes have failed, simply that other people have done better.  I can feel a song, and a title, coming on . . .

A breakfast fit for heroes

The reason UKA has these extra standards is that  ‘an athlete getting to the Olympics with little chance of qualifying from their heat or pool does not have a significant impact on inspiring the nation, and therefore does not merit public funding‘.

This is clearly nonsense, as they don’t know what will inspire the nation. I’ve been inspired by a 51-year-old skateboarder and a Nigerian cyclist, (including a story of German sportsmanship), and by a long-jumper who came fifth and has a full-time job. Yes, I’ve been inspired by some of the winning athletes, but a lot of them have left me wondering what happened to the Olympic spirit.

As I’ve said before, the losers are often the ones you remember. Apart from this one. Here’s a winner that will make you smile. She used to train at the athletic club with my kids, and went to college with one of them, so we like to see her doing well. Read to the bottom and look at her hairstyle.

There’s a petition here. I don’t usually hold with such things but now and again, I do. If you are in the UK, read it and please think about signing.

I needed some photos and wondered how to string three together in a series, as I have no photos of athletes.

 

An Early Start

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Well, not early for a farmer, but anything before 10 am is early for me on a Sunday. I’ve made a few notes about what I want to do for the rest of the day and have sent an email to one of my cousins  My patchy family history research, though deficient in many ways, seems to have contained a piece she needed to fill a gap. She, in turn, was able to correct something my dad told me. He was an extraordinary man, I know this because a journalist said it in a newspaper article about him, and we quoted it for years after. He wasn’t, however, a very reliable source of family history as his memories were often close to reality without actually being accurate.

I’m going to write my self-imposed minimum 250 words now and then get on with my list of thigs to do. It’s not that I don’t love all my readers, it’s just that when I get a good run of inspiration going I don’t love anything as much as getting it all down on paper. I have twelve notes made overnight and I need to get them fleshed out before they melt away. There is little so sad as a ghost of an idea, when you remember you had a brilliant idea, and thought of a great opening line, and find that it has slipped away as you came downstairs.

I now need fifteen words to finish off. It can be tricky when writing this sort of post – enough to show I’m still alive, but not enough to divert me. Expect me back later today when I need a change of pace.

Pictures are from our recent trip to Southwold, which was in the headlines this week – it will soon have no bank in town.  This is part of a growing trend towards removing cash from society and making us all vulnerable to internet fraud. Cash is a security issue for banks. So is computer fraud, but they can make that our problem with a few subtle alterations to their terms and conditions.

More beach huts at Southwold

 

 

Spring.

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Last night when I tried to write the blog,  I couldn’t put anything together. Once I had announced the less than enthralling news that it was unseasonably cold (or record-breakingly hot in southern Europe – they are taking all our heat) and that I have booked my Covid booster, I ran out of steam and couldn’t come up with anything else to say.

Today is little better, despite my lack of inspiration in the matter of a title. I slept for three and a half hours last night.  Then I slept for two more hours. Then one. Strangely, after getting up and having breakfast, I was able to sleep in my chair for another hour and a half.  Why am I able to sleep so easily in a chair in full daylight when I have such difficulty sleeping through the night in a bed designed for such things? It is a mystery.

It’s also a mystery why I can think of subjects for blogs and poetry when I’m sitting in the car, but all such thoughts desert me as I sit in front of the screen.  What I need is a degree in psychology and a nice big research grant. The only problem is that with my propensity for timewasting and random internet use I’d end up with one of those click-bait articles that says “Scientists Discover New Way to Brew Tea.” or even one of these. Number Seven is interesting, Number Eight is bizarre and Number Five, frankly, makes me wonder about the sort of people who take up medicine.

Meanwhile, I can reveal that there is a lot of bird activity in the garden – manly pigeons, It looks like it’s a good year for pigeons. Several times I’ve looked out to see three pairs in different parts of the garden, many of them performing impressive feats of balance whilst ensuring the continuation of the species. It is definitely Spring, despite the temperature.

Day 26

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Last night, feeling pleased with myself, I hit a seam of inspiration and wrote notes as I was on the point of falling asleep. his is what proper writers do. So, two things went right – one, I relaxed and became inspired and two, I had a notebook and pen ready.

Just one problem – I can’t read the notes. At the best of times, as I may have said before, I have trouble reading my own writing. It looks like a lazy worm has escaped from an ink pot and made loops on the page. That’s why I generally write in capitals, even if it does end up looking like a ransom demand.

When I am close to sleep it gets worse. I can’t remember what I was thinking and I definitely can’t read it. I am sure none of my thoughts included the words “blessed treehouse stargazer”, “print out the smell lads” or “listed in retinue meat”. It is, however, possible that some future notes may include them because the three of them offer a range of bizarre possibilities.

So, even before starting to write, I seem to have failed. From this I take the lesson that all late night notes should be written in block capitals.

Who would have thought that reading your own writing would be such a problem? Maybe, in years to come, quercusisms (unintentionally amusing poetry resulting from the inability to read your own scrawl) may join malapropisms, spoonerisms and mondegreens in the list of literary mishaps.

In the meantime, I will learn my lesson and start printing my late night notes – I can’t afford to lose inspiration to poor penmanship.

The Second Shot

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I wrote a 350 word post earlier. It was about the GP surgery not having my blood test paperwork sorted despite me organising it three days ago. Then it went on to discuss the pharmacy and the lie they told me about texting me when my prescription was ready this afternoon. I feel you’ve heard the same complaints before so after ridding myself of the burden, I consigned it to WP limbo and decided to move on. I moved as far as the cooker, then as far as my seat in front of the TV. There I stayed for a while. I am now back writing a new post, and hoping that it’s going to be more interesting than the previous list of complaints.

It is ten months since I started taking poetry writing more seriously and in that time I have made 39 submissions. It’s going to be a bit of a slog raising that to a hundred a year, because I already feel that I spend a lot of time writing. I’m in the middle of a good patch at the moment – plenty of successful attempts with an even spread of rejection to keep my feet on the ground.

When I get a cluster of rejections I always start to think I’ll never be accepted again, and when I have  a good run of acceptances I worry that it can’t last forever. It is also the case that after a run of acceptances the next rejection hits harder. The mind of a writer is a strange thing.

I need two sets of submissions in the next couple of weeks – one to a magazine where I have had some minor success and one where I have had no success at all since a change of editor. I had a look through my list of pending/unfinished/work in progress and decided that there is very little there of any merit. I need a surge of enthusiasm and a flash of inspiration to set me going again.

This Moment

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I have hit on a productive creative strategy – thinking whilst putting my socks on. After a certain amount of success with the technique yesterday, I managed to think about three projects this morning, including synopses and a few lines. Full of confidence, I set off down the stairs and, en route, completely forgot one of the pieces. Not only can I not recall the plan and lines, I can’t even remember the subject.

Fortunately two of them survived and the lesson about always having a pen and notebook available has been driven home. The trouble is that I either find myself with no notebook or too many notebooks. I am actually struggling with too many at the moment. I completed taking the notes from one last night but have one big book to do next and a few shorter notes to retrieve from other books. I can have as many as six or seven other books – upstairs, car, work, desk, living room, spares…

Then. like this morning, I can have none where I want them.

Nothing much else has happened today. I’ve dressed, thought, made two of the three notes I meant to make, had breakfast, read a few poems, checked a few things on Wiki, wrote a comment on  a website and wrote this. Time goes, but nothing of consequence has been done.

I will now have another cup of tea, sit by the fire with an A4 pad and start to plan. After lunch (which will probably be soup and sandwiches) I must do something of consequence.

Alternatively I may watch Murder She Wrote.

“ It is the season for wine, roses and drunken friends. Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”

― Omar Khayyam