Balancing writing and promoting--Billy Collins

When asked what Georgia's incoming poet laureate should keep in mind, Billy Collins said:

"The best thing you can do it writer really, really good poetry. You can be an advocate, but the best you can do to spread the word of poetry is to write really good poetry. the other thing is, [poet] Robert Hass called me up when I became poet laureate and he said, 'They're going to be pulling you, interviewing you to death, dragging you from one place to another. Just don't leave the place where you write your poetry. Don't give up that psychological spot here the poetry comes from because they will try to drag you out of there and make you a public figure.' Being a poet is a very private activity and you have to hold onto your solitude." 

What a great way to balance writing, with speaking about and promoting what you've written. You need to be out there reading from your work, and speaking. Publishers expect it--even require it.

But I love this reminder: your best work is writing, and the most important thing you can do is to hold onto your solitude where your writing came from in the first place.

Billy Collins on writing every day

"I'm a writer every day, but I don't write every day. Every day I'm looking for those ducks to land on the water, or something to nudge me toward the page. But I don't really have any compositional habits. I'm afraid it's still kind of a romantic view of writing. I have to wait for something to startle me rather than just hacking it out every day. But it doesn't take much to startle me. My stepdaughter, who was 16 a couple of years go, was doing all these drawings of princesses and fairy tale castles and fantasy stuff. Fair enough. But one day she came in with a little drawing of a scallion o a plate and I wrote a poem about it because I thought she was moving from one phase to another. She was moving out of fantasy into the simplicity of real things." Billy Collins

How freeing to read that Billy Collins doesn't write every day. If you're not one of those writers who writes every day (and hard as I try I'm really not)--you can feel guilty, like you're failing, not doing it right, not living up to your potential. You name it.

But perhaps that's too limited a view of what it means to be a writer. What if it's not about the typing or your desk or word counts or pages? What if it's actually about showing up. Whatever that means that day. Whether that means you're at your desk or out watching children in a playground--whatever you're doing--the point is you're showing up and being one on whom nothing is lost.

"I'm a writer every day but I don't write every day."

All I can say is, if Billy Collins can write the way he does and not write every day, then that's good enough for me.

To fill the page with a dream

"Day after day, season after season, I face a blank page and I have to fill it with a dream. That's my work. And we have a team like an orchestra, that makes it happen." Elbaz, designer at Lanvin
via NYT

It's the work of a writer too. To fill the blank page with a dream.

Or is it more than that--is it actually the work of us all?

What will we fill the blank page of our lives with--today? now?

Writing Tip: don't try and guess what editors want

"Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don’t know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new." WILLIAM ZINSSER

It's scarier to trust yourself. And write the book that's in you to write. The book that only you can write. It's risky.

But which is riskier?

To follow the trend? (By the time your book comes out they'll have moved on to something else.)

To try and write the book that that someone else writes? (Won't they do a much better job at being them?)

Or to write the book that only you can write? And possibly find yourself ahead of the trend, setting the trends, doing something startling and new?

Happy St David's Day

Today is St David's Day. so... Dydd Gwyl Dewi hapus!

St David (seen here in a stained glass window from Jesus College, Oxford) is the Patron Saint of Wales. In the 6th century he helped spread Christianity among pagan Celtic tribes of western Britain and he only ate watercress and once stood in the middle of a lake up to his neck--but I don't remember why.

He is famous for saying, "Gwnewch y pethau bychain" ("do the little things") but then proceeded to be canonized and do great big things.

But then didn't someone else say do not despise the day of small beginnings? or you never go anywhere except one small step at a time?

Hooray for St David! Hooray for St David's Day! And Hooray for little things!

(oh and happy birthday Dad!)

love is making its way back home

beautiful!

 

it was made with over 12,000 laser-cut pieces of construction paper and was directed by Erez Horovitz. you can see how on Josh Ritter's blog

 

a lot of love was poured into this.

 

it shows.

door mouse snoring

OK. So you probably already saw this but since when can you have too much of a door mouse snoring? (And, exucse me, but did he not just come straight out of Lewis Carroll?)

The best composer you've never heard of

That's what the Wall Street Journal said of Morten Lauridsen.

Dana Gioia (past chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts) describes him as "one of the few living composers whom I would call great."

What does Mr Lauridsen say? 

"There are too many things out there that are away from goodness. We need to focus on those things that ennoble us, that enrich us."

And of his "Lux Aeterna": 

"I didn't want to write an elitist piece that only the very best choirs in the world could perform--I wanted to write a piece that could be within the reach of many people, many performers. It's a piece with a message, and I didn't want to complicate that message with complicated musical language."

Reminds me of what another composer said: "Use ordinary words and say extraordinary things." Arthur Schopenhauer

Beautiful, direct, true, from the heart. Too many things away from goodness. I'm so glad Morten Lauridsen isn't.

(The award winning new documentary about him, "Shining Night" isn't yet scheduled to be broadcast anywhere in the US. The Wall Street Journal: "All he does is compose radiantly beautiful music and lead what appears to be a wholly satisfying life, and these days that's not quite enough to make you a household name. Time was when PBS would have snapped it up. Why not now?")