I thought someone might find it interesting how I work at poetry. I have several methods, so I’ll describe them in several posts over the coming weeks.
Automatic writing is a method of writing at speed without thinking too much about what you’re producing. It’s not a mystical thing or channeling spirits or any such thing. It’s just writing faster than you can “correct” yourself. I do this sometimes for a set time, say ten to fifteen minutes, without looking back or stopping. I take that second rule very seriously: I will not let myself stop writing until the allotted time. This has occasionally involved answering the phone with one hand while writing with the other until the timer dings.
What this mostly produces is nonsense. But sometimes that nonsense has a few good phrases, which I can turn into poems. This is my go-to method when I’m really stuck. Since I’m nearly always really stuck, about two-thirds of the poems in Second Person are written this way.
