Category: Writing

On My Weather Obsession

~ plainswriter ~ Leave a comment

In 2 1/2 years of living in Central Texas, I’m still in awe of the weather, the heat of the summer, the mildness of the winter. I suspect that as a native Minnesotan, as someone who lived there for 27 years, I will for many years more remain in awe of the weather here. This afternoon, it will nearly reach 70 degrees. It was over 70 yesterday. Blue skies and those high wispy clouds that I love but cannot name.

Yesterday afternoon, I sat in my backyard, prepping for the next session of the poetry class I teach. I was reading chapters from my textbooks, reading my students’ first poems, and jotting down details for a poem of my own. This afternoon I will sit outside and read from a long novel I’m enjoying very much: Larry Woiwode’s Beyond the Bedroom Wall. Later, I will take my son out to play disc golf. And tomorrow afternoon (again a forecast of blue skies and 70), we’ll take a family trip to the zoo.

All of this in mid-January.

It feels as though I’m living in some kind of fantasy world, my memories of unseasonably warm days renewed by the reality of days not that far removed from the norm for this part of the state. (Average January high here: 57.)  Average January temperature in my MN hometown? 24. Average January temperature in the Northwestern MN town where I completed my M.F.A.? 18.

One of several recurring elements in my poetry, fiction, and nonfiction is weather. As I joke (though it’s true), the wind is always blowing in my poems, stories, and essays, the weather is always present doing something. I’m a weather junkie, have always been fascinated by it, the unseasonably warm days in winter, the unseasonably cool days in summer, the data, the storms (whether they involve snow, ice, rain, wind, etc.). After all, as an undergrad in college, I used to leave The Weather Channel on in my room while I studied or did schoolwork.

I doubt I’ll ever lose my weather fixation, and so it will continue to manifest itself in my creative works, even as a breeze ruffles the pages in my open notebook. Now to head outside and make the most of the afternoon.

2015 Poetry Writing

~ plainswriter ~ 4 Comments

Last weekend I was creating my 2015 poetry folder in Dropbox, and I started looking back through previous years’ folders (with one for each year, going back to 2004). In 2014 I wrote first (and some subsequent) drafts of 60 poems, 40-something each in 2013 and 2012. Taking that initial inventory prompted me to dig into the files some more.

I sorted out the poems that I’ve published in journals and in my chapbook, and imagine my surprise when I tallied around 300 unpublished poems, counting a 55-poem manuscript I drafted in 2005. I promptly asked my wife to guess how many unpublished poems (dating back to 2004) she thought I had, and her response was 93. When I told her to triple the number, she was as shocked as I originally was.

This entire “discovery” shifted part of my writing goals for 2015. At the end of every year, I reflect on my “production” as a writer, as well as on what I’ve published. Then I look ahead to the next year and set goals as far as poem drafts and revisions, story drafts and revisions, essay drafts and revisions, book reviews, blog posts, etc.

For poetry, my initial idea for 2015 was drafting a new poem each week, and revising a poem each week. Well, realizing my “back log” of poetry, I decided to change my plan somewhat, instead writing at least two poem revisions a week, and not “requiring” any new poems this year. I’m teaching a poetry writing class again this spring anyway, so I’ll no doubt generate some new poems when I’m writing in-class poetry prompts with my students.

For whatever reason, I’ve started working through poems from the 2008 folder, and it has been so much fun! I don’t have the pressure of the blank page (a pressure that after all of these years that I still feel at times), and I have the benefit of six years’ distance. I can’t wait to count how many “old” poems I’ll have revised by the year’s end.

November Poetry-Writing Wrap-Up

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So, I completed my November experiment: drafting or revising one poem per day. How did it turn out? Well, I ended up with 21 new poems, and 9 revisions, more new poems than I expected, some drafted with my accompanying grumblings and mutterings.

I wrote some more poems about prayer (as part of a manuscript, Your 21st-Century Prayer Life), poems about the weather (standard fare for me), poems about writing, and poems about writing poems. A love poem or two as well.

Full disclosure: I’m glad to be done with this project, not because I don’t enjoy writing poems anymore (because I certainly do), but because I enjoy writing short stories even more. I’ve been ruminating on two story ideas throughout this month, and I’ve put off beginning them until December.

When January arrives, I’ll be back in poetry drafting and revising mode, seeing as I’m teaching a poetry-writing course in the spring, and I tend to write most in the genre I teach at that time. August, September, and October were short fiction and fiction, hence several blog posts, a creative nonfiction piece, and first drafts of several short stories.

Writing all of these poems, especially toward the end of the month, taught me more about being thankful for the gift of writing and the secondary gift of being published. Two weeks ago I received an acceptance for a short story that I’m really proud of (proud of enough to end a sentence, minus the parenthetical aside, with a preposition). In the span of three years, the story was declined by a couple dozen journals, with a handful of those rejections including notes about how the story “almost made the cut” or how the editors liked my “literary style.”

I persisted, and then arrived the acceptance from Whitefish Review, a wonderful journal out of Montana. The editors went so far as to tell me that it was one of four stories that they selected from a batch of over 200. That news was almost more exciting than the acceptance itself.

Octavia Butler said that “You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.” She’s right. Write a line (or a sentence), and then write another line (or a sentence), and then keep doing that until you finish a draft. Set it aside, and then return to it, reworking lines and sentences, before setting it aside, and again reworking lines and sentences (and so on, and so on, and so on).