Today is a to-do list
I have been writing, but not creatively. I am working on cover letters, on fine tuning my resume, on sending emails to people to promote my class at Hugo House. It is funny because writing in this way is with the same words that I use to write poetry, but the feeling is completely different. This is busy work. There is a clear goal. Writing a cover letter I am trying to communicate that I should be hired. Writing a poem I am often communicating an intangible feeling that has been rechocheting through my mind and body; the only goal there is to write it down, to get out.
I still feel any writing is a good writing for a writer. It keeps me aware and thinking and my fingers moving. I think Jericho Brown says to his sturdents that has long as you have something on the page then you have somethning that can be edited and then that can be made something. I fully believe in this. It is very easy to not write. To put off the cover letter, the edits on the resume, t put off writing in general and then all the feeelings build. I cant remember who it is but someone said, write the shity first draft. This has alamost been the most important advice to me becuase I write the shitty first draft and then the next I can move on from the shitty first draft.
Writing a cover letter the shitty drafty is real bad. There are moment of almost bragging, moments of almost begging. But gfrom there I gfigure out what it is I want to tell the job and then from there I fine tune. The shitty first draft, the words on the page, become the foundation. And coming to the page the next day is easier becasue the work of generating words has been done. Sure more may need to be added but more oikely a lot have to be taken out and that then shapes. different mindset as well. That of the editor mind. Coming back strictly with the goal of the cver letter in mind and taking away everything that doesnt help my case. Then realizing where needs to be filled in.
A shitty draft of a poem looks different than shitty draft of a cover letter but the idea is the same as freewriting, keep the pen moving, keep the words moving. Often a shitty draft of a poem begins with me attempting to write a poem about a specific thing that I think I want to write about and through the shitty draft I slowly realize what it really si that the poem is about. From a shitty poem draft I will usualy get one or two lines that carry to the enxt left. or other times I get no loines but a more clear image in my head. Sometimes the shitty draft quickly becomes a poem I like with only small tweaks. But, for me I feel like this happens after I have been writing a lot so everything I want to say is already at the surface and the hands are clear of backed up words.
