Positive How to be a better writer?

[FixXxer]

Imo, mental illness helps

certainly gives you a lot to write about if you have it.... stories of 'completely sunny days' are kinda bland... though nice.

for anyone that likes to rhyme... there is a site called Rhymezone that has a rhyming dictionary (and many other functions)
... i often use it when i get stuck on how to continue..
... also i share some of my stuff on the poetry forum there too.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Imo, mental illness helps

Yes it does

Thank you all for your suggestions.

I remember everything.

If I could only learn how to control this brain. Beep beep boop bop beep.

 

[(Wordy)]

There’s plenty of good advice in the thread already.

A few things:

Read widely, deeply, every-which-way. Read the kind of stuff you’d like to write, if you can find it, but also get out of your comfort zone. Choose a book at random (e.g. at a library) and see where it takes you.

Reading your own work aloud can alert you to aspects and nuances that you may not pick up any other way. Recording the reading and playing it back can also be instructive.

Stay connected with other writers. You’re doing that here, obviously, but I’ve found that connections with other writers have been invaluable to my craft. Just to have encouragement, recommendations on what to read, or plain honesty about a piece where it’s required!

Maybe try submitting stuff to a poetry zine or website? Reading a bunch of zines and sites can give you a sense of what’s out there, what others are doing, where your work might fit, where your audience may be. You might build some connections with writers and editors along the way too.

But I've found that preparing work for submission, or for a gig, really helps me to re-work it and hone it. Sometimes it takes years to get a poem into shape. Or as Paul Valery said, 'A poem is never finished, only abandoned'.

 

[AutoTripper]

'A poem is never finished, only abandoned'.

I did finish a few, at least one, full closure no other better or more complete conceivable way about it.

I have two others, real crazy ones delivered through me without any conscious effort or decision making, except not as perfectly rounded in that sense.

An uneditable poem is what to aim for.

 

[(Wordy)]

I did finish a few, at least one, full closure no other better or more complete conceivable way about it.

I have two others, real crazy ones delivered through me without any conscious effort or decision making, except not as perfectly rounded in that sense.

An uneditable poem is what to aim for.

Yeah, 'uneditable' is an interesting way to think about it. It's a high bar. And I think it also depends how open or closed the poem is on a formal level. In other words, with some poems (say a sonnet by Shakespeare) there's a sense that it could be no other way. Whereas with other, more open-ended forms, especially when it comes to longer poems, there may be a sense that the poem could go in other directions, or even carry on infinitely. I guess they're the two extreme ends of the spectrum, and FWIW I love poems at either extreme, and in between.

I've also had that experience of poems seeming to be 'delivered through me', as if I were having a message dictated to me. The unconscious is a strange beast, for sure.