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Print: Wednesday’s Workshop

Print, Printing, and Prints
Wednesday Workshop

Tuesday evening’s Gents Night Out started with John and I, on our own, and after our usual jovial salutations, we talked about putting things into print.

Print

John visited me last week and guided me through the placing of Monkey Temple on CreateSpace at Amazon. Then, when it was up, he talked me through the placing of the same text on Kindle. Now both are available online. He has read Monkey Temple and was kind enough to give it an online review (and a 5 star rating). He tells me it is his favorite among my books. Julie Gordon, another good friend from an online writing course we shared, has also read Monkey Temple, and she gave it another 5 star review, so it is doing well. Only one poem from Monkey Temple has appeared on this blog, Monkey’s FAQs. With it already in print, I may add an occasional poem to the blog, but I will not run through the whole text.

Though Lovers Be lost is also available on Amazon. John’s teaching was good, as I told him in our conversation, and I put TLBL up on my own. However, it is not yet available on Kindle, but it will be available soon. Now, Though Lovers Be Lost has appeared here on the blog in toto, so, if you, dear reader, have followed the blog and would like to contribute a review online … well, I would be very grateful.

Printing

I am just tidying up The Empress of Island and that manuscript, together with the flash fiction of Bistro, should go up on Amazon very soon. Two separate books, I should hasten to add. Again, with the amount of text from both that I have posted on this blog, if you have followed them, then please consider posting a review.

John himself is preparing yet another novel for publishing. We discussed the timeline and the structure of this novel, his twentieth, or twenty-first. He is trying to schedule gaps in the text of five years and ten years and is working out a plan to have all the characters age over those time spaces, not an easy task, as you can imagine, but then, John is a very good novelist. He gave me a signed copy of his novel, The Caroline, available online at Ex Libris, and Clare and I will be reading that, one after the other, if not together. You can find John on Amazon at John K. Sutherland, incidentally. You can find me most easily under my name and the book title: Roger Moore: Monkey Temple … that gets me every time. If you just type in my name, there is more 007 material than even James Bond and 100 secretaries could account for, all paid On Her Majesty’s Most Secret Service.

Prints

A knock at the window of The Second Cup, right behind me: John points over my shoulder, it is Kevin, come late, with the most attractive … now, you really don’t know what I am going to say next, although you think you do, … nine week old Habanese puppy in his arms. Of course, she can’t come in, so we go out to greet her. What a darling … I refused to touch her. Puppies are catching and I don’t want to catch one: too much bending and house training at my advanced and creaky age. If I can’t tie up my shoelaces, I can’t clean up after a poo-pee — that’s the French for a puppy, la poupée, oh no, my mistake, a poupée is a little doll — just what Kevin’s puppy is.

Kevin left the dog in the car — in the shade, windows down to give air circulation, cool evening — John and I lectured him — he didn’t need the lecture –. and we discussed Kevin’s week. Things are going well and he is juggling work, writing — he is finishing his first manuscript and has a contract — wow! — I look forward to giving news of the publication of his book on a future Wednesday Workshop — and he’s also working on a new and very secret PROJECT — about which we can say nothing except ssssh!

Footprints

Kevin didn’t want to leave the poo-pee in the car for too long, especially since she was fond of climbing her way into the driving seat — remember Clyde? — oh no, not another Clyde! — and so we all soon made footprints. Alas, Chuck’s were covered with dust and sand and we didn’t see him this week. He is busy with a building project and also with his fourth novel — The Underwater Road — for which he, too, has a contract. His other novels are doing well. I have only read Steal It All … but I must say that Chuck Bowie is a master of mystery and intrigue, as I said on my online review.

So, this Wednesday’s Workshop is a potpourri: lots of announcements, friendships, changes in momentum, new editions, and new additions, and not so much literary criticism and theoretical musings. Ah well, life’s often like that.

See you all next Wednesday!

A question and an answer

Question: I am curious if you’ve ever had any of your short stories/poetry published in any lit. mag? I’m wondering because I am travelling down that publishing avenue and looking for advice when pitching to literary magazines. Although the general consensus seems to be that it’s a wholly tough market to get into!
Tales from the Trunk — https://trunktalessite.wordpress.com/

Answer: I have published about 135 poems in literary magazines, mainly in Canada. This happened mainly in the ’80’s and ’90’s when the market was probably a little bit easier to break into. I have also published 14 or 15 short stories (and won some awards and honorable mentions, same with poetry, too, incidentally). It seems to me that there are two distinct ways to go: (1) Submit, submit, submit: paper your walls with reject slips, keep going, keep improving, no matter what, don’t give up, ever. You must be stubborn and believe that your work is worth continuing with and BETTER than what those who are rejecting you think it is. Mind you: listen to them, keep reading, check your markets, revise your work in accordance to what editors think (if they make suggestions), and, above all, be as stubborn as a mule or worse. I did that for years and then I started to take route #2: (2) Go Indie and publish your own work. With route #1 behind me, I knew who I was and what I was writing. If other people didn’t like it, that was their problem. Sure: I am a Welshman, writing in English, in Canada, about Spain, Mexico, and Wales … duh … so, as they keep telling me, it’s just not marketable. Why not write about the Maple Trees turning red and Maple syrup … duh … going Indie led me into two further directions. (A) I published my own collections, paid for them myself and, in a fit of pique, gave them away free to my friends, “because my poetry is too precious to sell for money”! NB I had a full time job and could afford to do this. (B) I am now publishing via CreateSpace (Amazon.com). This is for free and easy to do. There are other options out there. Some ask you for cash up front …. I wouldn’t pay for their services. Others are free and excellent. I also recommend Smashwords or is it Wordsmash? Anyway, it’s also free and you can control where your books go and what they do. I chose Amazon because I had a persuasive friend who talked me through the process. If you have someone who can talk you through the process, any process, of publishing online, that helps. If you have a writing group THAT IS HONEST WITH YOUR WORK — that is essential. You must have some reliable readers who can step up and say: “No, that is not up to your usual standard” or “No, you can do better than this.”Good luck and best wishes, and yes, if I can answer your questions and help, I most certainly will.

Monkey FAQs

I have a busy day today, so a brief post: two poems. The first, Monkey FAQs, comes from Monkey Temple, a book of poems now (or soon to be) available at Amazon. I am also working on preparing the text of Though Lovers Be Lost for publishing, again at Amazon. My thanks go out to all who commented on these poems and thus assisted me in revising them for publication. So, a busy day.

Monkey FAQs
(with apologies to all those who draw them up
at their work place, knowing they will never be read)

“What news from the ark?”

“Only the dark waves pounding the hull, the wet winds blowing.”

“Who placed the whale ribs on this mountain
and called them a cathedral?”

“Sunshine blossoms through hollow vaults and shadows shimmer.
The day is striped across my back
and I bear its weight like a beast of burden.”

“When the anvil rings out, will the armorers appear?”

“When I snatched a blade of grass, its fine glass sliced my finger.
Yet, when I grasped the nettle, its swan-song perished in sunlight.”

“Who will forge chains for sun and moon?

“The peregrine falcon slices my eye in two and I am a mole,
blind with a weather’s wind.”

“Who will carve a cell door for errant stars?”

“I snuffle round the tightness of the temple clock:
its legion of Roman numerals marches to the beat
of a dull, dry pendulum.”

“Why are there no birds in last year’s nests?”

“The ox tongue sandwich on which I snack
talks back to the lettuce and salt clogs the tomato.”

“Why are you avoiding these questions?”

“Speak up: the wind is high. I can no longer hear you.”

April Fools

When we were young
we used to wake up
at night and
come
together.

Now we are old,
we wake up
at night and
go
together.

Though Lovers Be Lost 1-3 /7

“Though lovers be lost, love shall not;
and Death shall have no Dominion.”
Dylan Thomas

Though Lovers Be Lost
1-3 /7

Once,
you were a river,
flowing silver
beneath the moon.

High tide
in the salt marsh:
your body filled
with shadow and light.

I dipped my hands
in dappled water.

Eagle with a shattered wing,
my heart batters
against bars of white bone.

Or am I a killdeer,
trailing broken-
winged promises
for a forgotten
god to snatch?

Gulls float downstream.
They ride a nightmare
of half-remembered ice.

Trapped in my cage of flame,
I turn my feathers to the sun.

Awake,
I lie anchored by
what pale visions of moths
fluttering on the horizon?

A sail
flaps canvas wings
speeding me on my way
backwards into night.

A feathered shadow
ghosts
fingers over my face.

Night’s butterflies
stutter against
shuttered windows.

Strange hands
reach out to grasp me
and once more I’m
afraid of the dark.

Recalcitrant Flash Fiction

Recalcitrant
Bistro 19

The annual Old Boys Reunion took place in the sixteenth-century cellar of a world famous winery that also ran a restaurant and banquet service for pecunious customers. A man in a penguin suit, with a foreign accent, and a suspicious looking bulge under his left armpit, ushered the recalcitrant towards a set of well-worn of steps.
“You are arriving slightly on the late side, sir,” the penguin whispered, staring mockingly at the checkered, American-style sports jacket worn by the man he escorted. “And not dressed like the others. But not to be troubled, I myself will escort you down to the place of the guests.”
As he descended the steps that led down to the former wine cellars, the recalcitrant heard the well-remembered, high nasal bray as his former headmaster’s brass voice pierced the ruminations of the penguin-suited herd that, having sniffed the glorious nature of the gregarious watering-hole, was intent on reminiscing, drinking, and feeding.
“Wonderful place … so fortunate … to be here … thank you … ” the old man neighed.
It was indeed a wondrous place, a semi-whitewashed room, warm in the center where bees wax candles in gold candlesticks blazed on antique tables and cool by the one wall left untouched since that same sixteenth century. Here the damp gathered in great grey clots and the spider webs, also untouched, sparkled and glistened, like “the mythical lights of fairyland” as the winery brochure announced to the limited circle of the wealthy to whom it was circulated.
Empty kettle … the recalcitrant thought as he remembered his old headmaster and then they were, face to face, the head and his obstinately defiant and anti-authoritarian pupil, staring each other down.
“You!” It was an authoritarian call to battle. “I remember you. The boy who denied all authority.”
“Yes, me,” the recalcitrant, eyeball to eyeball with the old enemy rejoiced in his newfound glory. And here he was, back in the old country on a lecture tour of six major universities, one of them being in this city, a full professor now, with international honors, multiple publications, department chair in a well-known university, a household name in his subject, and all of this at forty-two years old. “Yes, me,” he repeated.
“You have done well for yourself,” the ageing donkey brayed.
The gunman in the penguin suit, sensing the tension, placed himself in the gunslinger’s position from which he could survey the whole room. He lovingly stroked the armpit bulge, eyes gleaming with hope.
“Tell me,” the head drew a handkerchief from his pocket and honked his nose into it like a storm-bound goose. “How did your career take off?”
“Well, in two stages,” the recalcitrant paused, partly for effect, partly to gather his thoughts. “Just like a rocket: stage one was when I left your school and stage two was when I left your country.”
The old donkey, blinked, threw back his head, trumpeted down his nose with intense nasal wrath, and turned away with a wave of his hand towards another latecomer who had just descended the stairs. “Ah, there you are Smithers,”the fog horn blared. “At last. Saved me you have. This man was just about to …”
The rest of the sentence was lost in the rush and a hubbub as a new series of delights arrived, tapas, hors d’oeuvres, little sticky creations on fiddly little sticks, they all circulated from hand to hand along with the exquisitely chilled champagne, the single malt whiskies, and the ultimate in estate wines.
Not a penguin spoke to the sports-coated recalcitrant. Nobody offered him a hand. Nobody shared a memory with him. As he arrived at each little group, the penguins gathered in a tight circle, turned their black backs to him, and shut him out. Throughout the feasting, he sensed the gimlet eyes of the gunman glued to a spot mid-way between his shoulder blades.
The recalcitrant didn’t partake of the food or the drink, he just watched. Then, after an hour or so, he turned and climbed the sixteenth-century stairs, the gunman in the penguin suit right behind him, and walked away into the freedom of starlight and the cool night air.
He never returned for another reunion.
He never received another invitation.

Obsidian’s Edge 29

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.
When reason sleeps, monsters are born.

Francisco de Goya.

5:00 AM

… bright flowers of penance purchased for a pittance finger knitted spider webs of silence spun into wrinkles between stars and evensong while an old film shadow boxes black and white photographs and a rowing boat lurches over the waves as if a soggy brown cardboard box had dropped down on a moonbeam to pluck the mote from a one-eyed jack-in-the-truck who surveyed his road map for the dead days lying in ambush next to the sudden bonfire that flared on Guy Fawkes night and ignited the world like a Jacky-jumper vaulting a Roman Candle as Catherine spun on her wheel and a sky full of stars wheeled round the North Pole and slid down the Big Dipper’s handle to launch a long white scar of lightning that scared night’s velvet mask and plucked a diamond feather from the peacock’s tail as it strutted through the garden of bifurcating paths where Borges left his summer footprints at low tide in the sandy grief of the autumn leaf that the red fox dripped and dropped as he fled in vain like blood sizzles drizzling from an open vein and observe I say the play of light as it glistens on the voices of young children reaching to pluck the church bells as if they were ripe fruit dangling before us in our dreams and the world is a handkerchief so small it is and now not so clean and so we dream these dreams and pluck this unripe apple from the eternal branch where it lay hidden kicking and struggling up like the float that bobbled then sank through deep water and memory bent itself into two like that fragile reed dead in the water lying as straight as a bowing string at a crazy angle at the pillows edge where mouths flap open as shadows walk and talk and we slide back into sleep’s dark waters where there are no dreams and nothing from those dark depths is ever recalled …

6:00 AM

a clicking of claws
needles knitting outwards
towards dawn’s guillotine

the alarm clock shuffles
its pack of sleeping hours

the church bell
lurches into action

IMG_0140 2.JPG

We have come full circle and the sequence of rewrites that I have dedicated to At the Edge of Obsidian / Obsidian’s Edge ends here, with the start of a new day in Oaxaca that will be very similar to the old day that has just passed us by. For those of you who wish to read the full sequence, in its correct order, it will appear (some time soon) under Obsidian’s Edge at the top of this page.

I would like to thank all those readers who have accompanied me on this journey. In addition, I would like to thank all of you who lent your voices to this sequence either below the line with your comments or, and I refer specifically to those who are close enough to know me in the flesh and blood of real life, with your verbal comments and telephone conversations.

I hope this will be the first of many journeys that we make together. My best wishes go out to you. I trust you will consider joining me in my next verbal adventure on this blog.

Obsidian’s Edge 28

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.
When reason sleeps, monsters are born.

Francisco de Goya.

4:00 AM

… scrabble of agile ruminants goats their basket weave ribs alive on the grass roof of the neighboring azoteas or wandering these cobbled pathways with knife-edge stones and broken all ten of those sea-faring bottles that managed to reach this land though they came floating from a distant shore each with its message lost now and he waded through the incoming waves this god-like ghost emerging from his white-cap snow bank to stagger in the moonlight where a child’s world lay buried like a bone as sharp as this black knife that slices the mind into two twin towers of tall sunflowers trapped in this wet clay rag of a body that binds itself in a fine film of glacial fire where incarcerated birds strut in the rib cage their robin red crests as distant as the light of a hurricane lamp in that moment of silence before an opening door snaps its sudden match of light and the tick of the death watch beetle gnaws at the beams of the worn out house that the earthquake cracked into a thousand pieces though one wall stood still and the alarm clock over the fireplace clicked a death mask for that anonymous face that raised both hands and threaded the black lace of the mantilla through the golden wedding ring as a finger nail of moon shredded the clouds and the body’s house slowly broke down in an unending dance round and round the garden where the teddy bear trod on his partner’s toes and the undergrowth tickled the china doll’s fancy but the garbage can intervened and dust stained the vagaries of a brutish existence both sharp and nasty as a devil’s scissors severed angel wings and tangled this skein of wool that pulled the church bells pounding their celestial hammers into a sea of wind while the sea parrot spoke in a tongue thick with anonymous flames that flickered a trigger of song while flashes of sound sparked twigs from the tree that flamed a joyless overflowing river of unknown light while the brown bear danced to a pipe and drum dance across bamboo marimbas that shimmered and shone and lay fine layers of music and dust that grew beneath bare feet as new flowers stoked a confessional of dust and gave it new life in a resurrection of the body into a world where everything is remembered and nothing is forgotten or forgiven … for how can we forgive if we cannot forget … or forget if we cannot forgive …

Obsidian’s Edge 25 (revised)

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.
When reason sleeps, monsters are born.

Francisco de Goya.

1:00 AM

… threshing from side to side panting and pouting mouths open at pillow’s edge with tongues flapping fiercely as the sharp hook pierces the dry upper lip and drives its root canal into the roof of the mouth where shadows walk and talk to silk worms wrapped in their ghostly cocoons and memories race through tumbledown alleys where shuttered windows wave white hands with silver rings sparkling on gnarled arthritic fingers and doleful uncertainties rush upwards in a cloud of bubbles to cover the sun and blot out daylight as dark descends and grief lies still on dawn’s distant altar where long-forgotten crimes stir and return each night to hunt and haunt the poor and pour fierce tears as a tap pours water and offers subliminal ablutions as the victims on their knees wear wild widows’ weeds as they kneel at each hand-carved wooden station where that dark cross flourishes with its black beads dangling from outstretched nails as necklaces clack and rosaries gnash the falseness of teeth that are white and bright and spotted with fool’s gold that reflects in a counterfeit mirror of surrogate corpulence with fleshed and bloodied hands handcuffed like some rabbit in the headlights of an oncoming crash and the car’s bones lie beached like great white whale bones on the bleached shores of an illusion that moves in time to the continuous clicking of claws and the clacking of needles knitting outwards to build a monstrous guillotine topped like a dictionary with red bonnets that move in the air as a knife edge carves night winds that slice the body’s earthbound cage of skin and bone and strip it of the fur that the white rabbit sheds as it climbs its golden staircase back to the moon from which it descended on this night of nights when sleep is a mystery revealed only to initiates who have mastered their duties and milked this market where a caravan of camels humps its way skywards like dark gibbous moons that burrow a tunnel and seek the fly’s high-pitched note with its angry black mote stuck to the cobweb that nests in whatever brain awaits the wind’s clean broom that wipes the slate clean of wild words and wars that are waged across scars that hack tracks and cross roads over this wilderness wherein we are all star-crossed and lost …

Obsidian’s Edge 27

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.
When reason sleeps, monsters are born.
Francisco de Goya.

3:00 AM

… often the imprisoned heart pinned like a butterfly and chloroformed into silence like a resurgent Guy Fawkes sitting on his bonfire and waiting for the universe to roll its coloured dice a captive and that heart singing as the dark rum of freedom bites into its jackdaw dreams of bright silver rings married to a bird’s leg and the round open eye of a cat staring at a Queen of Hearts as champagne bubbles burst in the mouth and dash on the tongue as they wash against the tooth’s white rock as it waltzes with the white caps that crest into broken ghosts who shuffle in and out like a pack of cards filled with knaves and the joker is belled with a red fool’s cap and a bladder on a stick as a tom cat’s tom fool grin melts in the mirror when the moon’s face skids and bounces off a snow bank where tranquil midnight mysteries trap trembling worlds in hand-blown glass bubble dreams that distort all distances clasped beneath clutching fingers while the crystal raindrops serve as an eye to behold the crimson glory of the hibiscus with its blood red stains where the baby fell from the rocking horse and confessed to a crime it never committed though speckled like a fresh trout it was drawn from deep water and blamed for the rainbow fire that flickered flames to the harsh crisp sound of the candle licking at its waxen jail where flower faces float framed against the white-washed wall as the wide-open staring eyes of the snowy owl speckle a yellow madness and its feathers are nails to be fired into a pottery tree in this harsh somniferous light that breathes fear and fire into shavings of dry bark and a beaver gnaws at the roots of the world as an accusatory beak points at the funneling snow and puffed up feathers plump out a body so thin it is unfit to fight these flames of ice or withstand these snow stones cast by blameless flint-eyed innocents who have never themselves done anything wrong though they spark at the trough with one eye clouded by a spider web of hate and the other a sharp sun peering through clouds condemned like a donkey to walk round and round crushing the heart out of the maguey in an interior world of dust and stone where the mote in another person’s eye is larger than the beam in one’s own and slant-eyed dogs eat dust and shadows of dust as they prowl through the courtyard and bark at the full moon blazing above this world that is sacrificed to a madwoman’s madness and an ancient flesh-devouring god who lives in a nearby volcano and is stoned all day on tequila and mescal …

Obsidian’s Edge 26

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.
When reason sleeps, monsters are born.
Francisco de Goya.

2:00 AM

… waves of people wandering the streets a hammer blow falling on an echoing anvil and the cracked church bell lurching into its hourly cry of grief dogs barking at the fleshy red crest some playful deity has placed on the heads of domestic fowls and other gallinaceous birds beaks digging for the dawn in parched earth with thin cracks spanning out from its egg shell crazy paving the yellow yolk of sunshine creeping out from cobbles and the Russian egg cup doll after doll unfolding as the hammer’s silver spoon descends on egg shells as thin as a shattered dream of moonlight raked from a pond with its life blood filling a crystalline goblet with a thick rich callous liquid as fierce and sweet as sunshine sacrificed on a branch as rain from the clouds speckles the tree with radiance an arco iris with its semi-circular scarf this deer head mocking pulling back velvet lips white teeth grinning through the wind screen’s shattered glass and man a string quartet of flesh and bone created from a ball of dough and baked in the oven in an earthenware dish with currants for eyes a raisin for a belly button lemon rind for a mouth orange peel for hair while white storks with swaddled babies are scared away by thrown stones and the man in the mirror his hand held up to trap the wind as a falling leaf settles in the secret web between index and thumb puzzles bind like a bird bound in a metal cage the sparrow’s mighty choir chirping at the roof of the circus tent and animals running wild all gone and the smooth grass brown with its withered distorting mirrors of stark staring eyes driving through black paintings of Satanic witches spooning soup between wrinkled lips dark open holes mouths and eyes gouged in slatted wooden faces and Anonymous Bosch’s bourgeois hell of furnaces and factories swarming with sparks of black imps falling from the heavenly meadow and the devil impaired on his black wooden horse …

Writing: To Task or Multi-Task?

Writing: Task or Multi-Task?

“To task or multi-task? That is the question.”

In the lonely world of creative writing, be it in poetry or in prose, is it better to continue with one text until the task of writing it is thoroughly finished? Or should we flit from text to text, developing several at once and thus multi-tasking in the best sense of the word? This is a key question in the revision process and relates directly to the concepts of write, re-write, revision, revisionism, and the creative process, all of which have been mentioned both in this blog and in the comments to this blog. However, there is no single answer to this seemingly either / or question as many factors must be considered.

Deadlines:

Anyone who has worked with strict deadlines knows that they matter more than anything else. “I want this work on my desk by 4:00 pm today,” says the manager rubbing the magic bottle in which the genie is kept. “Yes, ma’am,” says the genie bowing before vanishing back into his bottle. Only one thing matters, the task in hand, and there can be no multi-tasking.

Novellas and Novels:

With longer texts, while there might be room for manoeuver, provided no deadline is in sight, it is better by far to focus on the task in hand — the extended narrative — and to dedicate all tasking and multi-tasking to that prime task. The majority of writers who have written on the art of writing, including Stephen King, Graham Green, and E. M. Forster, emphasize the necessity of sticking at it, maintaining focus, and getting on with the task. Graham Green’s recommended approach is to write four to five pages a day, re-reading them and revising them the next day, before writing another four pages. That way the events, the action, the characters, are kept well in mind. In addition, Joan Clark and Norman Levine, in their workshops, advise writers to get to know their characters intimately, to think about them, and to write and rewrite until they come living from the page. Anyone who has taken a longish break and then returned to the writing of a novel knows just how difficult it is to get back into the mind of those characters. With an extended narrative, a dialog abandoned is a dialog lost. And one must learn to listen to one’s characters and to never forget what they have said, mustn’t one?.

Poems, Prose Poems, and Flash Fiction:

This is where multi-tasking can truly take place. The brevity of these pieces, and I classify epic and extended poetry with narrative rather than with poetry, allows the writer time to pick the pieces up and put them down again, to play around, to abandon the text and to return to it later. Being shorter pieces by definition, one can re-read them with ease, correct them at leisure, and research around them with impunity. In an extended narrative, or when writing to a deadline, focus is necessary. With shorter pieces, easily recalled, procrastination is a pleasure, not a crime. With poetry, focus is sharper but for shorter periods.

From Poem to Poetry Book:

As the poems accumulate and the writing, or rather the putting together, of the collection becomes more important, so the need to concentrate and single-task, rather than to procrastinate and multi-task becomes paramount.

These are my initial thoughts on Task or Multi-Task. What happens when we apply them in real life to real questions?

On Revision (Chuck):

Will this exercise (revision of older texts) provide you more gratification than starting new ones that may or may not be so important to you?

The question of revision is key. While I would like to avoid revisionism (Al: There is value in showing poetry as a snapshot in time (if only to avoid endless revisionism), the question of how to revise a text is of maximum importance. The text to be revised may be old or it may be recent, but the act of revision — how and why and what to revise — is one that must concern us as writers if we are to eschew automatic writing in a search for le mot et la phrase justes. If I can learn from the revision of older texts what I need to look for in order to revise newer texts, then my search for a way in which to recognize and achieve better form of writing can be justified, for the techniques discovered can surely be applied to future texts as well as to past ones.

The young Roger who was once you is no more (Kevin):

This is a beautiful thought: thank you, Kevin. Much of that earlier writing must stand as it is (and was) as a monument to what and who I was back then. However, some thoughts and phrasings may well be weak and need revision. The recognition of weakness and the realization of how to strengthen and how to renew is surely a part of our ongoing growing writing process. That is what I would argue, anyway. I would argue further that revision is NOT multi-tasking, but is single-tasking in the sense that I, as reviser, am teaching myself how to revise: an ongoing process in the act of creativity.

Conclusion:

In my current situation, I have five creative works (Echoes …, Waiting, Bistro, Stars … , People … ) lying fallow and waiting for their final touches. As I look back on what I have previously written and how I have written it, I am, in my opinion, multi-tasking. That is to say, I am working with many texts rather than concentrating on a single text. However, at the same time, I am working hard on a single task: that of teaching myself, once again, how to revise and how to rewrite. Hopefully I will put a little, objective distance between my current self and my recent texts. Then, when I return to them, I will be able to take them, one at a time, and revise them properly. That is my hope and my intention.

To task or to multi-task … writing or re-writing … each has its place in the creative process. To conclude: I thank all of you who contributed to this conversation (mentioned or not!), and I wish you joy in your (re-)creativity.

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