some exercises

This is a continuation of an old post where I promised some creative exercises but never followed up on it (sorry)
Being primarily a cartoonist I will of course skew these small acts with an eye toward cartooning but it doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize that there are corollaries and connections between all the arts and what benefits an artist of one stripe can also benefit an artist of another. Some of these exercises will not be helpful to a writer of poetry or a dancer or a person who battles sharks but with a little luck there will be at least something in this list that will appeal to everyone's idiosyncratic creative drives. These are presented in no particular order.

• Make a grocery list and go shopping. When that is done take your list and sit down at a table. Make a quick drawing of each and every item on the list... don't spend more than two or three minutes on each drawing. Make a small book of those drawings (if you don't know how to make a small book you can look it up with a search engine of your choice using keywords like 'zine' or 'minicomic.' I will post a detailed how-to on that subject in the distant future) Take that book to a local zine show or craft fair and sell them for a quarter.
• go for a walk and collect objects you find on the sidewalk. Make sure to have at least ten items. Once home arrange those items on the floor in a row, in an order that you think of as "harmonious" for lack of a better word. Write a short story incorporating all the items. The items should appear in the story in the order they are arranged on the floor.
• Write a poem, do not spend too much time on it, this is just an exercise remember? Turn that poem into a comic strip, turn that comic strip into a song, turn that song into a video monologue, turn that video monologue into a short story... you get the idea. Take no more than twenty or thirty minutes on each form. feel free to stretch it out over several days if you need to though. When you are done you should be able to notice distinct strengths and weaknesses that each form offers.
• write a short biographical study, this can be in comic form, prose, screenplay, whatever. Try to make the study dramatic and narrative, not just a list of events. Make sure to remain true to the facts.
• write a stream-of-consciousness story for thirty minutes or more. if written on the computer you should print it out. with scissors cut the paragraphs apart and paste them together in no particular order. read the story aloud and see what new inspiration you can derive from it. repeat as many times as you can stomach. try the same technique cutting each sentence into strips and rearranging.
• go and see what some of my co-contributors have to say here and here both articles are hugely inspirational and many good exercises could be cultivated from them.

I'll try to list off a few more exercises whenever things get slow around here. Thanks for reading, now go make stuff.

Formal Construction in Poetry

Poetry abounds in history, with uses that delve into every aspect of the human condition. It has been used to create the guidelines of nations in constitutions and declarations, to lift up our lightest matter and subjugate our darkest engorgements. It has chronicled much of our ancient history and some of our modern. Poetry has been used to commemorate and send off our dead, and herald our newborns. It has been put to music, paint, ink, clay, and digital bits of meaning. In short, it has been around long enough, and with so many attributes and disciplines, that a huge variety of its designs exist. From sizes ranging the shortest couplet in iambic dimeter, to the vast and novel-like Divine Comedy of Dante, from idle notions in observational work, to the very bibles of our major religions, poetry is the engine that turns our minds in words.

I've set out to highlight some of the better known forms of poetry, the types of it we have encountered over the millenia. I will post five forms with descriptions and some origin information in each post. Where needed, I will provide scansive formula (templates using metrical indicators), and will post about once a month. In the first of these installments, we'll take a look at the sonnet, haiku, the ghazal, the pantoum, and the limerick. I have provided scansive marks where appropriate, with soft accents appearing as 'o', and their opposite hard accents appearing as '/'. These are often shown as circles and dashes, as well as other symbols, but for this text, I've chosen to go with o and /, and use color to indicate layering effects. We begin with the diva of poetry forms, the sonnet.

The Sonnet

One of the most respected and prolific forms of poetry in western history. No study of Shakespeare, Petrarch, Dante, or most of our greatest western poets until the last two-hundred years would be complete without a study of the sonnet. A gift beginning in Italy, it has since been re-articulated and its rules redesigned numerous times in English, Spanish, Italian, and German history. Most major languages have made use of the sonnet since its Italian conception. So respected was the sonnet, it almost feels as if I should capitalise its every instance in this post. There were portions of English history where it was considered shocking that a given poet might stray from the sonnet form. Up until the last hundred years, sonnets were to poets what the vatican is to Catholics. The big enchilada. The head honcho. The alpha form. The sonnet.

Origin and a Nudge of History: The sonnet came about in the very early 13th century, in the court of Frederick II, then Holy Roman Emperor. The sonnet was designed around a songwriter form in Italian, a canso or canzone. The word sonnet comes from the Italian sonnetta ("little song"). At its heart, this form was a long poem, formed around the use of two stanzas serving to divide the poem into two parts, not always equal. It was common that these two stanzas would be broken down into two sections, a fronte and a sirma, separated from one another by a turn in design or meaning (volta).

Over a hundred poems still remain from the court of Frederick II, and 35 are sonnets. These early sonnets were 14 lined, 11-syllable stanzas, composed of an octave (8 line stanza) and a sestet (6 line stanza) always rhyming abababab / ababab. Another device was being used at times involving the addition of a couplet at the end. After finding its way north, it was idealized by poets like Guido Cavalcanti and then friend, Dante Alighieri. They used the rhyme scheme abbaabba in the octave. They also designated the octave as the place in the poem for presenting and describing, and then used the sestet portion of the poem for further comment. Dante's younger works are encapsulated in an excellent book, La Vita Nuova, and show how the form was taken in among Dante and his ilk, and enjoyed greatly.

After Dante, who was exiled on pain of death by the Black Guelfs, the sonnet saw more use by other poets, and particularly by another exile from Florence, Francis Petrarch. Petrarch used the sonnet form heavily. It is Petrarch we have to thank for the sonnet still being around, 700 years later. His use of it was prolific and accomplished. Like Dante, Pertarch used the abbaabba scheme in the octave, but he often used different schemes in his sestet: cdecde, and others. The pioneering Petrarch caused a change in which this type of sonnet would be regarded, and it was named, aptly, the Petrarchan sonnet. A large variety of earlier English sonnets are adapted from Petrarch, though they also adopted contemporary continental poetic structures, as with those utilized by Spenser.

Our modern sonnets, in varying forms, are more adapted from the later William Shakespeare's format and use. Shakespeare was fond of linking several sonnets together to create a longer poem, divided by sonnets. A group of sonnets formally linked by repeated lines is known as a "crown" of sonnets. Shakespeare and other poets of the 1500's were fond of occasionally placing an extra, self-rhyming couplet at the end of the sonnet, which is a common trait of our most modern sonnets.

Examples:

Francis Petrarch translated by Edwin Morgan

Gli occhi di ch'io parlai si caldamente


The eyes that drew from me such fervent praise,
The arms and hands and feet and countenance
Which made me a stranger in my own romance
And set me apart from the well-trodden ways;
The gleaming golden curly hair, the rays
Flashing from a smiling angel's glance
Which moved the world in paradisal dance,
Are grains of dust, insensibilities.
And I live on, but in grief and self-contempt,
Left here without the light I loved so much,
In a great tempest and with shrouds unkempt.
No more love songs, then, I have done with such;
My old skill now runs thin at each attempt,
And tears are heard within the harp I touch.

***

William Shakespeare

Sonnet 6

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface

In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd:

Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place

With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-kill'd.

That use is not forbidden usury,

Which happies those that pay the willing loan;

That's for thyself to breed another thee,

Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;

Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,

If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:

Then what could death do, if thou shouldst depart,

Leaving thee living in posterity?

Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair

To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.

Haiku

One of the most misunderstood and heavily utilised traditional writing forms in English today. Haiku's origin is Japanese, around 1890, but stemming from haikai-no-renga in the 16^th century, which stemmed from renga in the 15^th century. The age of haiku's invention can be misleading. See the description below, under 'Origin and General Information' to learn why.

The reason for this form being misunderstood in the west is due to longstanding misconceptions about the intent of the poem. Westerners use form as an exacting template in which to write, and our subjects are somewhat open. True, certain forms had specific subjects to keep in mind (Miracle Plays, Eulogies, etc...), but in general, subject was a matter of the author’s experimentation and the general level of understanding and comfort of readers. There aren’t very specific rules regarding what a sonnet must be about. So, we don’t generally apply a subject mindset to modern haiku, either, and maintain that haiku is best with no specifically chosen limiter. That is, no center of interest that must be maintained. This is unfortunate from a traditional point of view, but does open the possibilities of the poem exponentially.

Origin and General Information: There is a longstanding confusion by western poets between the three related terms Haiku, Hokku and Haikai. These are sometimes used in place of one another, incorrectly. The term hokku means, in its most literal sense "starting verse", and was only the first introductory verse of a longer chain of verses. This longer chain was known as haikai-no-renga or just haikai, for short. The intent, scope and tone of the haika (the completed chain, the entire poem) was settled early in its hokku. Writing the introductory hokku quickly gained notoriety as a feat one had to be very skilled to do well. Because of this, it became common in some circles that a poet could compose a hokku solely.

After some time passed, writing a hokku could be considered a separate endeavor, though not officially. To remedy this and to give the form its own identity, away from the notion of haikai, a single introductory hokku became known by the name haiku. This occured in the 1890s, under the supervision and pressuring of Masaoka Shiki, one of the greatest critics of Matsuo Basho, an earlier poet who had been deified by the government. Criticizing Basho, for some time in Japanese history, was a blasphemous offense. According to Shiki, if separated and complete on its own, and without the extension of other verses, a hokku was to be called a haiku, and to be considered its own poetic form.

Because of this switch in names and intent, the "haiku" actually has a short history, and those poets (Kobayashi Issa, Matsuo Basho, and many others) who are known to have written it earlier than the late 19^th century were actually writing hokku. The difference is a matter of official naming and cultural shift.

I once had a creative writing teacher who, when asked what a haiku was, stated to his class: “Oh that? It’s just a poem that goes 5-7-5. That’s all.” This is neglectful. Saying a haiku is 5-7-5, and that's all, is akin to stating that a car is just a box that travels on four wheels. Yes, most cars have four wheels and travel, but there is certainly much more going on than that. The metrical count in Japanese haiku is important, but could be strayed here and there if needed. The real regulation of a haiku was its subject, concise brevity, and imagery. Westerners have a difficult time, culturally, charting and weighing subject and imagery, considering our alphabets aren't necessarily pictogrammatic, whereas many facets of asian language involve more pictogrammic usage. The Japanese symbol for 'house' looks like a house. Our word for 'house' looks like coded nonsense, if you don't read English. We can discern if we think an image in a poem is good, or of interest, and we can figure out if we enjoy or are attentive to a subject, but we don’t usually regulate it for our formats. We can write about anything, culturally. This has more to do with modernity and changes in acceptance than with cultural borders, but they do play a serious part in how we interpret haiku. So, if we don't specifiy subjects much, and we don't generally chart out our imagery, we're left with the concise brevity part. We focus most on the metrical count, one of the rules of haiku. Most scholars agree that the English syllable is the closest thing we have to the Japanese use of meter, despite that it is not so short as its japanese counterpart, and also that the English syllable varies in length ('cop' and 'strange' are both monosyllabic, but one takes longer to say). While some dislike this difference in style between traditional eastern and modern western haiku, particularly those who wish to write haiku in a more classical mode, there isn't much of a closer option than the English syllable, so that's what we use.

Brevity: My past instructor’s remark is a perfect example of forgetting subject and imagery, focusing on nothing but brevity. The general rule in English is three lines, of 5, 7, and then 5 syllables, and many people allow one to alter this, within reason. It is commonly accepted that modern, western haiku can be interpreted as the author wishes, so long as it's short. Most stick with 5-7-5. Unfortunately, this is not the sole rule one should follow (yet most do) in writing more traditional haiku. I can write 5-7-5 from sunrise to sunset, no problem, but I can’t write a good, true haiku without expending a lot of thought into it. You can dedicate your life to it. Ask Issa or Basho. The subject and imagery is key in traditional haiku, every bit as much as the metrical lines.

Haiku must contain a kigo, which is a seasonal word. These exist to indicate in which season the haiku is set. Snow would indicate winter, mosquitos can indicate summer, and one of the more famous images, cherry blossoms, indicate spring. There were, in the traditional Japanese, a wide variety of seasonal words that were acceptable, and it was the mark of a craftsman to gain acceptance with a new one of his own. In western haiku, the kigo and various other forms of subject and imagery, once mandatory and of great importance, even here, have been widely lost. Western haiku has largely become as my old creative writing teacher stated. A five, a seven, a five. That's it, the boring result of a hard watering down by masses of occasional poets and tinkerers.

Examples:

Kobayashi Issa (western calendar: June 15, 1763 - January 5, 1828)

A man, just one -
also a fly, just one -
in the huge drawing room.

***

Matsuo Basho (roughly 1644-1694)

Fallen sick on a journey,
In dreams I run wildly
Over a withered moor.*

*written on his deathbed.

The Ghazal

Originating in 12th century Persia, from an arabic word that means 'talking to women', the ghazal (pronounced like 'gozzle') has a longstanding history. It is a poem comprised of entirely separated couplets, of which there is no enjambment or lead-off, and of which consist of lines of equal metrical length. The first line of each couplet is introductory, and the second line amplifies the meaning of the first. The rhyme scheme and system of refrain (repeated word or phrase) is uniform and does not change throughout the ghazal. The rhyme scheme is present in both lines of the introductory couplet, but thereafter is utilised only in the second line of each succeeding couplet. The rhyme does not end the line, but tapers into the refrain. The length of the ghazal is of the author's choice, but they are not usually longer than 15 couplets, and the last couplet in the poem has a specialized function, in which the author may introduce their name in whatever person they choose. It is a sort of signature by the poet.

The following is a template example in 3 stanzas, using iambic heptameter (seven iambs per line), with bold to show an example of rhyme, and red coloring to show a possible refrain. There is a blue patch to show a possible place to add your signature name. Remember, the refrain will always follow the rhyme immediately:

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/A

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/A

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/A

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/A

Most ghazals are longer than this. If I were to lengthen it, I would add more couplets in the middle, all of which would bear the same design as the middle couplet already shown. The template example above merely shows the pertinent structure of the poem. The rhythm and meter are open and can be chosen by the author, so long as that chosen is consistent throughout. Also open are the rhyme and refrain you choose, as well as the way your signature works.

Example:

Khwaja Shams ud-Din Hafiz-i Shirazi (1326-1390, also known as 'Hafiz'.)

agar ân tork-e shirâzi be-dast ârad del-e mâ-râ
be-khâl-e henduvish bakhsham samarqand o bukhârâ-râ

badeh sâqi may-e bâqi keh dar jannat na-kh^vâhi yâft
kenâr-e âb-e roknâbâd o golgasht-e mosallâ-râ

faghân kin luliyân-e shawkh-e shirinkar shahr-âshub
chonân bordand sabr az del keh torkân-e kh^vân-e yaghmâ-râ

ze ‘eshq-e nâ-tamâm-e mâ jamâl-e yâr mostaghnist
be-âb o rang o khâl o khatt cheh hâjat ru-ye zibâ-râ

man az ân hosn-e ruzâfzun keh yusof dâsht dânastam
keh ‘eshq az pardeh-ye ‘esmat berun ârad zolaykhâ-râ

agar doshnâm farmâyi va gar nefrin do‘â guyam
javâb-e talkh mi-zibad lab-e la‘l-e shakar-khâ-râ

nasihat gush kon jânâ keh az jân dustar dârand
javânân-e sa‘âdatmand pand-e pir-e dânâ-râ

hadis az motreb o may gu va râz-e dahr kamtar ju
keh kas na-g’shud o na-g’shâyad be-hekmat in mo‘ammâ-râ

ghazal gofti va dorr softi biyâ kh^vosh be-kh^vân hâfez
keh bar nazm-e to afshânad falak `eqd-e sorayyâ-râ

***

(The following poem is a translation of that directly above, and for which I couldn't find a translator's name.)

If that Shirazi Turk would take my heart in her hand,
For her dark Indian mole I would give Samarkand
and Bukhara.

Wine, sâqi, bring the remaining wine!
For in Paradise thou’lt not find
the water’s edge of Ruknâbâd or the rose-park of Musallâ.

Alas, these wanton Luli girls upset the town with their sweet work;
they take away patience from the heart in the same way that the Turks plunder the feast.

The beauty of the Beloved has no need of my imperfect love:
what need has the beautiful face for perfume, rouge, moles, and makeup?

From the daily-increasing beauty that Joseph had, I know
the love that brought Zulaykhâ out from behind her veil of innocence.

If thou pronounce curses and maledictions, I will say prayers.
The bitter answer suits the sugar-eating ruby lips.

O soul, listen to advice
which is dearer than the soul to joyful youths
from the wise old man who knows:

Tell the tale of the minstrel and wine,
and don’t inquire much into the mystery of time,
for nobody’s wisdom will untie or undo this knot.

Thou has spoken the ghazal, and strung the pearls; come, sing sweetly, Hâfiz!
So that heaven may scatter on thy poem the necklace of the Pleiades.

The Pantoum

A French form, originating in Malay. The pantoum's traditional form consists of 4 stanzas, 4 lines each, of approximately 8 syllables to the line (this indicates the use of 3-footed rhythms like Dactyl and Anapest are out), rhyming ABBA. However, these rules are but a beginning of what makes a pantoum. The difficult and defining characteristic of a pantoum is its recursive quality. The pantoum re-uses its lines again and again, in a very specific order: The second and fourth lines of each stanza reappear EXACTLY as the 1^st and 3^rd lines of the next stanza. The last stanza's 2^nd and 4^th lines are also the 1^st and 3^rd lines of the first stanza, creating a never-ending loop. The last rhyme in the ABBA scheme doubles as the first rhyme when it repeats (example: ABBABBABBABBABBA. The red is used to denote how the end of one ABBA doubles as the beginning of the next. That second A doubles as the first A in the next rhyme scheme fulfillment). Today, most people who write pantoums allow an infinite number of stanzas, so long as the recursion rule is followed, and the use of 4 lines to the stanza. Some will augment the syllable count, so long as it's static throughout, and it's not uncommon to find modern pantoums with ABAB rhyme schemes. Many poets rank this classical form of poetry to be the strictest and most difficult (I disagree) but with a touch of modern laxity and experiment, they become easier. Sticking to the classical, traditional mode can be a headache, hence why these poems have been respected for some across many countries.

I've noticed that the pantoum is sometimes used for ‘dirty’ poetry, or, poetry of a debauched or raunchy gist, but classically, it is usually elevated for purer intentions. The pantoum is an amazing, recursive form, and difficult. Your lines have to be open enough to fit a variety of circumstances grammatically, yet specific enough to be of interest to the reader. In short, acrobatic word choice and lines capable of several meanings, in context. The toughest part of writing a pantoum is that any change you make to a line will require changing it in other lines, which changes the meaning of surrounding lines, which all have to be changed then, and on and on... It's the Rubik's cube of poems.

There is also the imperfect pantoum, which finds some use in the modern poetry arena. In this form, the final stanza differs from the traditional form, with the second and fourth lines allowed to be different from preceding lines.

The following is the template design of a usual pantoum, using trochaic tetrameter (four trochaic feet [/o] = 8 syllables). The color code represents which lines are the same (I.E. line 4 of the first stanza repeats as line 3 of the second stanza). By following the colors, you can see where each line repeats exactly. Lines 2 and 4 repeat as lines 1 and 3 in the next stanza, always. The last stanza's lines 2 and 4 repeat, just as before, but in the 1^st and 3^rd lines of the FIRST stanza, concluding and sealing the loop of lines together. The last stanza presupposes the very first stanza follows it, and the rhythm as well as the recursive line structure is completed.

/o/o/o/o A

/o/o/o/o B

/o/o/o/o B

/o/o/o/o A

/o/o/o/o B

/o/o/o/o B

/o/o/o/o A

/o/o/o/o B

/o/o/o/o B

/o/o/o/o A

/o/o/o/o B

/o/o/o/o B

/o/o/o/o A

/o/o/o/o B

/o/o/o/o B

/o/o/o/o A

Example (Note: In the following example, Charles Baudelaire ignored the common tactic of repeating the first line of the poem as his closing line, and also chose to use an ABBA rhyme scheme.)

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

Harmonie du soir


Voici venir le temps où vibrant sur sa tige
Chaque fleur s’évapore ainsi qu’un encensoir;
Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir;
Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!
Chaque fleur s’évapore ainsi qu’un encensoir;
Le violon frémit comme un cœur qu’on afflige;
Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!
Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir.
Le violon frémit comme un cœur qu’on afflige,
Un cœur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir!
Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir;
Le soleil s’est noyé dans son sang qui se fige.
Un cœur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir,
Du passé lumineux recueille tout vestige!
Le soleil s’est noyé dans son sang qui se fige . . .
Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir!

***

(An English translation follows)


Here comes the time when, vibrating on its stem,
Each flower evaporates like a censer;
The sounds and scents revolve in the evening air;
Melancholy waltz and languorous vertigo!
Each flower evaporates like a censer;
The violin trembles like a heart that is distressed;
Melancholy waltz and languorous vertigo!
The sky is sad and beautiful like a great altar.
The violin trembles like a heart that is distressed,
A tender heart, which hates the vast, black nothingness!
The sky is sad and beautiful like a great altar;
The sun has drowned in its freezing blood.
A tender heart, which hates the vast, black nothingness,
Collects all vestiges from the luminous past!
The sun has drowned in its freezing blood . . .
Your memory shines in me like a monstrance!

The Limerick

Believe it or not, this form of poetry, once considered the lowest of the low and generally relegated to drunken bar cronies rhyming anything they could with words obscene, profane, or just plain fun, is still alive and kicking. We've all met someone who has recited that they ‘once knew a man from Nantucket...’ who, at some point, did or said something that rhymed with 'fuck it' or 'suck it' or else. Believe it or not, there's a Limerick Day, which is celebrated on May 12^th, coinciding with the birthday of Edward Lear , a notable writer of limericks who wrote in the early-to-mid 1800s.

Origin: The object of the limerick, most of the time, is humor with a dash of shock-value. The subject matter for any good limerick usually involves something foul, low, begrudged, or sexual (and if you're really good, all four at once), and the poem is delivered like a joke or riddle, as it usually involves a punchline ending. I’ve heard all sorts of endings to limericks, from men having sex with mules, to drunken blackouts, and even a vacuum cleaner inserted in a politician's bottom. At 5 lines completed (I have seen experiments involving longer and more intricate structures, but the usual form is 5 lines), the general rhythm for this form is two lines in trimeter (usually anapestic, but on certain occasions iambic, and any other rhythm is workable), dropping into two shorter lines in dimeter, and then exalting its end with a final trimetric line, which tosses out the final rhyme and, like the punchline to a joke, delivers the witty shock or dirty wrap-up. We find out in this last moment what happens to the man from Nantucket, what tools were utilised, and to whom he involved in his humorous debauchery. The rhyme scheme of most limericks is AABBA.

Let's take a well-known (albeit filthy) version of 'Nantucket' apart:

There once was a man from Nantucket

Whose dick was so long he could suck it.

While wiping his chin,

He said with a grin,

"If my ear were a cunt, I could fuck it."

o/oo/oo/o A

o/oo/oo/o A

o/oo/ B

o/oo/ B

oo/oo/oo/o A

You'll note that in the last line of this version of the poem, the author snuck in an extra syllable at the beginning. The rhythm needs not be exact, but it can't be entirely forgotten or you don't have a limerick.

Examples:

A flea and a fly in a flue
Were caught, so what could they do?
Said the fly, "Let us flee."
"Let us fly," said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

-Anonymous

***

There was an Old Person whose habits,
Induced him to feed upon rabbits;
When he'd eaten eighteen,
He turned perfectly green,
Upon which he relinquished those habits.

-Edward Lear

***

There was a young lady named Alice,
Who used dynamite for a phallus,
They found her vagina,
In North Carolina,
Her arsehole in Buckingham Palace.

-commonly known, yet unattributed

Getting an idea.

There is, perhaps, no more dangerous man in the world than the man with the sensibilities of an artist but without creative talent. With luck such men make wonderful theatrical impresarios and interior decorators, or else they become mass murderers or critics.
~Barry Humphries

You know how we’re all forced to have a day job because making art don’t pay dick? Well I was at my day job (I quit a year ago) having lunch and one of my co-workers asked me how I came up with my ideas. See, when you have a dayjob and people find out you’re creative in some way you’ll get questions like this a lot. People take an interest in your work or at least they pretend to but no one will ever know what the creative process is like until they do it.
My answer to her question was that ideas were the easy part; it’s actually making those ideas into some kind of finished piece that is difficult. I’m serious, ideas are everywhere and at the beginning they’re all equally valid. Every idea you have throughout the course of the day is a book, or a film, or a comic waiting to happen. Every time you make a decision or notice something insignificant you’re forming ideas. These are the building blocks of stories and it’s up to you to craft those building blocks into something that others want to look at.
Now I’m not advocating putting every idea you have into a story and I’m certainly not suggesting that every idea is going to interest an audience but the notion that ideas are rare is certainly false.
There are few creative people that will ever be able to tell you how they come up with ideas and they sure as shit aren’t going to be able to tell you how you should come up with your ideas. That being said, it still seems to be a common question. So, like an idiot, I’m going to try to tackle the question “How do you come up with ideas?”
Part one: The difference between an idea and a story.
Okay, you’re sitting on a beach and a guy walks up to you and asks you directions to a nearby hotel. The guy is noticeably intoxicated. You give him the directions in an unsure way and moments after he walks off you realize you’ve given him the wrong directions.
As you sit there on the beach wondering if you should try to catch him you let your mind wander.
“I wonder where that guy’s going to end up.”
“I hope he gets where he needs to go eventually.”
“why was that guy drunk?”
You sit watching the sunset and you begin to daydream a bit about the whole scenario. You create a series of events in your head about how and why the man was asking directions on the beach.
You decide the guy had been out on the beach drinking because he’d gotten in a fight with his wife. The two of them were on their vacation and staying at a nearby hotel. The fight they had was over a trivial thing like where to have dinner that night. The man had gotten so drunk on the beach that he’d just wandered aimlessly and forgotten which way he’d come from. Some faulty directions from a stranger (you) had caused the man to walk off into the bad part of town and get attacked by a mugger.
You see where I’m going with this? A random occurrence caused you to think a little (and only a little) about a certain series of events. You wondered about the motivations of someone you met and turned those questions into a story without even realizing it.
Part two: a word about Craft
Is the above scenario really a story? No, it isn’t a story but it’s a good building block for a story. This is where craft comes into play… you know our friend craft right? That stuff they talk about in school? That stuff James Kochalka thinks is the enemy?
Craft is your friend, craft is a useful set of experiments that exist to allow you to maximize the potential of your ideas. Some people think that craft is there solely to tell you that you’re a bad artist and that no one will ever love you. Fuck that, you could kick craft’s punk ass and whenever craft gets out of line you can toss it out the window and rely on your gut.
However, craft is a useful tool and it would do everyone good to learn more about making good stories, learning from your predecessors, peers and your mistakes. Relying solely on the strength of your ideas is folly. Have you looked at the internet lately? There’s an idea around every corner, everyone’s got an idea. In the last ten years small press has given rise to blogs and youtube and there’s a means of distribution for anyone with two fingers and a brain anyone with two fingers. Everyone is now publishing every idea they have and every idea had already been used up a hundred years ago.
My point, if I have one at all, is that though an idea is absolutely the first real step in a creative endeavor it isn’t really any more important than the rest of the process.
That being said, let’s generate some ideas.
Next Part three: some writing exercises.

Simultaneous Submission

Author’s note: This post is designed with poetry submission in mind, though some aspects of it may apply to other forms of writing, especially short stories and the such. Certainly the role of simultaneous submission changes considerably when you’re submitting something as large and time-consuming as a novel or book manuscript, and my opinion of simultaneous submission changes in relation to these circumstances. So, read on and take it as you want, but for the purpose of this article, we’re generally talking poetry and short works.

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Through the thousands of magazine guidelines available online and in print, there is strong mention of a process called ‘simultaneous submission’. Some magazines call this multiple submission (though the term ‘multiple submission’ is occasionally also used to describe submitting more than once to a magazine within its given reading period). Simultaneous submission is the act of offering your writing to more than one publisher or editor at the same time. It allows you to send what you consider to be valuable work to several places at once, thus garnering a higher chance of a positive response, or at least, rejections more quickly, giving you more of an idea of what the troubled work needs. This can be a blessing to the poet who has wide aspirations, or not much work, or who has a specifically themed piece that might be used well in several outlets where a submission window is a factor.

The benefit of using simultaneous or multiple submission, for the writer, is unarguable: It increases his/her chance of being published in a very direct, marketed way. Unfortunately, this act can be damaging to some editors, especially when a counted on piece from a submission is retracted close to a deadline, or at all, for that matter.

Let’s run through the process with an example and see where it gets us...

Flagella Garner has aspirations to be a published poet, and she believes she has three good poems to send out. They're entitled: "I Went Wild on Spring Break", "Spring Break Series #2: Pregnancy Test", and "I Think He Told Me His Name was 'Road Bird', But the Song Lyrics on the Napkin He Hid in My Glove Box were Signed 'Shawn'".

Now, Flagella has decided to send these three poems out to the magazine, Youthful Peril Bimonthly, but she thinks they'd also be a good fit at New Mommy Review, as well as at Experience: The Journal of Finding Things Out the Hard Way. She only has the three poems, but each magazine says to send exactly three. What can she do? That’s nine poems Flagella would need to submit to all three magazines. Well, she could send to one, wait until she gets an eventual response, and if it’s a rejection, send the poems on to the next magazine, and so forth, or she could send to all three magazines at once and hope they don’t mind. Well, in this instance, let’s say these three magazines state in their guidelines that they allow simultaneous submissions. Great news. Flagella can simultaneously submit these same three poems to all three magazines. Her odds just jumped up a bit, and someone is bound to accept at least one, right? It will pad her bio and give her a better chance at acceptance, with much more potential for having her work read by someone, which is why people want to print in the first place, to get their work read, yes? Sending these three poems out to a group of magazines, instead of one, will up young Flagella’s chances considerably. This sounds wonderful to her, and in this instance, is surely the best bet for achieving her goal of publishing the poems.

It seems as if things are going to work out for our young poet, Flagella. Or maybe not...

Simultaneous submission is trouble, and perhaps selfish. I wouldn't recommend it. There are rights involved in printing with magazines and anthologies. Rights to print are important and held in serious regard. Flagella can send to all three magazines at once, and hell, she could send the same poems to 12 magazines if she desired (and if they allow it), but she’ll have to let the others know the second one of them sends her an acceptance, or worse, she’ll have to tell the magazine accepting her that she’s holding out for a better magazine if she decides not to take the first acceptance. The rights become an issue (a big one) the minute she fails to do either of these things. Different magazines ask different rights, as well, and she'll have to maneuver her way through them in order to figure out what she can send and what she can't. The process can be a hassle, submissions can become more complicated than necessary, and there’s always the ever-present chance that she’ll piss someone off.

To give you a better idea of what's really going on when you simultaneously submit, with the fronts and well-meaning stripped away, try looking at it with the roles reversed. Imagine, as a poet, getting something like this in the mail from an editor:


Dear poet,

As you'll remember, I accepted two of your poems last month for my upcoming issue of World Renowned Literary Journal. As part of my selection process, I strategically 'over-accept' for each issue. I use twelve poems per issue, but will usually accept around 20, to make sure I have enough at crunch-time, when I head to the printer. I am about to release the issue, and am sorry to tell you that I have my twelve set up now, and yours aren’t in that, so I won't be using your poems as planned. Sorry if I got your hopes up, and please consider your poems freed and no longer of use to me; I've chosen to go with other poets. Thanks for your submisson to World Renowned and sorry to take back the acceptance. No hard feelings, and feel free to submit to us in the future.

-Editor

Yeah, no hard feelings, right?

I've never had an editor do anything this cold and horrible to me, so why would I toss this kind of wreckage on one of them? I wouldn't, and I wouldn't advise you do it, either. Simultaneous submission in poetry is, in effect, over-submitting. There’s also the between-the-lines message inferred when you simultaneously submit. This message is that you don’t care about the magazine enough to send them something that’s solely for their perusal. This message is that you’re only out for the acceptance or credit, and don’t necessarily see yourself as a potential part of that magazine’s ongoing history. This message is that you probably don’t find their magazine any more important or necessary than the next one you have earmarked for the poems. In short, speed-dating. Many editors understand, of course, and are both tolerant and patient about a contributor’s submission practices, but on a certain level, simultaneous submission still bears with it an undercurrent, no matter how courteous it is handled, of disrespect. It can be a rude behaviour and carries with it a selfish vibe. Having to retract your work from an editor because of an acceptance elsewhere is an act of aggressive marketing, no matter how polite an editor may be to you regarding it.

If you're serious about your work and you’re doing you job as a poet, you should have enough material to send to the magazines you like. If you don't have these things, wait until you do. If you’re not serious about your work, wait until you are. Sending various editors the same poems at the same time is an efficient, expedient, helpful, bad idea. It requires more active charting and records, and can turn on you rather quickly. There are magazines that allow it (many, in fact, and some even encourage it), but most of them don't like it when it backfires on them much, especially when rights or money come into play. They're agreeing to allow it because they feel for you. They know you're trying to navigate a large and unusually sporadic gauntlet and they're willing to help, to some degree. Some editors do it when sending out their own work. Regardless, simultaneous submission is still a situation that can easily become a mess, cause you to burn bridges, and anger some editors that were counting on the poem you sent them for an upcoming issue. What happens if two magazines accept a poem? There are ethical choices to make in this situation, but in the end, you’ll most likely have to go with one and ditch the other. How is this going to mutate the now cuckolded and ditched editor’s view of you?

If you have certain works that you feel would be well received at various magazines, the smartest thing to do is go without and just submit within your capability until you've accumulated enough material to send unique and real submissions to the magazines you hope want them. In dating, under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t ask ten people in a room, one at a time, to go out on a date with you within earshot of the others, would you? If so, what the hell for? Upping your chances? Ask yourself this: Chances for what? Certainly not establishing something meaningful. An acceptance, a score? Sure, but to what end? There’s no simple way around it that isn’t damaging: You simply have to try your luck and wait for the rejection. You’re just going to have to wait. Want more poems out at more editors? Write them, then send them. If you get an acceptance, problem solved; you printed the work. If you get a rejection, problem solved; the work is free to revise and send elsewhere.

Now, many people use simultaneous submission to get around the achingly long response times of many magazines. This is understandable, and certainly a simultaneous submission can help you get your work to more publishers in that time span for which you’re waiting. However, in lieu of simultaneous submission, I offer that a well-placed rescinsion when necessary works much more efficiently and is far less confusing. I’ll get into rescinsion in another post, but for now, a ‘rescinsion’ is when you contact an editor and take your poems back because an irresponsibly undue amount of time has passed and you still haven’t heard back from them. This shouldn’t be done lightly. When I say ‘irresponsibly undue’, I mean that the magazine is out of line, and usually by leaps and bounds. Basically, if a publication states they received your poems and that they’ll respond in up to 6 weeks, and then eight months go by, and they aren’t answering your emails, they deserve to lose the poems. But that’s for another post. I only mention rescinsion as a useful and cleaner alternative to using simultaneous submission in the solving of long waits.

While the process does abound in the small press, I’d advise you to think it over before sending your work to multiple editors at a given time. Instead of debating how to out-maneuver the publishing process, and how to get a small number of poems out to more editors, you might want to ask yourself why you don’t have enough writing to avoid having to ponder these things. Again, you’ll have enough material to avoid simultaneously submitting if you're serious about what you do.

In conclusion, use simultaneous submission if you want to, but bear in mind the trouble you can cause, and the variety of bridges you can burn simply by losing track of who you sent what. Ask yourself this: Is getting a few more acceptances here and there worth pissing all over the longstanding conventions of the only place left that actually wants to print you and your ilk, for free, and often unprofitably?

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The following are some various viewpoints from several sources on the subject, as well as some information taken from guidelines of various magazine that use poetry. Some are fine with simultaneous submission, some discourage it, and some downright hate it. If anything, this should give you an idea that simultaneous submission bears with it some controversy, and the tolerance of it seems to vary nearly by press. Brackets are mine.


Here’s an approval of it from the submission guidelines at Pemmican Press:

“It is indeed difficult for poets to send out poems, wait weeks, perhaps months on end for a reply that, odds are, will be negative--and then have to start the entire submission process all over again. Therefore multiple submissions [at Pemmican] are understood and encouraged.”

Here’s a no-no, with the punishment, from the submission guidelines at Toasted-Cheese Literary Journal:

“We do not accept simultaneous submissions. Withdrawing a submission because it has been published elsewhere will disqualify you from future submissions.”

Several links to other articles of varying views on this subject:

http://clairelight.typepad.com/seelight/2006/03/simultaneous_su.html

http://www.writing-world.com/basics/simsubs.shtml

http://www.star-dot-star.co.uk/multi.htm

http://ezinearticles.com/?Are-Simultaneous-Submissions-a-Good-Idea?&id=455928

http://www.writehabit.org/journalfaq.html

http://www.marketlist.com/articles/artsimul.asp

An interesting article that also discusses a bit of rumored history behind how simultaneous submissions first began (purportedly Norman Mailer started it):

http://www.theroseandthornezine.com/Article/17SimultaneousSubs.html

Shake the Box

Over the years, I’ve developed some odd and even innovative means for salvaging a terrible poem. Maybe it’s a poem that, no matter how you revise it, nothing seems to happen, yet you’re not the sort of author to destroy it. You end up stuck with it rotting somewhere in a folder or electronic wasteland in the back of your hard drive. I am this way. It’s the pack-rat mentality in art, and like many, I’ve got it bad. I can’t get rid of anything, even if I’d be embarrassed to ever put my own name on it. What can be done with these lingual chunks of concrete stuck on your hard drive, besides ignore them with the hopes that one day you’ll be ingenius enough to figure out what they need? I have a few tricks that, to date, I’ve horded to myself. These tricks, in all of their forms, represent a sort of revision / rewrite ignition-device that I call ‘Shaking the Box’. It’s similar to jumbling the letters in a Scrabble game before you try to make words with them. I’ll list some of these tricks and, when I’m willing to part with some of the others, I’ll post them here as well.

All of these tactics involve rewriting. These are only diving boards into the mental space you need to be in to rework your poem into something you prefer. They’re idea-sparkers, or at the very least, stave off the boredom that may have infiltrated your routine. Some of these I’ve used to a small degree, and some of them I’ve used heavily. They also work to re-innovate your old, old work that simply isn’t up to par with where you are now.

1. Machine Translation

Machine translation is generally conducted by a program that translates text into another language. You'll find thousands of these online, some free, some online only, etc... It's just a translation program.

I go into phases where I’ll use this often, and then I’ll pass out of it and forget about the process for a few months, maybe a year, but I always come back to this one as a unique and striking means of wiring my head back into poem I’ve previously ditched. Machine Translation works like this: You take a line and use a translation program to translate the line into another language like French, Greek, Jive, whatnot. Since machines aren’t very bright about this yet, you’ll get a very literal translation. Now, take that line of translated material, and have the program translate it BACK into English. What you’ll get is a very literal translation, word for word, not by meaning, of the line. This tends to break up your more anglicized notions into a more communicative, simple, cross-border terminology. This is essentially using a machine as a kind of automated thesaurus, except it's not finding the best word for you, it's finding the closest match in another language, and it's finding that match in a very rigid way.

Let’s use a translating program (we’ll use Systran Personal) to translate this awful line:

“You’re eyes are dumbass satellites, and your breath smells of puberty”

Now, if we go from English to Portuguese, then Portuguese back into English, we get something like this:

“You dumb is eyes is as satellites, and its cheiros of the breath of puberty.”

Okay, sure. What the hell does that mean? Nothing. It’s literal machine-translation. What you would do now is start trying to make a sensical line out of this result. Do whatever you want with it. Destroy it, rewrite it, associate in it a while... ‘Cheiros’ might remind me, just briefly, of the word 'churro', or 'Charon', or ‘charity’, and so forth... You might come up with something for this line like:

“Dim and circling, those eyes come around like Saturday, while the breath of that pubescence is but wild charity.”

Well, it’s just a start. Eventually you'll have something much better. Whatever you get, it’s yours, just a little unlike you. So, not great, but the idea is that it sparked something, and you did something with it, and now, different line, poem, etc... The point is to have something better to work with than what you previously had. To stir up the pool. After using machine translation, rewrite normally until you’re content, or go mad. I’ve found that either tend to satisfy my page. Of course, for machine translation to work, you should try to find the worst possible, and most literal and simple translator you can find. One that really spits out the oddity. I use Systran Personal (Portuguese works well, though French can get you some interesting results. I’d love to mess around with Russian sometime...).

I’ll post links to various translators and things at the end of the article.

2. Poetry Generators

These are usually awful and obviously, don’t work well. They create, for the most part, random streams of gibberish that ‘sort of’ keep within the rules of English, but in a strange and coded kind of way. Occasionally, you can find one that will ‘read’ a text file, and then create it’s haphazard streams of gibberish based on what it has read. In this case, you make it analyze a handful of your bad poems. What it spits out is crap, but it’s your crap jumbled up into bizarre machine-like lines that mean nothing. What this can do for you, however, is stimulate a sound or unexpected phrase, similar to what you’d get from the above-mentioned machine translation. It gives you an entirely new take on your poem that you might never have found on your own. It’s not cheating because every word it spit out was yours, and you’re doing the rewrite, and you’re not using the generated material anyway, just bits here and there. These will become new lines you’ll go over and add to and alter to your liking.

You might think while seeing the results of this: “Huh, I would have never thought to put ‘shack’, ‘biped’ and ‘face broom’ together in a sentence... Weird, I think I can make something neat out of that...” Eventually, the poem you end up with is nothing like what the generator puked out, but you wouldn’t have it if the generator hadn’t spun your mind a bit with some odd word placements.

Want to have some fun? Have the generator read a text file that contains many of your terrible poems, as well as copied versions of the numerous rejections editors have given you for those poems. You end up with both in the same poem. Or, have it analyze a file of your poems, as well as several XXX stories from an adult site, and then spit out the mixed result. Interesting stuff you’ll get.

3. The Reversal

This is when you start taking the lines (or stanzas, or even the words, one by one) of your poems and reversing the order they appear in. The level and exactitude with which you do this is up to you. You don’t have to do it exactly, but just seeing what happens when you start with your ending, and onward, backward. Usually, you’ll nitpick a little, reverse a few things, then realize you like what’s going on, and stop there. You’ll get a line or two, in a certain order that you end up being fond of, and then, with rewrites, you can find yourself with an entirely different poem, or several of them. The idea here, and with most of these tricks is that you can get dirty in you poem. Make a mess. Some painters come out of their art rooms, after hours of working, messy and covered in paint... just because you use words doesn’t mean that you can’t make a pig sty out of your page. If you’ve got a terrible poem you want to work on, you should know you can kick it in the head, smash it, twist it up, spatter it back on a page... It’s open game.

For a quick example, let’s reverse the following end of an awful poem:

Then
the tongue shot out, dripping

in toll of the hour,

sick.

Reversed:

Sick,

in toll of the hour,

the tongue shot out, dripping.

Then,

There you have it, a start into something else. Not very interesting or good, but a start. Now you can figure out what happens after ‘Then’, and move forward. Your brain is on. That was the point. Mission accomplished. You can also reverse something you like, write a poem around it, and then switch it back into it’s original order. This can get you yet another unique spin in the poem.

4. Dissection

Have you said too much, or gone off on a great tangent that was just too odd or unnecessary for the poem at hand? Pare your poem into more stanzas, and then try to make several poems out of them. Add where you need to, see what happens. Taking several lines out of a poem and using them as the base of a new poem can completely re-tune your ear and get you writing something you weren’t expecting at all. Also, at the end of this process, there’s a good chance you can end up with two good poems out of one bad.

5. The Every-Other

This is a tricky one, and I only use it when I’ve been working a lot and have begun playing myself out. It’s a last-ditch effort for me. The results of the Every-Other vary depending on the fodder you use.

It works like this: You rewrite the poem (or retype, if you compose on screen) double spaced, line by line, so you’ve got room for a line between each. Now for the fun part. You need to find a source of strange lines (strange for poetry, at least). An example: Start by typing in some random thing in Google and searching. Go through the results you get and try and find a line in those initial blurbs that will fit grammatically between two of your poem’s lines.

For instance:

Your line 1: This is the moment when I

Google: purchase the ab-flex and

Your line 2: get rid of him, though still

Google: having sex with no longevity,

Your line 3: mention my urge to

Google: replicate the real thing and

Your line 4: sock his face back, then look

Google: in the busy, clean zoo

Your line 5: for the candy.

It doesn’t need to make sense at all (and it probably won’t). Complete the poem in this manner. Now, you’ve got something very odd and unpublishable. Also, it’s not entirely yours because you’ve only written half of it. Take this ‘poem’ and begin rewriting it, trying to make sense of the new lines you’ve added, reworking the poem as if you wrote the entire thing like that on purpose. Try to bridge the difference in lines by adding a few more (no tricks, just write), taking control and rewriting all the while. You can get something out of this that is unique, yet also very you. It’s just a way to quickly turn on your engine and start down the road to a poem. In the end, it’s all you. What’s really happened is that you’ve managed to force yourself into your work-mode, by confusing and startling yourself with general nonsense and the occasional nifty find (in this example, I rather like ‘replicate the real thing and / sock his face back’). This is a good way of salvaging your poem by infusing it with strands of garbage or miscellaneous debris.

I only mention Google because it’s always around. I tend to get better results when I take random, odd lines from newspapers, magazines, appendices of first lines from author’s books, children’s books, film dialogue... on and on. Hey, somebody left it lying around. Use it.

6. The List

This is probably the most common trick that I know of, and it’s not mine at all. I’ve seen it in use in various places in the poetry world, so I try to avoid it, but have gotten good results with it in the past. It’s also very simple (read: gimmicky). Basically, you turn on your eyes and ears and crank up the dials, making a list of things around you that you find interesting, especially things you think not many others may have noticed. You write them down as a list. Then, when you’ve got enough items, you start adding verbs, adjectives, a metaphor or two... until you’ve got the skeleton of a poem. Worry about the subject last. Once you have a barebones version of what will be a poem, you start trying to connect the dots of these details into a cohesive purpose. What do they have in common? What don’t they have in common? Does number 3 on the list (Horrid, Pulsating Smell) relate very easily to any other item on the list, for example, number 7 (Mentally Challenged, Half-Dead Cat)? Write a line or two bridging these. Or a stanza, or an entire poem. Once your brain is stimulated on something, it’s yours.

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That’s about it for now. I have others I’ll mention at some point, but these should keep you busy. I use most of these during revision of my older, more naive work, and can attest that all of them work well in certain circumstances. These are also quite good at knocking you out of writer’s block enough to get some work done. It’s forceful, but effective. The basic idea, with all mental trickery like this, is that you get moving and into your zone. You’ll know how to do this better than I could advise, so these are more for when else fails. But give them a try (I recommend machine translation over the others).

Lastly, I get it. You wrote something not so good and you’re still proud of it, or you just don’t want to meddle with it. This makes perfect sense, but just because you cherish something you wrote, doesn’t mean you can’t fuck it up and shake the box a little from time to time, especially if you’ve got some things sitting around you don’t think you’ll ever do anything with. There are no abuse laws for poems, so if one starts aggravating you, punch it in the face, rearrange it’s organs. See what happens. The important thing is that you’re getting work done.




Some Machine Translators (I recommend Systran and most online translators)

Some Text Generators: (I'd recommend Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet (costs, though), and especially Babble)