Of writers and writing

A friend recently lent me a book titled One Continuous Mistake - Four Noble Truths for Writers, written by Gail Sher. The Four Noble Truths she refers to are:

1. Writers write.
2. Writing is a process.
3. You don't know what your writing will be until the end of the process.
4. If writing is your practice, the only way to fail is to not write.

Reading through the first section, she reminds me of something that used to be a great source of joy for me when I was a "young" writer, but which I need to revisit: The habit of sitting down to the act of writing regularly (mindfully is another word that applies), regardless of whether or not something productive actually comes from it during any one session.

I chose poetry as my medium for creativity in 1995. I thought then that it would be easy to just throw a salad of words onto that blank platter, and voila, a poem...no more days spent in the darkroom developing photographs or making video documentaries.

Needless to say, I learned very quickly that it wasn't as easy as all that, and most of my early work was simply terrible. But I kept writing and writing. I wrote nights, I wrote weekends. I think I wrote over three hundred poems in that first year. I knew I had found my passion because no matter how disappointed I was in some of what I wrote, I could find some tiny spark in it that encouraged me to go on and write more. I was hooked...I just couldn't stop. To this day, I still write a large number of stillborn poems (I call them my beautiful, crippled children), but some of what I learn through them (and some of their subject matter) I revisit months or years later when I have a different perspective, and more skill to give to them. Some poets tweak their old poems...I usually just start a new one.

What also inspired me was the work of one of my favorite Haiku poet Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827...my favorite translations are by Poet Laureate Robert Hass.) It has been said that Issa wrote over 20,000 Haiku, many of which were reputed to be simply terrible. But since he wrote incessantly, the remainder of his work was what characterized him as one of the most notable poets of this genre.