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Sunday Scribblings: Idea

"No ideas but in things."
~Williams Carlos Williams


As a writer, I've always tried to adhere to this notion. If concepts such as love and death, hate and happiness, estrangement and despair are to mean anything, I have to show it in my work. It's not enough to write great verse around an idea, I have to figure out how to make it resonate for the reader through everyday examples. And that is where craft comes in.

Not all of the poetry I write is good, but I'm not afraid to push an idea up against the wall and interrogate it until it tells me what I need to know.
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Kamsin said…
I really like this post, I love the way you describe your relationship with ideas.
4:30 AM
claireylove said…
hear, hear! i try to steer away abstract concepts and get everything down in concrete nouns and palpable descriptions, to exhaustion :-)
7:40 AM
paris parfait said…
It's true that incorporating elements of real-life experience in writing always makes the piece resonate more with the reader.
8:13 AM
Regina said…
Writing is so much easier for me when I write about what I know as opposed to what I think I know... thanks for this profound SS...
8:51 AM
January said…
I like making connections with people and the ideas, I guess, are a means to an end. Does that make sense?
8:57 AM
Becca said…
I agree completely - writing always resonates more profoundly for me if it touches me at some real life level. This happens hen the writer can successfully incorporate her experiences with the real world.

You do that extremely well in your poetry :)
9:44 AM
Anonymous said…
I agree that resonating with the reader is so important.
11:40 AM
Crafty Green Poet said…
Yes you need to resonate with the reader (though you can't guarantee that you'll resonate with everyone).
11:59 AM
DJPare said…
Great analogy!
12:28 PM
Inconsequential said…
lol, I think the stuff i write are all bad. if fact sometimes i merely give my ideas a quick slap and send 'em on their way :)
1:39 PM
Anonymous said…
"I'm not afraid to push an idea up against the wall and interrogate it until it tells me what I need to know."

More power to you. Stay with the poem until the end, until you've wrenched everything from it you can.
10:03 PM
kj said…
oh, wow. do i like what you've said here! all i can say is thank you.

i wish you the best year of writing. i'm rooting for both of us. i want to visit you more, and i will!

:)
10:07 PM
JHS said…
Interrogate it? What an interesting choice of words!
2:03 AM
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