On writing every day.

Poet William Stafford reputedly sat down every morning before sunrise and wrote a poem--if not a whole poem, then some lines toward a poem. In Writing the Australian Crawl, he says, "I get pen and paper, take a glance out of the window...and wait. It is like fishing. But I do not wait very long, for there is always a nibble--and this is where receptivity comes in. To get started I will accept anything that occurs to me. Something always occurs, of course, to any of us. We can't keep from thinking...If I put down something, that thing will help the next thing come, and I'm off."

The biggest word in this quote, for me, is receptivity, the idea of being absolutely open and ready, free of "monkey mind." When I sit down to write, I find myself more often initially thinking of a phrase or line or idea; I also often start with titles. I can't say I have the same receptivity Stafford has, but I'm getting better about not getting frustrated too early. I imagine Stafford went many many lines before he declared the readiness of a piece; I probably try for 20-25 lines before I pass judgment.

Perhaps the practice of writing every day opens one up more, but I am not compelled to write every day. I simply don't feel the need to push if there's no give at the other end. But if we mean writing in its broadest sense, I probably am writing something every day: email, blog post, acceptance letters for poems. I don't write lines every day, put it that way. I can't even blame schedule or activities, because I don't have a crammed calendar. I always think, when my load lightens, "Ahh, just think of all that time to write." And it rarely works out so. Taking the longer view of the past year, though, I've written (and gotten published) a hell of a lot more than in the 4 or 5 years prior. That's progress.

So this means I can't be a full-time poet, and I think I'm okay with that notion--I think. I always feel I should be writing more, but that's a neverending nag. Think of Elizabeth Bishop, who published, let's see, four books in her life.