When my two older boys were 1 and 3, in the most absolutely exhausting and relentless stage of early motherhood, and I'd already been back at work full time for about six months, I took a week off work when it wasn't a family holiday -- I mean the children were with their nanny/at nursery as usual and I just took the weekdays for myself, something I'd never done before and haven't I don't think done again. Completely to my surprise I wrote lots of poems. I hadn't written any poetry as an adult at all, though of course I've always read a great deal of poetry. It was so surprising that I actually found it a bit frightening. At the end of the week I put the notebook away and forgot about it or at least avoided thinking about it for a year or two.
Generally I very much enjoy writing -- I mean any sort of writing, in my case these days mostly either academic writing or critical writing for a more general audience. I always have loved it and very often experience a kind of low-level flow state when writing. But this is for me a very accessible and reliable experience when it comes to writing various types of prose. For me, writing poetry is an extreme and significantly rarer sort of version of this experience. I think it must be something not that far from a kind of trance state because very often afterwards I know that I have drafted a poem but I cannot consciously remember it at all. I am often very surprised when I go back to it. (This is distinct from the revision stage because I can always recite poems that I have finished.) I also do a lot of poetry translation and I find that very satisfying because in general as an experience it lies somewhere between the "ordinary" flow state of a satisfying prose writing session and the very intense (but much rarer) version associated with writing my own poetry. It has something of the latter quality but is much easier to access.
But of course I've written a great deal of prose since I was very young -- I started keeping a diary when I was 6 -- and I have only spent a tiny tiny fraction of that amount of time writing or attempting to write poetry. So perhaps if the ratios were different the experience might be rather different as well.
I had a surprising experience of poetry during the pandemic, when I signed up for one of Nadia Colburn's free weeks of meditation + writing. I did *not* expect poems to come out, but they did, and they sounded -- I don't know how to put this, but the voice sounded firmer, more confident, than my usual writing voice. It was the most dizzying and wonderful thing. I had not written any poetry since my early 20s, and that was very mannered and artificial. This was something different.
This is a really pertinent and immediate question for me, because I've spent more or less my entire life pursuing this and something finally clicked and started working in the last 6 months. Long story short, I'd been trying to write a novel since about 2020, many halting starts, obsessive re-editing. Then coincidentally within a few days of each other last autumn I (a) bought an A6 notebook and (b) had an extremely shocking 'life & death' encounter, and right afterwards I decided to hand-write 3 pages in the notebook every single day, forward only, no going back and editing (which you can't really do when writing by hand anyway), didn't matter how good or bad, only re-reading enough to pick up where I left off the day before. I finished the novel a few weeks ago and shifted to writing a short story every day instead, again just 3 pages in an A6 notebook, doesnt matter how good or bad. This is when the real creative unblocking started because there was no feeling of needing to be faithful to a project. I had the habit no constraint. I think the fact a page in an A6 notebook is so small made it much less of an intimidating task. An A6 page is nothing, so only filling 3 is nothing. And the notion that the content of what I actually write doesn't matter as much as just writing something, which I think was an effective way of tricking myself, since the mind keeps working and the creative instinct and taste and everything else keep churning away unconsciously even when you tell yourself you're just writing any old shit. The best days have been when I let a first sentence pop into my head and just go with it and follow wherever each new sentence seems to lead
When I'm writing, I often think the beginning feels like rolling the stone uphill. At some point, after hours and hours (or weeks or years), I notice that I'm reaching level ground. Then the stone begins to roll downhill. I figure out how every sentence and paragraph fits together. I find the exact right words. I can see the words that don't pull their weight, and I cut them without remorse. This part is what feels most like "the direct line." It's a shame it's over so quickly!
There have probably been times when I've begun by rolling the stone downhill: copious freewriting, let's say. But for the outcome of that to be *good*, I still need to roll the stone uphill. Half will need to be deleted. What seems like something in the world might actually not be ready for the world until it's been worked further.
My point is, I don't think the direct line exists without the fits and starts. I think you have to roll the stone uphill sooner or later. The challenge is to see that as enjoyable. (And I mean it: It's a challenge! It's hard to see it as enjoyable! I often don't! But I go back and keep pushing anyway.)
I have experienced that kind of easeful flow with writing. It does exist! For me, accessing it is associated with a steady state of open receptiveness to the world and the availability to stop everything to turn toward inspiration when it strikes, both of which feel like unaffordable luxuries in my current life.
Most of my blog (https://kolokoli.blogspot.com/) was written in connection with the direct line, but none of my scholarly writing was.
I think I know exactly what you mean by "steady state of open receptiveness to the world". So -- do you do anything to enter that state, or is it mainly a by-product of occasional leisure?
It's been something I've been trying to cultivate more lately, through some of the things you've talked about in this post and in earlier ones--Cameron's Daily Pages, for one. I also find that more time with fewer stimuli (for example--just washing dishes instead of simultaneously listening to music/a podcast) also creates space for receptivity.
I'll be in a new city at a new job for the fall semester, so I'm also thinking about ways to use that occasion of moving to build a daily/weekly rhythm that has more space for the direct line to find me.
I will also be in a new situation this fall semester, but with a very long commute. I've been thinking a lot about how not to let it exhaust me, but you're making me think it's also an opportunity to cultivate space and energy too.
Good morning Irina! Your essay captures a feeling that every writer eventually encounters: the tension between intention and expression. Since antiquity, the Muses have been treated with reverence, and winning their favor has never been easy. Inspiration has always seemed both a gift and a discipline. There is a well-known anecdote about T. S. Eliot. When someone asked him what he was writing, he replied, "A fairy tale and two riddles for children." His interlocutor was surprised, but Eliot explained that writing is a craft that must be exercised constantly, regardless of the subject. Every sentence, however modest, is part of the lifelong apprenticeship of becoming a writer.
Many of us have experienced the tyranny of the blank A4 page or today, the empty document on a laptop without knowing where to begin. We search for the perfect opening, the perfect thought, the elusive "direct line" between imagination and language. Yet perhaps that line is not discovered all at once. It is patiently built through the simple act of returning to the page, again and again. The flow we long for often comes only after we have accepted the discipline of showing up before inspiration arrives.
Thank you for reminding us that creativity is not merely about producing words but about cultivating the courage to trust that, eventually, the words will come :-)
Thank you so much for this. I think a lot of it is, indeed, about trust. Is it trust in oneself, or trust that is something greater than oneself, I wonder? Or do we have to believe in something greater in order to do the really bold thing and believe in ourselves?
I suppose it is a form of trust that goes beyond ourselves, trust in something that is difficult to define. We might call it creativity, but even naming it does not fully capture its mystery. Thinking about it reminds me of the two sacred doves of the Oracle of Oracle of Dodona, which interpreted the murmuring of the oak leaves as divine messages. Many times I have felt less like the author than an interpreter, trying to give voice to something that already exists beyond me. We may believe that what emerges is profound, but ultimately it is the readers who decide its meaning and value.
However Irina, you are writing beautifully. Ever since I discovered your essays, I have followed them with genuine admiration. Thank you for continuing to share such thoughtful reflections.
i have felt it in dance improvisation, especially contact improv, and i have felt it in writing grant narratives for community programming where i am catapulted into the projected positive outcomes of the program.
When my two older boys were 1 and 3, in the most absolutely exhausting and relentless stage of early motherhood, and I'd already been back at work full time for about six months, I took a week off work when it wasn't a family holiday -- I mean the children were with their nanny/at nursery as usual and I just took the weekdays for myself, something I'd never done before and haven't I don't think done again. Completely to my surprise I wrote lots of poems. I hadn't written any poetry as an adult at all, though of course I've always read a great deal of poetry. It was so surprising that I actually found it a bit frightening. At the end of the week I put the notebook away and forgot about it or at least avoided thinking about it for a year or two.
Generally I very much enjoy writing -- I mean any sort of writing, in my case these days mostly either academic writing or critical writing for a more general audience. I always have loved it and very often experience a kind of low-level flow state when writing. But this is for me a very accessible and reliable experience when it comes to writing various types of prose. For me, writing poetry is an extreme and significantly rarer sort of version of this experience. I think it must be something not that far from a kind of trance state because very often afterwards I know that I have drafted a poem but I cannot consciously remember it at all. I am often very surprised when I go back to it. (This is distinct from the revision stage because I can always recite poems that I have finished.) I also do a lot of poetry translation and I find that very satisfying because in general as an experience it lies somewhere between the "ordinary" flow state of a satisfying prose writing session and the very intense (but much rarer) version associated with writing my own poetry. It has something of the latter quality but is much easier to access.
But of course I've written a great deal of prose since I was very young -- I started keeping a diary when I was 6 -- and I have only spent a tiny tiny fraction of that amount of time writing or attempting to write poetry. So perhaps if the ratios were different the experience might be rather different as well.
I had a surprising experience of poetry during the pandemic, when I signed up for one of Nadia Colburn's free weeks of meditation + writing. I did *not* expect poems to come out, but they did, and they sounded -- I don't know how to put this, but the voice sounded firmer, more confident, than my usual writing voice. It was the most dizzying and wonderful thing. I had not written any poetry since my early 20s, and that was very mannered and artificial. This was something different.
This is a really pertinent and immediate question for me, because I've spent more or less my entire life pursuing this and something finally clicked and started working in the last 6 months. Long story short, I'd been trying to write a novel since about 2020, many halting starts, obsessive re-editing. Then coincidentally within a few days of each other last autumn I (a) bought an A6 notebook and (b) had an extremely shocking 'life & death' encounter, and right afterwards I decided to hand-write 3 pages in the notebook every single day, forward only, no going back and editing (which you can't really do when writing by hand anyway), didn't matter how good or bad, only re-reading enough to pick up where I left off the day before. I finished the novel a few weeks ago and shifted to writing a short story every day instead, again just 3 pages in an A6 notebook, doesnt matter how good or bad. This is when the real creative unblocking started because there was no feeling of needing to be faithful to a project. I had the habit no constraint. I think the fact a page in an A6 notebook is so small made it much less of an intimidating task. An A6 page is nothing, so only filling 3 is nothing. And the notion that the content of what I actually write doesn't matter as much as just writing something, which I think was an effective way of tricking myself, since the mind keeps working and the creative instinct and taste and everything else keep churning away unconsciously even when you tell yourself you're just writing any old shit. The best days have been when I let a first sentence pop into my head and just go with it and follow wherever each new sentence seems to lead
When I'm writing, I often think the beginning feels like rolling the stone uphill. At some point, after hours and hours (or weeks or years), I notice that I'm reaching level ground. Then the stone begins to roll downhill. I figure out how every sentence and paragraph fits together. I find the exact right words. I can see the words that don't pull their weight, and I cut them without remorse. This part is what feels most like "the direct line." It's a shame it's over so quickly!
There have probably been times when I've begun by rolling the stone downhill: copious freewriting, let's say. But for the outcome of that to be *good*, I still need to roll the stone uphill. Half will need to be deleted. What seems like something in the world might actually not be ready for the world until it's been worked further.
My point is, I don't think the direct line exists without the fits and starts. I think you have to roll the stone uphill sooner or later. The challenge is to see that as enjoyable. (And I mean it: It's a challenge! It's hard to see it as enjoyable! I often don't! But I go back and keep pushing anyway.)
I have experienced that kind of easeful flow with writing. It does exist! For me, accessing it is associated with a steady state of open receptiveness to the world and the availability to stop everything to turn toward inspiration when it strikes, both of which feel like unaffordable luxuries in my current life.
Most of my blog (https://kolokoli.blogspot.com/) was written in connection with the direct line, but none of my scholarly writing was.
I think I know exactly what you mean by "steady state of open receptiveness to the world". So -- do you do anything to enter that state, or is it mainly a by-product of occasional leisure?
It's been something I've been trying to cultivate more lately, through some of the things you've talked about in this post and in earlier ones--Cameron's Daily Pages, for one. I also find that more time with fewer stimuli (for example--just washing dishes instead of simultaneously listening to music/a podcast) also creates space for receptivity.
I'll be in a new city at a new job for the fall semester, so I'm also thinking about ways to use that occasion of moving to build a daily/weekly rhythm that has more space for the direct line to find me.
I will also be in a new situation this fall semester, but with a very long commute. I've been thinking a lot about how not to let it exhaust me, but you're making me think it's also an opportunity to cultivate space and energy too.
Good morning Irina! Your essay captures a feeling that every writer eventually encounters: the tension between intention and expression. Since antiquity, the Muses have been treated with reverence, and winning their favor has never been easy. Inspiration has always seemed both a gift and a discipline. There is a well-known anecdote about T. S. Eliot. When someone asked him what he was writing, he replied, "A fairy tale and two riddles for children." His interlocutor was surprised, but Eliot explained that writing is a craft that must be exercised constantly, regardless of the subject. Every sentence, however modest, is part of the lifelong apprenticeship of becoming a writer.
Many of us have experienced the tyranny of the blank A4 page or today, the empty document on a laptop without knowing where to begin. We search for the perfect opening, the perfect thought, the elusive "direct line" between imagination and language. Yet perhaps that line is not discovered all at once. It is patiently built through the simple act of returning to the page, again and again. The flow we long for often comes only after we have accepted the discipline of showing up before inspiration arrives.
Thank you for reminding us that creativity is not merely about producing words but about cultivating the courage to trust that, eventually, the words will come :-)
Thank you so much for this. I think a lot of it is, indeed, about trust. Is it trust in oneself, or trust that is something greater than oneself, I wonder? Or do we have to believe in something greater in order to do the really bold thing and believe in ourselves?
I suppose it is a form of trust that goes beyond ourselves, trust in something that is difficult to define. We might call it creativity, but even naming it does not fully capture its mystery. Thinking about it reminds me of the two sacred doves of the Oracle of Oracle of Dodona, which interpreted the murmuring of the oak leaves as divine messages. Many times I have felt less like the author than an interpreter, trying to give voice to something that already exists beyond me. We may believe that what emerges is profound, but ultimately it is the readers who decide its meaning and value.
However Irina, you are writing beautifully. Ever since I discovered your essays, I have followed them with genuine admiration. Thank you for continuing to share such thoughtful reflections.
i have felt it in dance improvisation, especially contact improv, and i have felt it in writing grant narratives for community programming where i am catapulted into the projected positive outcomes of the program.