Shazia Hafiz Ramji : Failing Success: A Writing Day

6 a.m.

Wake up. Make cream earl grey tea in a pot that can fill three cups. Eat waffles with melted chocolate and one scoop of honeycomb ice cream. Open up six files:

            -Novel journal (reflective and reflexive thoughts and questions about the novel while in the process of writing)

            -Novel freewrites (rough scenes, character interviews, monologues, back stories)
            -Novel (the thing itself) 
            -Poetry journal
            -Poetry freewrites
            -Poetry (the things in themselves)


Look for what I avoided in my novel; can be found in poetry files.

Enter crying state.

7 a.m.
Begin freewriting process with questions that arose and were avoided in previous day’s work. Feel proud that I haven’t checked my phone.

Enter relieved state. 

8 a.m. 
Calm state. Second helping of waffles. Freewriting. 

9 a.m.
Calm state. Third cup of tea. Writing prompts; character situations; more scenes. 

10 a.m.
Elated state. Call mom. Happy state. Try to avoid phone and social media. 

11 a.m.
Adventurous state. Walking the city, collecting impressions and overheard conversations. Trying to avoid phone and social media, but failing. 

2 p.m.
Taken the train to the end of the line. At the airport, watching planes. Allowing myself to have big dreams. Head back into the city and towards home, get groceries. 

4 p.m.
Listening to other writers talk about their work while cooking dinner, while on social media. 

5 p.m.
Eating dinner for longer than it should take. 

6 p.m.
Showering for far longer than it should take. 

7 p.m.
Burning incense. Drinking rooibos. Drinking yerba mate. Peeing a lot. 

8 p.m.
Anxious state. All six files open. Oneohtrix Point Never on almost-full volume to subdue feelings. Looking at all my craft books and feeling like a hack, like Nicolas Cage’s character in Adaptation. Review and overview morning’s work. Try to fit scenes into larger picture. Try to turn poems into scenes. 

9 p.m.
Crying in bed. Hugging pillows. Feeling extremely ashamed because timelines in novel and outlines reveal what you have been avoiding, but you don’t want to see it. 

10 p.m.
Email mentor with unrelated and/or pending task. Hope that you can meet. 

10:30 p.m.
Call psychiatrist. Ask for a call back to book an appointment. 

11 p.m.
Feeling a bit happier and reading two unrelated books: one poetry book, one novel. 

Midnight:
Listen to neighbour breathing and sleeping deeply. (Our windows are extremely close.) 

1 a.m.
Thinking about death and loneliness. Finally decide to confront the thing I’ve avoided in the novel the next day; through a poem first. Make a one-sentence note in a little book on bedside. 

2 a.m.
Trying to remember I am not a bad person. 

3 a.m.
Having thoughts like: How would I even be alive if I didn’t write? Why isn’t writing rewarded in Canada? Should I move to France where I wouldn’t have to pay taxes because I’m an artist? Should I get married to have a stable house situation? Should I get married so I don’t have to do my banking? When will I ever get through the Canada Council portal? 

3:50 a.m.
Realizing that the current state is bad for my writing the next day. 

4 a.m.
Guided meditation. 

4:10 a.m.
Asleep halfway thru meditation. 

10 a.m.
Guilt because I couldn’t make the 6 a.m. wake-up time for a Successful Writing Day. 
 

***

In spite of and because of the various failures, I’ve had a successful writing day.

Shazia Hafiz Ramji’s first book, Port of Being, received the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry (Invisible Publishing, 2018). She was a finalist for the National Magazine Awards and the Alberta Magazine Awards, and her poetry and fiction have appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and The Humber Literary Review, respectively. Her criticism has appeared in venues such as Canadian Literature, Quill & Quire, and the Chicago Review of Books. Shazia has appeared on CBC North by Northwest and will be a writer in residence with Open Book in spring 2019. She lives on unceded Coast Salish land (Vancouver).

G. E. Schwartz : My Routine of Writing

            I will tell you that what I often seek out in reading accounts of how other artists—composers, visual artists, novelists, essayists and especially librettists and poets—make what they make and how they make it: in short, I seek their shop talk: what kinds of pencils, pens, notebooks, and all manner of other media. And I want to know what they listen to or watch (if they do) while they work. These are the telling details: this is the most resourceful information.

            For me, every project—whether it be a libretto, play or poem—undergoes three distinct stages: the scheming or the planning; the writing of actual notes; and the editing. With every piece, no matter its pulse or length, the first thing I do is to map out its itinerary, from the simplest, worm’s-eye view to more detailed questions: what are the textures and lines that form the work’s economy. Perhaps it develops linearly or vertically. Perhaps there will be points of dense saturations—and perhaps those will be offset by sections of zoomed-in simplicity: sparse words with lots of white space, or perhaps a density which has been the result of indexing of indexing, associations of associations (this later mostly applying to the way I compose poems).

            I reach my space of writing—my kitchen table, surrounded by a bay window presenting wide vistas of fields and skies (I can see storm fronts moving in from about ten miles away), most every day at five a.m. after a good night of sleep stoked previously by some reading—mostly philosophy from Pascal to Wittgenstein, as I find it often stokes the next day’s writing. After a first cup of coffee (one of three, cheap, strong Cuban), I put on some music—mostly modern composition (David Diamond, George Crumb, etc.); I open either a 7 x 5” assignment notebook (for poetry), or a 6 x 9” Steno Book (Gregg ruled) for libretto and plays, and, using a black Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil, I begin. Mostly the poetry comes as a response to mining the previous night’s dream-stock. Working fits with enduring images and/or the crenulations of a dream, I quickly move to a tractor-beam of associations. Today, for example, somehow the image of souls, paired somehow with a sense of unknowing, which leads to the way to Meister Eckhart, which leads to Zen Buddhism, which leads to the paintings of insects, snails and flowers by the sixteenth-century Flemish painter Joris Hoefnagel to an image of pure iridescence.

            From this, the poem comes quickly. Immersing myself in these deposits of information creates an environment in which lines start to present themselves, and the shape of the work emerges.

            What is key for me about this sort of emotional, cerebral, visual and sonic architecture is the possibility connecting to others having both like and radically different experiences.

            The poem I produce at the beginning of this process becomes a central reference point. I keep it visible, attempting to memorize it, as I read it, sounding it aloud, which further helps to shape it to its completion.

            I’, often working on various projects at once: I am never at the same stage of planning/writing/editing on two or three pieces but seek out situations that enable me to be at different stages, resulting most often in a sense of complementary groups of work percolating simultaneously and productively.

            When I’m working on a libretto—usually following the day’s work on a poem—I work in the Steno Book, transferring each day’s work to my laptop, making corrections and initial re-writes. This has been my pattern for Brendan, Nosferatu, Caligari, Golem, Frankenstein, as well as current works in progress—Faust and Inferno. It’s a process that has a velocity and flow unlike my work in poetry; the call and response between characters animates the task. I’ve written these books and libretto as I continue to do with a long-term collaborator, composer David Esposito.

            Mostly I end these initial passes at work by nine or ten a.m., often returning throughout the day to continue as needs call.

G. E. Schwartz, who has studied with Irish-American poet John Montague and Joseph Brodsky, was an original member of Solomons Ramada, as well as Faking Trains. He's the author of Only Others Are: Poems (Legible Press), Odd Fish (Argotist ebooks), World (Furniture Press), and Living In Tongues (Theenk/Loose Gravel Press).

Angela Caravan : My Writing Day

My writing day isn’t so much a day as various small pockets of time I carve out for myself. I have a full-time job and I live with my partner and his son (my stepson), so it is often hard to find solid blocks of time to devote to writing. It’s not all that bad, though. In fact, I think it really works for me. If I had too much free time, I’m not sure that I’d be as committed during my writing time.

A typical day for me starts around 7:00 am when I wake up. I give myself 20-30 minutes of alone time in the morning to eat breakfast while doing some quick reading. Sometimes this just means reading my Twitter feed, but other times this means reading over poems that I have in the works and making some quick revisions. I read my poems over a lot to try and get a sense of them, trying to find if something doesn’t feel right or flow right.

Just before 8:00 am, I’ll wake my stepson up and get him eating breakfast before I depart for the bus to go to work.

I deliberately take a transit route to work that’s a little longer and has fewer transfers. Sometimes, I’ll write on the bus (on my phone) but a lot of the time I just use this space to think about what I’d like to write. A lot of my poems start from a single line or phrase that I think is interesting, and the topic of the poem will emerge from there. I don’t always like writing on the bus. It’s hard for me to re-enter poems I’ve half started (unless I’m completely revising them) so I try to avoid starting a new poem when I’ll have to transfer soon and interrupt the flow. Often, I’ll just hold onto a phrase or an idea to enter back in on later.

When I get off work, I pick up my stepson and spend much of my evening doing various things around the house and preparing dinner (my partner works most evenings). If I have a poem or an idea from earlier in the day, I’ll usually wait until my stepson is in bed before devoting time to drafting it out.

I rarely write on my computer. I write with a pencil in a notebook or on my phone. Because my day job is spent at a computer, I feel like I need a mental break from that space when writing. My favourite spot to write in my house is the corner of my L shaped sofa, maybe with a mug of tea, maybe with a glass wine. I love writing in absolute comfort, where I’m writing because I want to and not because I’ve implemented some kind of schedule or deadline on myself.

That being said, I do occasionally plan days off to write. This usually happens on a Sunday when my partner and I agree to have a “writing day.” This may mean sitting together on opposite ends of the couch, or in the little patio space outside of our basement suite, or sometimes we’ll go to a local coffee shop (or even the brewery!). It helps to have someone to write with. I’m not very productive when I’m alone.

When we spend the day writing together, my partner writes episodes for his history podcast or works on a history article. He is incredibly productive in producing ready content, while I accumulate a lot of drafts. In one month, I might write one poem that I’ll keep and pile up a bunch of others that I don’t think are working, though maybe I’ll come back to them later.

On the rare occasion that I’m home alone, I don’t often find that I’m able to write. I need people around me, and some small amount of background noise. When I’ve decided that it’s a day to write, I’ll bring a pile of books with me to wherever I’m settling in. I can’t force myself to write when I don’t feel like it, so I like to have a lot of options: books by other poets, a poetic forms book, a literary magazine, a short story I’m working on, or old poems that I’d like to revisit. I believe that reading helps you be a better writer, so even if I don’t get any words down, getting some reading in on one of these days is a step in the right direction.

For me, a successful writing day means I’ve developed a strong first draft. It’s easier to fit in edits and revision through the pockets of time on a busy day, but for me, a promising first draft is the hardest. When I feel like a poem is almost “ready” (are they ever ready?) I’ll ask my partner to read it. He’s not a poet and doesn’t always have much feedback, but it’s also an opportunity to prod him with questions I’ve been thinking of while revising (i.e. “does this make sense to you?”, “what did you think this meant when you read it?”). In exchange, I’ll offer my outsider perspective of his history writing. This non-excerpt advise makes our writing a collective experience, and it helps make me more confident as I work towards the hardest part of the writing day: sending a poem or a story out into the world.

Angela Caravan lives in Vancouver, BC, and writes poetry, fiction, and essays. She is the author of the micro-chapbook Landing (post ghost press) and was 2nd runner-up in Pulp Literature’s 2018 Magpie Poetry Contest. Her work has also appeared in Longleaf Review, Reel Honey Mag, and Screen Queens. You can find her on Twitter at @a_caravan.

A Writing Day Of A Womanchild: Kristin Garth

My writing is both not a day and everyday. There is never a whole day I can devote to writing but I write most every day in segments or what we will call sessions. I call myself often on Twitter, in interviews and books, a womanchild. It refers to the fact that though I am very much a woman chronologically, I have a teenage heart emotionally. Part of being a womanchild, knowing you have a heart with an exuberant but sometimes flighty nature, is that the woman part of me makes schedules to protect the sacred time I require for writing.

A womanchild, like any human, has “responsibilities” that have nothing to do with writing. I battle them like any writer does for my very artistic and spiritual existence. I schedule and guard my writing time with a vengence and a fury. As a person who took a 15 year hiatus from writing and completely lost myself, I don’t grant myself the privilege of breaks. I’ve used up my off days of writing for life. So I write almost every day, I attempted to take a week off recently. It lasted two days.

So every day as soon as I can get there, like an adrenaline junkie body builder whose Mecca is the gym, I make my way to a coffee shop. It’s often a Starbucks where I order a venti white chocolate mocha, pull out my Capricorn caffeinated work ethic, my MacBook, whatever annotations I have to do for the day and begin there. I have two chapbooks in the world: Pink Plastic House & Good Girl Games. I offer signed, annotated copies on my website Kristingarth.com which is just a fancy way of saying pink ink scribbles of my thoughts and secrets teenage diary style right in the book.). I usually have at least one of these to do. 

Writing Session 1: Coffee Shop 

After I annotate a bit, with earbuds securely in my ears, I switch my iPhone from shuffle to a special instrumental playlist. Here’s a secret about me: though I love to write in public, I can’t abide words in my ears when I write poetry — not even accompanying music. So if I’m writing poetry, I might be listening to Mum, Salem, Maxence Cyrin, Tchaikovsky. The music could be electronica or classical but it’s going to be lyricless. Maybe I’m a simpleton — in fact I’m pretty sure it’s the case but I am in lust with words, and they are endlessly distracting to me. I require very specific sensory input when I’m writing.

I start a sonnet at a Starbucks or a place we have here called Bagelheads when I give in and splurge on an expensive loxworks bagel. Depending on the day I am there between two to four hours. Then I am sucked away from my happy place/interior world/writing space and deposited back into the world of responsibility for some hours. I often have just a beginning to a sonnet but it but every once in a while I complete one there.

During the interim between writing session one (coffeeshop) and writing session two (we’ll get there in a second), the only writing I do when I have a minute is Twitter (@lolaandjolie). I post on Twitter some of my thoughts or what socks I’m wearing like this: 

Writing Session 2: Walk in the Woods

After the woman parts of my day are done with me, the childish, selfish part of my soul is free to play again. One of its very favorite games is words. Once again, I put on my headphones and head to the woods around where I live. I love to walk around typing lines in iambic pentameter with leaves and twigs crunching under my feet feet. I’m usually attired in a tennis skirt and Nikes or a sundress. The headphones are in and my fingers are frenetic. My mind is lost and happy while I wander for an hour, hour and a half. I often finish a morning sonnet on this jaunt. I look like this:

Writing Session 3: Late Night

I don’t always make this session of writing very long. Sometimes if my sonnet is done, I don’t have any interviews to do or annotations, I skip it entirely. More often than not though, I lie on my bed finishing a poem of beginning a new one. I feel like the tired brain is halfway between the conscious brain and the subconscious — two worlds. I think that is a goldmine place for material. Even if it’s just a couple of lines that I jot down for the new day, it’s a beginning and always takes me some place magical.
Sometimes I have edits to do late at night as well. I have three solo chapbooks forthcoming in 2019. I have a chapbook Puritan U from Rhythm & Bones Lit, March 2019. Another will be forthcoming from The Hedgehog Poetry Press, Shakespeare for Sociopaths, January 2019 as well as my full length Candy Cigarette Womanchild Noir forthcoming in April 2019. I receive proofs a lot and correspondence about publication issues I tend to lying in bed late at night, too.

I also am co-editing two anthologies. The first is a Slenderman Creepypasta anthology for Dancing Girl Press called Mansion. My co-editor is Justin Karcher, and we are often discussing scary poetry late at night. My second anthology has just closed submissions and is in production now. It’s an anthology on sexual assault entitled You Are Not Your Rape. It’s being published by my co-editor’s Press Rhythm & Bones Lit. The book is over 200 pages of literature from over 80 survivors. It was a huge undertaking. For me those late night sessions are over. For my co-editor, editor in chief of Rhythm & Bones Lit, Tianna Hansen, they’ll continue for a bit.
Clearly, a womanchild can have a very intense writing schedule. It’s never a whole day but every day several portions of my day are devoted to writing. It’s a schedule I maintain to stay prolific and accountable in my artistic life. I’m also pretty sure that is what keeps me young at heart. At the end of writing session 3, I dream. Sometimes dreams are sonnets, too.





 

Kristin Garth is a Pushcart & Best of the Net nominated sonnet stalker.  Her poetry has stalked magazines like Glass, Yes, Five:2: One, Anti-Heroin Chic, Former Cactus, Occulum, Luna Luna, & many more.  She has a chapbook Pink Plastic House (Maverick Duck Press), three forthcoming: Pensacola Girls (Bone & Ink Press, Sept 2018) and Shakespeare for Sociopaths (The Hedgehog Poetry Press Jan 2019), Puritan U (Rhythm & Bones Lit March 2019). Her full length, Candy Cigarette, is forthcoming April 2019 (The Hedgehog Poetry Press). Follow her on Twitter:  (@lolaandjolie), her weekly poetry column (https://www.rhythmnbone.com/sonnetarium) and her website (kristingarth.wordpress.com).

Justin Evans : My writing day

            I’ve worked hard to give myself time to write and improve while my life has frequently evolved and occasionally upended. I typically work in construction and facilities maintenance, often electrical, which has given me the opportunity to write the way I think will be most valuable but has usually split my life into compartments. Lately, thanks to friends and supportive organizations, I’ve been able to work a contracted position that gives me flexible hours while I pursue an MFA and occasionally find independent electrical projects. I’ve also been given a two month residency at Goodyear Arts, a program dedicated to giving local artists time and space in a supportive environment.
            I’m coming to the end of my first month here, where I spend almost all of my free time sitting at a table made of a sheet of 1” plywood on sawhorses. I’m surrounded by reused drywall covered in leftover paint from previous artists, which the residency has allowed me to write on as I work. All around me are lists, free writing exercises, outlines, and selections of what I’ve been reading scribbled in sharpie. My goal is to cover the walls but I won’t succeed. For now it’s just to show what I’ve done so far and make sure any discarded ideas are still available to be stumbled on while I pace around the room.
            I brought a few old rugs that weren’t being used and laid them over the concrete floor in one corner, and piled up books from home that I thought would be useful for the long poem I’ve had in mind: most importantly a complete copy of Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno, but also pickings of Samuel Beckett, James Dickey, Douglas Kearney, Kenneth Patchen, and Peter Cole. There’s also a compact edition of the NRSV Bible, some field guides I’ve borrowed from the library, and Joseph Campbell’s Historical Atlas of World Mythology. At the far end of my table is an electric kettle, a variety of old tea, and a bota box of wine. And hanging above me are the eyes of an angel my girlfriend, Kristy, painted for me, watching out for me but always pretending to look the other way.
            On the days I have to focus on writing, I get woken up by Kristy on her way to work, then fall back asleep for a half hour or so. I try to give myself a warm breakfast. Since the dog ate the butter last night I put some chutney on a piece of toast and have a few cups of coffee before I’m out the door. I get to Goodyear Arts around 9:30, driving through an ivy drowned gate and through the century old manufacturing facility that is Camp North End. I usually have the first couple hours to myself. These first hours are always sporadic, as I grasp around looking for the next step of a process I’m learning as I go.
            For this residency I’ve decided to focus on a long poem to be read by a group using antiphonal structures and overlapping voices. So far I have about 40 minutes worth of poetry which I’d like to double and then cut by the end of the residency, arranged into 8 sections which will be performed in 3 “Acts” throughout the evening of a gallery opening scheduled to present my work and that of my two neighbors. Most of it is textural writing and absurd rewritings of other texts. First, I’ll usually find something to listen to on my earbuds (Kamasi Washington’s new album has been helpful), and read through what’s on the walls, adding lines and edits to the sections I haven’t yet put into a word document.
            I’ll then either sit down with the printed drafts I’ve left on my table or flip through some of what I have lying around, to hopefully foster new ideas where my wheels may be spinning. Or I’ll flip through language I’d like to replicate or comment on. With the news as it’s been, I’ve been making passes at both the Declaration of Independence and Pope Urban II’s speech at the Council of Clermont. As I read I’ll try to find points of entry for free writing, phrases that can sprout like seeds into something else with beauty and clarity.
            At lunch time I’ll usually just heat something up in the microwave on site, or occasionally I’ll treat myself to some soul food down the road. Afterwards I like to go for a walk around the site. Goodyear Arts is housed on a former industrial site that made everything from Model T’s to missile casings. I’m constantly reminded of The Zone, from Stalker, where everything is concrete imbued with flora. Behind Goodyear is a giant parking lot with an excellent view of the sky and the Charlotte skyline. I find that usually on these walks I can find enough inspiration to write a short poem, pretty as it all is, just for fun and practice.
            Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a believer in waiting for inspiration. But I believe in the term as something which can be achieved with exercise and patience and occasion. The more I force myself to write (as obvious as it sounds) the more often I feel compelled to. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I find it really helpful to post short poems on social media. Linking poetry with images (often edited into abstraction) and receiving just a little positive feedback can be encouraging when I’m spending a lot of time working alone.
            Once I sit back down I try to reorient myself with the full project. I have a short list of techniques I feel capable of experimenting with and a list of the sections I’ve almost completed and plan to start. And now that I’ve started rehearsals with a group of performers I can sit down to listen to my recordings to hear what was working and what we had problems with. I’ll try to spend a good deal of time on reviewing these and making focused edits on at least one section.
            For the rest of the afternoon I’ll trade between free-writing potential pieces, extending what’s been written, and making edits to what’s been done. Now my rehearsals with my performers will usually involve exploring new techniques, so I’m wanting to bring new or reworked material each time. By the end of the day I’ve almost always become so unfocused that I’m not sure if I’ve gotten anything done. So around 6:00 I’ll try to give at least an hour to reading for school before I head home.
            So far it all seems to be working, never as efficiently as I mean.

Justin Evans is a poet and playwright from Charlotte, NC. He is former co-editor of Vanilla Sex Magazine. Past playwriting credits include A Tonguey Kiss for Samuel Davidson (Anam Cara Theatre Co.), Satan v. Laundry (ACTC), I Wont Hurt You (XOXO Theatre Collective), and The 30th Annual Bernstein Family Christmas Spectacular (The Magnetic Theatre). His poetry has been published by Five2One, Metabolism (as Valentina Tereskova), Ursus Americanus Press, and The Peal. He frequently performs with Asheville's Poetry Cabaret and is the creator and editor of the sound collage podcast Mystery Meat. He organizes and hosts the America's Pastime reading series, a bi-monthly reading of un-original poetry and fiction.