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| Helpful to know: Others also live with ambiguity, uncertainty, and confusion. |
In your writing workshops, are there key lessons that you find yourself consistently emphasizing?
Oh, yeah. I'm always hammering on the same things. Sufficient clarity and context for a reader. Understanding your intent, on a holistic level, so you can reshape (the poem) accordingly -- that is, figuring out the core (of the poem), making conscious to yourself the ideas and themes as far as possible. Keeping the writing fluid and trying out several strategies for revision, not just one.
Is there any other advice you'd offer on the creative process?
What I've learned is simple: if you nurture it, it will expand, and it will nurture you in return. I have also learned that it is a kind of salvation. Sometimes it's more than enough and sometimes it's not enough -- by that I mean one's own creativity. If you can truly tap in to the creative process, you know it's there all the time, and then you probably don't need saving.
