Because I only started writing for my own emotional amusement and release I just wanted to write good poetry it is only partly since others have read some of my poems that they encouraged me to try to get published.

So my original goal was to write words that would make me feel good about the words i wrote and the emotions i was trying to express

As I write more and discover more about techniques and style then I feel the need to experiment thus my poem Good Bye.

Whilst I find certain things frustrating in the end the creativity and emotions take over and I have to write I cant hold the words inside me and as I write I want to write good poetry

does that make sense

take care

Honestly and as much as I love the work of other authors there is only one person I would like to write like, me!

Hi Fevvers, hi Geoff,

I agree with you Geoff. And really that's what I was saying at the start of my last submission. But then, as Bangla is my mother tongue, I thought I'd extend the topic to Bengali poets. The reality is, having grown up in this country, my Bangla is no way near as strong as my English. Which is kinda sad, as it's a beautiful language. So, unlike with English, I do wish I could write Bangla poetry like some of the great poets I mentioned.

I only ever wrote one poem in Bangla and that was in 1983/1984. I don't have it anymore. I sent it in a letter to my cousin. she and her husband said it was OK for someone who lived abroad. That was the only time.

It wasn't that I felt snubbed and so lost confidence. It just hasn't happened.

May be I'll try again? But, my vocabulary is limited. And, I know that that will frustrate me as I like flying free when writing poetry.

I would KILL (well...) to write Like Tom Robbins, Kerouac, Milan Kundera or hmmmmm...Erhm, Salinger.

My problem is that I have dyslexia/ADHD, which as you can imagine is a huge problem especially when it comes to writing. I have the most amazing thoughts and ideas and inside my head is probably the most beautiful place I know. What I would truly love is to be able to put these thoughts down on paper.

It's all very bizarre. A classic trait of ADHD is you think better when you're physically on the move but as you can imagine it's not possible to write stuff down. I'm toying with the idea of getting a dictaphone but I really hate the sound of my own voice!

Problems with my short term memory also mean I construct some amazing sentences but if I don't get them down immediatley they are lost forever.

Hi geoff

use a ditaphone, I've done it before you soon get used to your own voice and it's incredibly helpful especially if you have a busy head (like me)

Geoff,

i have many ideas when driving and walking around which I then forget. Si I bought a Panasonic digital dictaphone, the repro isnt brilliant but it will take 120 minutes of recording in 4 folders and it is extrely small and light cost about £40.00 well worth it
also you want to look at the software that transfers speech into typing for your PC cant recall the technical name it may not be perfect but should ease your burden

take care

Jib, I've got friends here who get ribbed because they can't speak proper Sylheti, never mind Bengali, and it's only just in the last couple of years that someone, (two people, actually), have put Sylheti into a written form. I felt all soft about what you said.

On the business of writing like somebody else, ... if I've got this right,... it's like saying do you want to BE someone else, isn't it?
It's a bad mistake to think that just because you admire someone, you should aspire to be like them. A bad mistake, one that will curb and rot your own creativity more quickly than mould will form on white sliced bread on a stormy day.

I think Becca's got a great point here.

I admire an eclectic bunch of writers - Will Self, Tove Jansson and Ronnie Barker with a dash of Victoria Wood and Oscar Wilde would be a great style to achieve but my writing will always be my style. (Just as well - imagine a book about a monkey who thinks he's a man, working as a dinner lady in an Edwardian stately home in Moomin Valley! And I didn't even manage to get Ronnie Barker into that mixing pot!)

Someone at WriteWords recently compared my writing to "Alan Bennet, Victoria Walters {Victoria Wood and Julie Walters?} and Hyacinth Bucket on acid" - interesting compliment but I was never a fan of Alan Bennett's work I'd seen on TV and this comment inspired me to read one of his plays. I quite liked it - interesting enough but I don't want to write like him.

I think it's good to have people we admire but we should never try to write like them - in their style. The whole point of writing is to find your own voice.

Lisa

P.S. Great topic for discussion

I was really talking about where we pitch our ambitions as writers. I will be more explicit in future. Keats very early on in his writing knew he would be among the poetic greats, one of his major influences was Wordsworth. This doesn't mean he wrote exactly like Worsdworth, but he aspired to his genius. Why are our ambitions as writers pitched so low? This is the debate I was really, I suppose, trying to tease out of the discussion. I do think I said in the orginal posting that it wasn't about mimicking style or language but about emotional or intellectual depth. Yes writing poetry is about finding your own voice, but it's also about finding the voice of the poem and it's also about being aware of the field (world?) in which you write - Eliot wasn't pissing about when he wrote "Tradition and the Individual Talent".

I disagree, I've learnt more about my own writing from reading other people's poems, especially published, than I could have writing on my own. When you're reading you're writing.

I don't deny that for one minute - I was commenting on Becca's post in the forum.

I do agree with you, Jacqueline, that reading other people's work, improves ones' own to no end - and it's not about copying or duplicating a style, it's about broadening our experiences of what can be done within the field of literature (be it novels, poetry, whatever).

What I also like about Write Words is reading other people's work-in-progress. That, I find a facinating insight into the creative processes we all go through.

Lisa

Lisa

Sorry if I sounded blunt. I get very disheartened when I hear writers that could be damn, damn good selling themselves short by not engaging (for whatever reasons) with other writers' works. I've just been reading Galway Kinnell's "The Bear" because a friend suggested it might help me move on a poem I'm writing. This is an amazing poem and I am so indebted to it and my friend for suggesting it, because it's helped me see a way forward - this doesn't mean I'm going to re-write The Bear, but that the poem I'm working on has more tangential possibilities than I first allowed myself. By reading, I'm empowering myself and that comes out in the subsequent drafts.

Cheers

I recently read "Life Of Pi" by Yann MArtel because it was recommended to me. Not as an aid to a specific piece I was working on but because of its style - simple almost child-like quality, which if anything, is something I need to learn from as I tend to overcomplicate things in my writing.

Pi was a fantastic book and had an unexpected sting in the tail - it made me experience something I'd not appreciated in a book before: It made me conscious of my choice to choose which reality to accept (two were given in the book).

But this is an unconscious choice we make all the time, whether we read a poem or a novel. Becoming aware of that and being forced to make the choice was an unusual and unnerving experience. Also, I surprised myself by choosing to accept the fanciful, least likely "reality" over the more likely one. Clever tactic of the author. Perhaps everyone who reads Pi chooses the fanciful reality?

Interesting that "willing suspension of disbelief" that both readers and writers have to experience, don't you think?

Lisa