Goodbye, blogger.

Heeey guys. So, thanks for reading my blog. I appreciate your loyalty.

I moved my blog to Wordpress this weekend (sell out!), so you can view it there. To those of you who subscribed via blogger, learn how to subscribe via Wordpress. It'll be worth it!

This is it:
http://blog.laurendeidra.com





Thanks,
Lauren Deidra

Install me in any profession....

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Lend me a little tobacco-shop,
or install me in any profession
Save this damn'd profession of writing,
where one needs one's brains all the time.
- Ezra Pound's "The Lake Isle"

--

No kiddin', Ezra.

--

It's getting to that point in the semester when I'm looking at my to-do list and most of it involves writing. I have an explication essay for American Poetry due soon. I have a news script to write for Tuesday. I have a big research paper I haven't started, and another I'm not even going to attempt until a few days before it's due.

My brain is fried.

But, I keep chugging on. Sometimes all you gotta do is write anyway -- whether it turns into a masterpiece or just an Anne Lamott-style shitty first draft.


Here's to writing.




Lauren


Scriptwriting Archive:
Broken-down Poetry, and what it means
The strenuous marriage of writing
Poetry as Therapy, pt. II
Imagination
Sh*tty First Drafts
Cross-train
Go get a life
Wishing writing could change me

Wishing writing could change me

Sometimes I think my writing can change me. And it always can, but only to a certain extent.

I want writing to bring me peace about a situation, but it's only temporary. I think of my smoking poem from last month. I used it to implore my boyfriend to stop smoking. He still smokes, and I no longer have peace.

It's not that I wanted the poem to change him. (I mean, yeah, a little.) I wanted it to make me feel better about the situation because at least I understood why I felt the way I did.

I want writing to revive my dry faith. I want to write a poem about how I feel about God (see "Eli, Eli") and get myself out of my rut.

But, it doesn't work like that. Writing helps, but it's not a world changer.

Still, I wish it were.

--

Everything I Am

love&hate

     together

bid farewell

to sanity

adieu, adieu—

   here’s everything I am

   here’s everything I am

It’s yours or fire

--

Scriptwriting Archive:
Broken-down Poetry, and what it means
The strenuous marriage of writing
Poetry as Therapy, pt. II
Imagination
Sh*tty First Drafts
Cross-train
Go get a life

Go get a life

At a panel discussion with top literary magazine editors at the College Media Advisers NYC conference Monday, a quote by Rainer Maria Rilke came up. You've heard it before: "Write what you know." One of the editors pointed out that Rilke didn't stop there. He said, right what you know, but if you don't have anything to write about - go get a life.

Let's be honest here: I don't have much of a "life." Forgetting my Iraqi escapade, I've lived my whole life in the Midwest, I have a normal family, I go to college. I don't have a lot of interesting things to write about.

So. What do I do?

I get a life. I find adventures to write about.

But I don't think that means I have to travel abroad every summer either. I think I can find adventure here (okay, I'm in New York as I write this. Here as in Marion). I think that if I look hard enough (or broad enough) I can find adventure wherever I am.

I just need to find the excitement in the ordinary, everyday.

It's not that I have to lie and pretend something's exciting like I do on Twitter. (Whoa! #awesome sandwich I'm eating! #yummy!) I can just have a different perspective on something.

This trip I'm on, for example, has been quite the adventure. School trips are, in theory, supposed to be kind of lame. Or typical.

Well, we're staying at a church in a rougher part of Brooklyn with the kindest church members taking care of us. We're a group of students with very diverse personality traits. We have gotten lost who knows how many times. Our internet is shoddy, so we've been improvising with our homework. (I've had to dictate an email to my boyfriend over the phone so he could write and send it for me.)

It's been an adventure.
And it's something to write about.

So, in response to the Rilke quote, I'd say, yes. Find adventure. But don't assume adventure only involves foreign countries, passionate romances or danger.

Adventure could be right in front of you.



Scriptwriting Archive:
Broken-down Poetry, and what it means
The strenuous marriage of writing
Poetry as Therapy, pt. II
Imagination
Sh*tty First Drafts
Cross-train