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

Screaming alongside us

Eli, Eli

My God, my God,

why do I forsake you

while I hang on the cross

of my screw-you, my hell-no,

my let's-just-get-this-over-with,

my it-couldn’t-get-worse-than-this,

my lies, my leanings and inclinations

toward the better-for-me-worse-for-you?

You’re the only one who gets it.

You scream alongside me—

but I can’t hear you.

--

"Isn't it wonderful? It makes all the difference to know there's someone else screaming alongside you -- and that's the point of the incarnation. I can see that so clearly now. God came into the world and screamed alongside us." -- Drops Like Stars, p. 68

Cross-train

So I write a lot -- go figure, I'm a writing major. But, I don't spend a lot of time writing for fun. As outlined in my last Scriptwriting blog post, I do a lot of everything for my classes, but I don't have a lot of time or energy to write for fun.

Last Sunday I got to. I got most of my homework done for Monday and Tuesday, so I spent the day writing poetry. Some of it turned out interesting.

I'm not entirely finished with the following poem. I think its metaphor was lost a little. But I'll let you read it. (You're welcome.) Ha.

--

Like the birds

You pointed up at a bird perched and

showed me how

its feathery neck moves in          jerks—

sharp, decisive

on a pivot

because its eyes are stationary

without periphery.

You pointed back at us and

said the same thing

about human eyes:

how they move like a bird’s neck, in          jerks—

always trying to focus.

I find this particularly entertaining

that as you tell me this,

I do whatever I can to avoid          you—

I look every which way in jerks,

sharply, decisively

to avoid your glance.

I dream of flying away.

--

As I began writing this post, I wanted to pose a goal for myself: write a poem a day. As I thought about it, I decided to shorten that to a poem a week. Then, I gave up on the goal completely. Do I have time?

I should make time.

Like anything else, writing gets better with practice. And like anything, variety is key. When you exercise your body, you don't spend all your energy on one set of muscles. Even those training for marathons cross-train.

I need to cross-train my writing. That may mean putting aside my homework to slave over a poem -- but that's okay. (I'd probably rather being doing that anyway.)


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

Sh*tty First Drafts

I’m learning the fruit of my creative effort often ripens instantly. I’ll sit down and get thousands of words, but then a week later, working with the same discipline, will have nothing. But my job is not to make the words come. Who am I to make the words come? My job is no different than a farmer. I till the land. I fertilize the soil. I plant the seeds. Unlike the farmer, though, I am surprised when the green shoots sprout in the spring. I think perhaps it is magic, and it will never happen for me again. But the farmer knows if he tills the land, and is blessed enough to get rain, the harvest will come. Don Miller via DonMillerIs.com

--

Author Anne Lamott encourages what she calls "shitty first drafts." Sometimes you just have to write. You don't feel it. You don't think you're producing anything worthwhile. But it doesn't matter all that much. You just need to write.

I'm there right now. As a writing and journalism double major, I spend most of my life writing. I write commercial scripts. I write essays. I write memoirs. I write nonfiction, fiction, creative nonfiction. I write news articles. I write emails.

Sometimes I can't keep myself going. My writing seems so very forced. For the most part, that's okay. I've learned that for newswriting, there's a formula that I can follow. My stories on online registration or a student's creative writing prize may not be interesting, but they're written correctly. Sometimes my scriptwriting rough drafts truly are shitty.

I like Don Miller's metaphor. Writing is like farming. It's habitual, first of all. You don't get plants without the process of tilling, planting, watering. Sometimes you don't get anything. Sometimes you get lush vegetation.

So right now, when I could care less about writing, I will write. I will finish this blog post. I will finish the essay I've hardly started. I'll keep thinking about the memoir piece I'm starting.



Lauren

--
Scriptwriting Archive:
Broken-down Poetry, and what it means
The strenuous marriage of writing
Poetry as Therapy, pt. II
Imagination