The Bad Writer + New Poem

Today I am combining a new poem I’ve written with a mini ramble. As some of you may know, I am a writer. Not in the way that my name is printed on millions of books, but in the small scale word document with clumsy late night ideas and poetic titles kind of way. Some of you may also know, as well as loving fictional writing, I also write poems, which are becoming incredibly infrequent on this blog. This is because of the pressure to be creative and original, which comes from an old confidence which I am now struggling to live up to. It’s the idea that my talent is slipping away. It is the idea of becoming out of control. I am mostly dissatisfied with my poetry and it is usually the flow of the poem which is the problem.  It sounds okay in my own head, but this is because I’ve paired it with my own subconscious beat which the poem itself doesn’t have.

Am I making any sense?

I don’t know. I just think when your ‘art’ is very personal, in the way that it means a lot to you, you seem to be susceptible to writer’s blocks more often. And sometimes I feel like I’ve never created anything actually good, but my novella, Noodle Panda as some of you may know it, is giving me so much more confidence in my writing and when I write that I believe I can go places with it.

Just remember that your own creativity can never be defined and just because it’s changing doesn’t mean that’s a bad thing. You will evolve as a writer and you may not like it at first, but it’s like getting used to a new house or a new macaroni cheese brand, it may be different but it doesn’t mean it’s worse. Experiment with your own mind and remember there is no such thing as a bad writer.

I’m now going to give you a little poem I’m written on this subject and it illustrates the point I’m making about the pressure to be a good writer but the poem itself is also a symbol of something which I don’t feel confident with and that’s okay.

The Bad Writer
By Alexandra Harrison

A computer fat and hot and smoking
Humming softly as coloured lines rip the screen
A cup of steaming coffee
Dusty old dictionaries and chaotic drafted scenes

Eyes glossy and white from a dull document
And simple black characters printed in Arial
Font 11
Overworked and gleaming with forgotten potential

Notebooks filled with thin ink
Casting grey lines across tea stained pages
Scribbles and circles and bad ideas
That were really quite good
If you hadn’t have been so tired
Exclamation mark, colon
And a comma in front of ‘while’

Music makes the characters dance
And you’re scared because you lose control
Paperweights and breakfast plates
And publishers to call
Notes on bad ideas
That were never bad at all

The creator
The controller
The writer of twenty four characters
That seem more human than the humans
Well some of them at least
More emotion
More talking
More enemies to defeat
That seem more evil
But they are the simpler sort
Is your Art to basic?
Is it worth reading at all?

Paperback covers and hardback too
You smile at a book fondly
It could have been you
What was this man’s ambition?
How did it happen to him?
How had he not gone mad?
From the pressure
And deadlines
The antonyms! The synonyms!
The idealisms for perfection
The motivation to be unique
To not be plain or boring
Or predictable or lame
How had he done it?

Well, maybe it was okay to become insane

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Thank you so much for reading,

Alex

ps. I was craving macaroni cheese

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