Yesterday, with much fanfare and espresso, I began work on the manuscript.
“Beginning” of course is a fairly relativistic concept, since much of the work I’ve done over the past several months properly constitutes a bevy of non-false starts, but yesterday I actually opened up the document, replaced the tentative title I had assigned the assemblage months ago, and began sorting and sifting, rearranging and revising. As I move along I’d like to chronicle my progress, both for the sake of conceptual clarity and in the hopes that it will be of use to greenish writers like myself who find themselves on the cusp of creating their first full-length collection of poems. I will not pretend that this is a “how to,” but I’ll include the phrase in close proximity to “first full-length collection of poems” so that keyword searchers will be able to find my blog. I heart search algorithms.
As most readers already know, this blog represents my lightest writing, both in terms of tenor and density. In contrast, the act of assembling a collection of verse is perhaps the chewiest, most deadly serious business I have ever undertaken (and I have done some deadly business in my day). I spent about three hours yesterday utterly engrossed in two acts: initial winnowing and provisional revision. Had not the Plumber from Porlock (technically the maintenance guy, who came by to check my garbage disposal) come by, I might still be at it.
Lest I ramble, let me boil down some findings into convenient list form:
1. Murder your darlings. That’s advice you’ll find phrased in other ways in better places, but it’s perfectly suited to the determination of what fits and what doesn’t when the time to gather your rosebuds comes around. While I have a strong will to protect and preserve, deciding what poems to include demands a certain ruthlessness as a plucker and pruner. Some cuts will be easy to make–I have several poems I love irresponsibly, but the subjects they treat have nothing to do with the radiant center around which I am plotting this manuscript’s pattern–and some will be tough. The good news, however? There’s no such thing as a tough cut, really, just a cut you won’t want to make. The trick is persuading yourself to make it.
2. Obey your master. I suspect that I found the cuts easy (if painful) to make because I understand what I’m writing about. “Aboutness” is another elusive notion to work with, but I conceive of it as a master motif, an organizing premise that can turn a clutch of stars into a constellation. I certainly appreciate the countervailing impulse–to conceive of the collection as an excuse to showcase your finest work, regardless of its nature–but I think its a little early to begin thinking of my verse in superlative terms. Accordingly, I have conceded to a concept that has imbued the manuscript with a certain shapeliness. Better yet, that same idea has helped me to write, to recognize gaps that will need to be filled.
3. Revise with new eyes. Another concession that the act of collection will demand is a mandatory trip to an uncomfortable class reunion: you’ll have to go and mingle among works you left behind three, five, or ten years ago and haven’t heard from since. The good news, at least, is that these strangers are subject to change, although you may not want to change them. When I look back on some of my oldest poems, part of me wants to preserve them just as they are, as artifacts of my thought and creative development. I would recommend, however, that you (and I) revise them with all your best, freshest sensibilities in play. I made some tentative changes yesterday, for example, and they were all of a piece: I found myself determinedly changing loose but useful descriptors for more exacting words and phrases. Because I write fiction, I sometimes write with function in mind: it’s often wiser to give a reader a suggestive detail than a more perfect, pointed word that hems in the imagination. Right now, however, I’m embracing a poetic imperative that insists on les mots justes, even if the justenessitude involves nothing more than evoking ideas and images more vividly. I would be a fool to deny my older verse the perspicacity I currently enjoy, and I would like my readers to perceive a subtle structural coherence at the linguistic level, one that speaks to my sense of aesthetics circa May 27, 2009.
4. Subsume your muses. My final word of advice for getting started is to accept that those fresh sensibilities will be infused with new influences. If you’re an attentive, responsive reader, you will adopt and adapt tics, tricks, and techniques from the writers you’ve lately encountered, consciously or unconsciously. I don’t think you can avoid it; I don’t think you should try. I reckon the best you can do is pick up the work of a writer you admire when you’re winding back through your own work, one whose clarity, acuity, or complexity complements the current tenor of the text.
That’s all I’ve got for now, aside from mentioning that the best index of a manuscript’s readiness may well be the resentment you will feel when you’re working on anything but the verse.
