I could not agree more.

This is C.J. Casey explaining to a poet-friend why she should read poetry. I am excerpting it because the larger point about the relationship between reading and writing will be a recurring theme here. Just scroll down and read my post from yesterday, or this comment thread at Scholars and Rogues, if you want to know how I feel about it. I’ve made liberal use of ellipses, because it’s a really long excerpt and I don’t want to just copy half a post. I have done my best to represent C.J. honestly here.

I haven’t yet said why you should read poetry. For this, I’m going to dip into the pool of metaphors, the pool of subconscious speech and imagery, the pool where we as writers go to pick out the phrases and images that we want to use for our writing. The actual pool itself is vast and inaccessible  . . . Most writers and artists have little pools of their own . . . and when we are casting about for an idea to write, or we want to add to something we want to write, we reach into the pool and pull out a handful of inspiration. This is the feeling you get when your paper suddenly fills itself of its own accord, when you feel like your pen is going to ignite because you’re writing so fast . . .

When we first discover that we, as creators, have access to this pool, it’s easy to get lost in the joy of creation. It feel so wonderful, better than any other experiences we’ve had in our young adult lives, to pull these ideas seemingly out of nowhere and pour them on paper. But unfortunately, the water in these pools is cloudy and opaque, We can’t see the bottom until one day we reach in and scrape our knuckles on the rock . . .

. . . The trick . . . is  to walk up the mountain, or around the mountain, where the collected subconscious of Mankind runs down in rivulets, cascades, and sometimes waterfalls. Do this, carrying your cap or a bowl, and dip it in. Then go back to your own pool and empty it . . . Let it mingle with your own ideas, your own subconscious. Let it form new worlds and new ideas. Then pull it out to work with it. This is essential… going to the works of others to recharge your own work. If you don’t, one day you will sit down to write and it will be as useful as trying to look out your elbow.

You can read the entire post at Stark Writing Mad. The post C.J. is responding to is at The 365 Poetry Project, which I follow with great interest.

Write Something.

That is my advice for today.

I thought about posting something about scene structure, or some thoughts from a successful author, but no. Drink coffee until you feel that vein in your temple start to throb (you know the one I am talking about), and unplug yourself from all your devices except the word processor.

Sit down in a corner somewhere and get writing. That is the only way to get where you’re trying to go.

If you just can’t do that, find a couple of well-written examples of what you are striving for and read them.

Sunday Photo Blogging

The weather has been too bad, and I have been too busy with this Thunderclap to to find a flower photo for today. I think this is just as good, though.  It’s a composite image of Pandora’s Cluster constructed with data from  the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and several different telescopes.

Pandora’s Cluster is officially designated Abell 2744. It’s 3.5 billion light years from Earth, and 400 trillion times the mass of the sun. It is formed by a group of four galaxy clusters that have been colliding for 350 million years. The red in the image is hot gas. The blue shows concentrations of the dark matter which makes up 75% of this massive structure.

The photo link goes to the BBC story where I originally discovered the image.