“BUT THEY MIGHT THINK I’M A DICK!” Seven words which stand between me and writing success

Writing is easy. Well, OK, it’s not. But for most writers, writing is easier than the other side of being an author – selling books.

This year, amazingly, wonderfully, I have a book coming out. It’s my first. During a workshop last night, I was forced to address the question: what is it that makes me so nervous about publicising it?

Much overnight soul-searching later, the answer is clear. BECAUSE PEOPLE MIGHT THINK I’M A DICK.

Let me give you some examples.

I need to approach journals, blogs, podcasts, in-person events and festivals to try to get myself, and my work, out there. But might think I’m too forward!

I need to organise a launch event, or maybe two, but what if, like, five people come and two of them are my Mum?

I need to get myself out to some poetry nights and open mics, and this will probably involve initially turning up on my own, since not many of my friends are into poetry. But what if they all think I’m Billy No-Mates? What if I fluff it on stage?

I should probably get the sales ball rolling by getting some friends to buy and review the book. But a lot of the book reveals the inner me! There is anxiety and nerdiness and weird humour and sex and oddness! What if they’re all talking about me behind my back?

In summary: BUT THEY MIGHT THINK I’M A DICK!

My challenge to myself: to spot those words in my head. To put them away. To run every doubt through the BUT THEY MIGHT THINK I’M A DICK filter, call it out and have none of it. I don’t think any other author putting their work out there is a dick, so neither am I. And if let these seven words stand in my way… well then, I really am a dick.

 

Last night’s workshop was run by the fabulous Elizabeth M Castillo. https://www.elizabethmcastillo.com/

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I Think, Therefore I Write

Whether we think in words, images or concepts, does this affect the type of poetry we write? 

 

What’s it like for you when you think? What about when you read? Do you hear words in your head? See images? Both? Or do you experience something else?

 

I love discussing this, particularly with those who are only just realising that it’s not the same for everyone. Frankly it freaks people out. Someone who has a noisy inner monologue, for instance, is often quite shocked when they realise that another person just thinks in wordless concepts. Or that a third person practically watches a movie in their head when they read. 

 

But what about how we experience, and indeed write, poetry? Recently it struck me that perhaps the type of poetry we create may be very influenced by our thinking style. 

 

For example, I’m a very word-based thinker and reader.  I don’t really picture anything at all when I think – it’s all a big chitchat in my head, and all in my own voice. Reading is almost the same, although there is sometimes a little mental “picturing”.  So a poem for me is a platter of sounds, throwing up ideas, connections and the odd fleeting, fuzzy image. 

 

And what type of poetry do I write? Well, I love soundplay and very passionate about sounds that meld and clash. They are a very important part of the poem for me. Not all my poems rhyme, but rhyme is a great love of mine. I enjoy half-rhymes and not-even-that-close rhymes, I love alliteration and I cannot get enough assonance and dissonance. Likewise, I’m slightly obsessed with rhythm, and even if a poem doesn’t have a classic rhythmical structure, I usually need the rhythm to have some kind of shape in order for me to find writing the poem satisfying.

 

Which is all a long winded way of musing: do I write like that because for me the experience of a poem, the way I process the ideas, is almost nothing but words? That, for me, hearing an inner rhyme is as satisfying as looking at a sunset? That I cannot disconnect the meaning of a poem from the sounds that frame it? And, a big question – if I didn’t think like that, would I find wordplay to be just an irritating? A noisy and unnecessary distraction? 

 

Or maybe not. Maybe this is just all nonsense. But if it is, it’s nonsense that sounds awfully good to me. 

 

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