08-19-2011, 05:02 AM
This is such helpful information, Todd, I should probably go and look out the book 
It's so very true -- I rarely know what's going on beneath the surface of what I'm writing until it's done, and then most of the editing process is to bring that second subject out while leaving the first as a sort of light cover. These days I write and do my initial edits mostly in my head (no time to sit down, and the kids have pinched all the pens!) but when I first started writing I'd do much the same as you.
I also find it helpful to use the workshop -- I'll quite often post a poem, see what other people consider the main themes, decide if that's where I want the poem to go and then polish with those themes in mind. That's why I find sites like this (particularly this, of course) invaluable.
It's so very true -- I rarely know what's going on beneath the surface of what I'm writing until it's done, and then most of the editing process is to bring that second subject out while leaving the first as a sort of light cover. These days I write and do my initial edits mostly in my head (no time to sit down, and the kids have pinched all the pens!) but when I first started writing I'd do much the same as you. I also find it helpful to use the workshop -- I'll quite often post a poem, see what other people consider the main themes, decide if that's where I want the poem to go and then polish with those themes in mind. That's why I find sites like this (particularly this, of course) invaluable.
It could be worse