Writing Techniques and inspiration

[Magpie]

I've been watching a few youtube videos about songwriting techniques and when it comes to the lyrics I've found that a lot of songwriters have 'lists' to draw from for writing a song.

Say for instance a list of verbs, weather, fauna, places, people, nouns, adjectives and food, then pick one or two from each list and then force themselves to write a song incorporating all of the choices.

Just wondering if anyone has used this kind of technique or anything similar to come up with scenarios and details when writing poetry.

[wasellajam]

I've been watching a few youtube videos about songwriting techniques and when it comes to the lyrics I've found that a lot of songwriters have 'lists' to draw from for writing a song.

Say for instance a list of verbs, weather, fauna, places, people, nouns, adjectives and food, then pick one or two from each list and then force themselves to write a song incorporating all of the choices.

Just wondering if anyone has used this kind of technique or anything similar to come up with scenarios and details when writing poetry.

Sometimes when I'm stalled I'll start listing words at the bottom of the page for possible use in the poem. They mostly go unused but while finding and reading them some other word will come to mind and spark a line or maybe the rest of the poem. Thinking about words can't hurt. I wonder whether those words end up in the final song or are replaced along the way.

[Magpie]

I suppose I was thinking more for the initial inspiration. It's possibly more for songs or poems that tell a story and rely on good details as part of the narrative.

For me, I feel more comfortable writing about things from a British perspective so my stuff will have british places, animals, people, culture.

But i do wish I could write more about other places and cultures, hence my list has deserts and coyotes and tornadoes. It's forcing me to write about things outside my comfort. I find it difficult

[wasellajam]

I suppose I was thinking more for the initial inspiration. It's possibly more for songs or poems that tell a story and rely on good details as part of the narrative.

For me, I feel more comfortable writing about things from a British perspective so my stuff will have british places, animals, people, culture.

But i do wish I could write more about other places and cultures, hence my list has deserts and coyotes and tornadoes. It's forcing me to write about things outside my comfort. I find it difficult

Ha, I've been writing about what I can see from my couch, thinking of maybe moving a poem to two towns over. The few keepers I've written have come from an immediancy close to me. But that's me, my imagination doesn't stretch far enough to write a musical about a Geordie shipyard town, even if I can relate to it.

I think whatever shakes it up is a good idea, that's why there are so many gems in NaPM. Shake it up.

[milo]

I've been watching a few youtube videos about songwriting techniques and when it comes to the lyrics I've found that a lot of songwriters have 'lists' to draw from for writing a song.

Say for instance a list of verbs, weather, fauna, places, people, nouns, adjectives and food, then pick one or two from each list and then force themselves to write a song incorporating all of the choices.

Just wondering if anyone has used this kind of technique or anything similar to come up with scenarios and details when writing poetry.

I had a bunch of words that I thought was cool and I could never fit into a poem so I worte a poem called  Some words I Never Put into a Poem.

Most poem I write happen when I notice that one thing is kind of link another or reminds me of something else or I might have a cool phrase in my head.  It does make sense to write these down but traditionally I don't so if I don't get to writing the poem on the spot it doesn't get written (although sometimes I will let it percolate in my mind for a few days)

[rowens]

When it comes to writing about other places, I think about Kafka's novel where the Statue of Liberty is holding a sword, and the one who wrote the introduction assumes that Kafka didn't know otherwise.
And about how James Dickey, who, like Norman Mailer, came up with theories simply to formulate something out of his ongoing mind-stuff, declaimed that works about things that people didn't experience, such as war, are often or even always better than people who experienced things firsthand. He used Stephen Crane as example.

As for me, the seasons give me an atmosphere and sense of aesthetics. I can feel as though I were actually there when Dickey made that comment, at a university in a university town, before I was born.

Also, I write whatever comes into my mind, then, spend my actual literary labor analysing my poems, as though they were written by somebody else who is already legit.

Some may find that I mar my poems with personal propaganda. I don't mind that. As my project is about shattering canonical standards, not by dismissing or attacking, but by being as strictly traditional as possible, regardless of what traditions I'm stealing from and patching together. Even to the detriment of craft and logic.

I find learning and practicing any skill extremely difficult, so I offer myself to Dionysos, and perform dithyrambically.  I find it difficult to understand anything, and am blessed by the traditional notion that there is nothing to understand.

[wasellajam]

(snip)

I had a bunch of words that I thought was cool and I could never fit into a poem so I worte a poem called  Some words I Never Put into a Poem.

(snip)

ha, browsing the NaPM threads recently I saw one of yours, Poems Ella Didn't Write or something like that, cheeky. I think you may have followed up with a real one, not sure.

(snip)
I find learning and practicing any skill extremely difficult, so I offer myself to Dionysos, and perform dithyrambically.  I find it difficult to understand anything, and am blessed by the traditional notion that there is nothing to understand.

Dithyrambically, a new word and concept for me, thanks.

What's been helping me this week:
I copy an op from the practice threads to the top of my page then write a different poem to avoid writing one in the form I chose.

Today I aimed for the form again, it only got going when I decided that when it's done it will go on the practice thread, took the pressure off to write something "worthy." We'll see if I get there today but it's a start.

[milo]

(snip)

I had a bunch of words that I thought was cool and I could never fit into a poem so I worte a poem called  Some words I Never Put into a Poem.

(snip)

ha, browsing the NaPM threads recently I saw one of yours, Poems Ella Didn't Write or something like that, cheeky. I think you may have followed up with a real one, not sure.

Now I want to see that one!  Here is the poem using words I couldn't fit into a poem:

Some words I Never Put into a Poem
(but always wanted to)



Cuneiform is a way of writing
far before I’ve ever written
or you were here to read

Purlicue is that meaty section
between your thumb and fingers
where you might rest your pen
(if you even use such things)
or couch against your lip
when you get nervous

Mandelbrot is what infinity
might look like,
if it wasn’t so large.

A tarn is a small lake
reflecting the moon’s face
isolated by the mountains
more beautiful for being alone

and a crucible is a pot
so strong they use it to melt steel
(or an uncommonly awkward situation)
so I ask that you stay a while.

[wasellajam]

I went through some of the old prompts thinking of catching up on some I missed but decided to write a list poem about the ones ellajam missed instead!!



A List of Poems that Ellajam Didn't Write


I thought it best if we could set things right
(and not to say that someone's acting bad)
by listing poems that ella didn't write.

On day 16, the topic on this site
was wanting something that you never had -
I thought it best. If we could set things right

 the 17th, but ella didn't bite.
The cruelty of nature? Just a fad
on the list of poems. That ella didn't write

of going on a trip, perhaps too trite
and so the 18th of the month was sad.
I thought it best if we could set things right


but she finds "story poems" much too light - 
is it my list of prompts that makes her mad
or this list of poems that ella didnt write?

Now, with 2 days down, I think she might
the 28th - a list? - she cries Jihad!
I thought it best if we could set things right
by listing poems that ella didn't write.

---

ha, same thread