A few years ago a friend of mine asked me what I did to get in the mood to write what I write. I told her that it always begins with music for an inspiration. For the last several years, I have had an affinity with music called "New Age." That music has become the backdrop, or canvas from which I generally will start painting with words.
Sometimes I will enhance the mood of the room a bit, a soft candle burning, but not often. Mostly, music is enough to enhance the muses to come out of hiding and help me in the process of poem creation.
When I began writing back in 1975 or so, I would pull out a yellow pad, turn on the music (almost always it was Neil Diamond's Jonathan Livingston Seagull album because at the time that was the deepest spiritual music I found around me) and then I would quiet my mind, put pen to paper, and then just let my hands start forming what came inside of me.
It was a process that I have no real words for, because it was like sensing something within that wasn't part of the every day world coming to the forefront and leaving footprints of thought on the page before me. Afterwards, I would read the writing and be amazed at what would often come out. So much was so deep, and so beautiful (to me anyway.)
Then I would spend time with my old Corona typewriter (not even electric) and some carbon paper if I wanted to share something, and it was a painstaking process... and often times a green eraser that looked like a pencil but had a broom on the end of it for sweeping crumbs would have to come out (no backspace bars back then... no quick fix and edit... and especially no spellcheck!) It was a labor of love... something I felt inside I had to do and something that came into material form that eventually I was going to share.
I got the idea for a book way back then, and called it "A Poet's Journal" and I would stay up nights and nights working on the creative part, and then on the editing part. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write, and it was a labor of love.
Then about a year into the writing, I was stationed at Ft. Huachuca as a musician, working on my book and my mother had some of the writings bound for me in book form to bring to me as a gift, and I was horrified! The gift was given out of love, but all I could see was this unfinished product staring me in the face! I think seeing my dream already out in the world and exposed as a little child frightened me a lot!
Over the years, as the computers came on board, I remember using the college computers to edit, compose, and re-edit my ever growing "Journal" but I never quite felt that it was time to try to hit the market. Technology kept changing, and I kept re-doing my writings every few years trying to keep up with the times. I always had in mind that some day I would like to publish a book of my writings... but 'life' and 'lack of money' became really handy excuses for not getting out there.
Today, we have such wonderful technology, and the ability to create for ourselves what we want to send out to others, and it has made the process of editing so much faster and easier, and the ability to set up files and organize and print when and where I want is fantastic, but The Process of creation is not much that different, other than typing as opposed to writing has changed.
I still start with music - wordless music if possible - and I close my eyes, take a deep breath, quiet my mind, and listen for the Muses to start their song for these hands to record. Typing with my eyes closed, I see and feel and hear the words that long to come to light, and I can type now so much faster than the writing used to go.
I never plan the work. That would take all the wonder out of the piece that I read when I turn off the writing brain and come back with my reader's eyes that see in wonder, for the first time, what came from the heart while the music played.
