Why Discomfort in Drafting might Help your Poems
This article is for: All of us!
When I’m teaching poetry in schools, one of the things I say a lot is “Poetry should be fun.”
And I really believe this. For all of us, at any age, putting words together can and should be as much fun as we had in preschool, making mud pies or digging in the sandbox.
But at the same time, fun is not the whole story, because:
Sometimes we get the most from ourselves when we’re not 100% at ease.
This might seem to contradict the idea of writing as pleasure—but I think the two can go together. So the subject of this article is:
The creative value of causing yourself (moderate) discomfort.
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How can discomfort help you write better?
First, I want to stress that I am not talking about making yourself miserable or putting yourself in pain!
These things will put you off poetry for life, rather than helping you! And often we need to reduce that kind of stress in order to write.
Instead, I am talking about a moderate feeling of unease, occasionally, and within a wider context of still basically reveling in the joy of words.
So with that important caveat, let’s get started by remembering that:
The root of creativity is challenge.
Creativity is not exactly lazy, but it does like an easy life.
If there’s no particular reason why you need to create something, your creativity is mostly happy to put its feet up and watch the world go by.
After all, making things takes effort! And our evolutionary training has taught our brains and bodies to save effort whenever possible. (This is why our bodies decay faster if we don’t use them, and why ageing slows if we exercise.)
Handily however, evolution has also taught us that, when effort is necessary—say, when you’re facing a hungry tiger—it really pays to do the work!
This means that when your creative unconscious is faced with a challenge—a situation that requires innovation and fresh thinking—it loves to leap into action. (See this article for more on that topic.)
Sometimes this challenge is something wholly pleasant, like really wanting to convey something you experienced, or learning a new tool or form and being desperate to try it out—or even being given a fabulous prompt in Poetry Parlor!
But often, the stimulus we’re talking about is actually a bit unpleasant.
For example:
Having to write a poem at a particular time to meet a deadline, whether you want to or not!
Working with a demanding form (like a villanelle, sonnet, sestina, or pantoum).
Or anything else that pushes your creativity by making you feel slightly off-balance or irritated.
You’ve probably had experiences like this—for example, in a workshop. And my guess is that these moments have led to some of your best work.
In fact, I believe that:
Causing yourself some unease or strain may be the best way, because it compels your creative mind to work harder.
Tough times can make great results
If you’re not convinced about this, try thinking of times in your life when you achieved the most—in anything, not just writing.
I’ll bet you a lot that these were times when you were under strain or pressure!
For myself, I think of:
Examination times at school and in college
When we had a new baby
Emigrating from the UK to the US
Moving house from Maine to New Hampshire.
None of these were easy periods, and most had aspects that were downright unpleasant! But boy, did I (and my wife—actually, mainly my wife) get a lot of good work done then.
I wouldn’t want to go through times like that perpetually, and neither would you, I’m sure. But it’s easy to see that, when demanding circumstances push you, you can achieve a great deal more than you thought.
Good discomfort for poetry
OK, I hope I’ve persuaded you that some level of unease and strain might be helpful in life, occasionally. But it’s basically the same in poetry.
The right kind of discomfort as you write can make you do more, learn more, and go further.
In terms of my dictum that “Poetry should be fun,” you might think of discomfort as being like the level of stress and worry that you get when you’re playing a difficult game—but a game that you nonetheless enjoy.
Or perhaps even a game that you enjoy because it’s difficult! After all, if a game had no challenge, what would be the point of playing it?
I guess this leads naturally onto the question:
What makes discomfort productive, rather than just painful?
Well, I might say that you want enough of it to test you, but not enough to put you off.
But to be honest, sometimes I’ve done very good work in circumstances where I really did not feel at ease, and I did not want to be writing at all. So actually, I don’t think there’s any hard-and-fast rule.
Instead, I think you need to feel your way through this and work it out for yourself.
And remember too that at different times, different approaches may work or stop working for you! One day you might respond brilliantly to a particular challenge, and another day the same challenge might kill your creativity stone dead.
So I think you have to develop an intuition about it, and listen to how you’re responding.
For that reason, I want to end this article with a list of some ways that you might make yourself somewhat uncomfortable as you write.
Some of these you will immediately realize you like the sound of, or in fact already do. Others you’ll read and think, “Never!” So already you’re starting to develop a feel for what kinds of creative discomfort might work for you.
However, I do think it’s also worth trying out the ones you shy away from, at least once or twice, because they may turn out to be the exercises that you “love to hate”—the ones you dislike doing, but that yield great results!
Anyway, here’s the list.
1. Try a difficult form
Form is always a challenge, and that’s a big part of its appeal.
This is why Robert Frost called writing free verse “playing tennis with the net down”: it was the difficulty of making his meanings fit inside rhyme and meter that got him interested. Tennis without a net would be too easy; poetry without a form gave him no productive difficulty.
So, a great way to give yourself a torrid but fruitful time is to tackle a form that you find hard. It doesn’t have to be stinkingly difficult, though sometimes those do produce great results!
2. Add time pressure
Creativity both loves and loathes being rushed.
Sometimes we just hate having to cram ideas down in short order—and yet when we do, often we do amazing things.
So a really simple but effective way to make yourself usefully uncomfortable while writing is to set a shorter deadline than you want.
I often do this when I’m drafting in the morning. I like to take 2 hours to get to first-draft stage, so sometimes I make myself do it in an hour instead. I hate this, but it doesn’t half move my poems along.
Same goes for revision. When I begin a revision process, I tend to want to luxuriate into it and spend a whole week or more on redrafting a single poem. But I’ve learned that doing this can also lead to getting bogged down and frustrated. So sometimes I require myself to complete a redraft in just one day, or at most two. I will feel on edge as I do this, but it works!
3. Take a workshop
Workshops and classes that require you to write in a short space of time are another form of torture—sorry, I mean, time pressure!
Not only do you have to write in crazily short time spans, you often also have to follow a prompt as well—two things to make you uncomfortable!
So it’s no wonder then that many people find workshops superbly productive. I am always amazed by how much stunning work people produce in my Spark workshop every month, for example.
4. Write when you don’t want to
A lot of us have a particular time of day that we like to write, and we can grow overly attached to this.
My time is morning, as it is for many people, but we’re all unique—if your time is 11pm, or 3am, then that’s fine!
But sometimes, try making yourself write at a different time—one when you feel ill at ease.
This might be because you feel physically less alert then, or it might be because of outside circumstances—like having children home from school, singing and screaming!
Either way, writing then might give you a jolt that takes you someplace new.
5. Write where you don’t want to
Same point as above really, but this time thinking about where we write.
I know some poets feel they have to write in a particular location, or type of location—study, coffee shop, sofa, deck....
If you’re like that, try busting out and going elsewhere occasionally. You never know what it might do.
6. Try a radical new style or approach
Trying new things can be a lot of fun, but we all tend to be nervous and tense when we try out something that is outside of our current skills.
So this is another way to get productive discomfort.
Find a poet who uses an approach that you would never think of using and/or that intimidates you, like:
Broken grammar
Weird juxtapositions of ideas
Experimental punctuation
Constantly shifting tone or voice
and have a go at imitating what they do.
You probably won’t like it, but you may produce some very good work. I’ve seen so many students do this!
7. Set weird constraints
Just as attempting a difficult form makes you feel uncomfortable in a good way, setting yourself odd things to include or achieve in a poem draft might give you some creative annoyance.
For example:
What if your draft has to include exactly 5 nouns beginning with the letter “h”?
Or, the number of words in each line has to be a prime number, and so does the total number of words in the poem?
Or every stanza has to contain a reference to a different kind of lizard?
Ugh! I feel uncomfortable already, especially with the lizards. I should start to write!
8. Do something else at the same time as drafting
When you’re writing, you typically want to be totally focused.
But what if you deliberately did something to distract yourself? Like counting down from 100 to 1, out loud, while you write?
If you try this, you have my sympathy. I was taught this one by Peter Blegvad, a professor at Warwick University, and it drove me nuts!
However, it did also help me write down stuff I never would have otherwise.
In my experience, exercises like this are best for trying to get to wild ideas, bypassing your conscious mind.
But I can also see a milder version having value for later drafting. If for example you make yourself sing a familiar song while writing, maybe you’d get some weirder things getting past your conscious filters.
9. Write with tools you don’t want to use
Finally, we most of us have our preferred writing tools—favorite pens, notebooks, computers, etc. But for once, try ditching these, and going off-piste.
If you never type a poem, try typing a poem. If you never handwrite, try hand writing. Write on your iPhone. Write on the backs of envelopes, or on Post-its!
You never know what the shift from familiar to uncomfortable might do.
Some of these will work, some of the time
Lastly, a reminder that none of these ideas will work always, or for every person! So be creative in how you use them.
But I hope that you do find your own ways to get some productive discomfort into your poetry life.
Next Steps
Here’s an exercise that uses two of the techniques above to push a poem forward.
Find a poem that’s not taking off.
You thought you had an idea, but it’s not coming together—or maybe you’ve got everything down, but the poem seems listless and dull.Take the poem, and your writing materials, somewhere you would not normally write.
—If you never write outdoors, try going into the yard or a park.
—If you always write alone, try writing in the middle of your family kitchen or a coffee shop.
You are not allowed to leave this place until you have a new draft of the poem!
This prepares the ground for some good Creative Discomfort!In addition, choose one (or more) of these annoying “rules” for your new draft:
—Every line has to be either 7 or 9 syllables long.
—In every stanza, you have to include something from the place you’re in.
—The final letter of at least some of the lines must spell (in order) the name of someone you know.Using your choice of these rules, create a new draft of the poem!
