Inspirations for Your Friday

It's been the kind of week where I've been eagerly looking for inspirations of all sorts.  Happily, there's plenty out there, even if I don't have as much time this week to act on the inspirations.

I loved this post on the writing habits of Pico Iyer.  I need to be thinking about how to restructure the small amounts of time I have to write and revise, those times where I can be sure I'll have that time, like very early in the morning before anyone else is up and before most stores open.

Here's an idea that spoke to me:  "Pico Iyer spends five hours at his writing desk every day. He allows himself to go online only after he’s completed this time at his desk. He is especially leery of googling for detail research as he writes because it’s easy to become caught up in one search leading to another and then to checking email. Instead, he uses “TK” as a placeholder, as a note to check a specific fact that he’s written through. When he does his daily writing, Iyer wants to keep going as far as he can in one sitting."

I do waste an enormous amount of time in Internet noodling.  I could get some time in with the memoir manuscript before I go online at all.  I could do this several times a week.  Yes I could.

If you need a writing prompt, be sure to check out this post on The Best American Poetry blog.  For those of us who have been writing for awhile, it won't be unfamiliar, but the examples used gave me a path to a poem about one of the kidnapped Nigerian boarding school girls.  I'm vaguely uncomfortable with it, as it envisions life in the jungle as freeing for a girl who hated being confined by boarding school, underwear, and shoes. 

But more than one wise person has advised that if our writing makes us uncomfortable, we may be onto something, so I'll keep pondering.

The rest of the blog has insight, too, into the work and process of the wonderful poet, Luisa Igloria.

How I wish I had time to do some writing right now.  But now, it's time to finish getting ready for the day.  This week-end, though.  I will get some real writing done this week-end.  Yes I will.