Quote:
Originally Posted by Philip Quinlan
"Writing" happens in the head. Not on paper. Not on a computer.
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What on earth does this mean?
I'm having trouble accessing the survey. But I can tell you something about my habits here. I never sit down in order to write a poem, and when an idea comes along I scribble it down at once - which is one of several reasons why I always have a pen and paper in my pocket. This is most likely to happen when I'm driving along a motorway or something like that. Sod
et al (1993) have a law about that. I used to carry around - or mean to carry around - an A5 hrdback notebook, but never used it because it was always in a bag or something, so these days I use little pocket notebooks that look a bit like passports. These notebooks contain more doodles and phone numbers and 'interesting thoughts' than poem drafts, but there you go. I normally have just a line or so in my head at first, and an idea, and then I graft away at it a couple of times in a notebook before transferring it to the computer. By this point, it normally needs tinkering wqith quite a bit, normally over the period of a few weeks. Most of my notebook/chit of paper jottings come to nothing and are pitiful. If something isn't working I tend to abandon it as a matter of course.