David, about the rest of the Hugo quote and your comment:
The real point of this passage in the Hugo book is a pitch to practice craft and write regularly so that, indeed, the mind will come to its own mind.
YES! And yes, again. This idea about process is what gets me through months of crap...
And now I think about it, this is what I tell students when they think they're terrible writers... To keep going... Well, now I can also use this quote. So thank you!
Susan, about your comment: ....I procrastinate less.... I agree, one shouldn't wait. But what I find increasingly is that poems don't just come on the whole. They arise out of all the bits and pieces I jot down in my notebook. For me, it's crucial to write down any pinging thought that comes into my head--I mean thoughts that seem to have a little buzz about them. Often I don't know what they mean, but they go down on the page. And some of them come together later in a poem--and some don't.
It's all practice and process....
Charlotte
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