I don't believe in magic. I believe in putting in time in a chair at a desk for 1-4 hours most days, now that I don't have a full-time job anymore. Sometimes I work on a computer; sometimes I start on paper before switching to a computer. I often get ideas while taking a shower or drying my hair, but the real work starts after the initial ideas. I don't tend to work on more than one poem at a time. Usually, I write a poem in a day, two or three days at most, but I tend to revise them over a week, at least, after I have posted them for feedback. Really short poems tend to take less time, longer ones more time. If I am getting no ideas for poems, I usually have several authors I like to translate, and I will pick up a poem by one of them and work on it for a while. I am not a morning person, so most of my work time is in the afternoon, or sometimes the evening. I jot down notes on scraps of paper or online if I get an idea when I don't have time to work on it. Many of those notes never lead to poems, but a few do, and sometimes years after I got the initial idea.
Susan
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