How do you write? Where do you write? What do you write about? Who do you write to? When do you write? What blocks you from writing? What moves you to write? Good questions for this first page of The Writer’s Village. Read, comment, and join in with your own writings.
On Writing for Posterity
by Randy Mazie
I write for posterity. For you, tomorrow, and for the children. I write because I like thinking I can do something that may make you remember me. Powerlessness over death compels me to do something more than simply be. I reassure myself in words. Who I was and who I loved, what I struggled with and for, may live on for a while past the limits of my life and of the box that will contain me. These words, my words, on this page, and you, my reader, live on. Though I am gone, you might catch sight of me again tomorrow; and know me in these words. You may still recognize or remember me; think of me, as I think of you now, and miss you now already. This may be the truest of resurrections.
On Disciplined Writing
by Randy Mazie
Writing should be conducted in a remote and barren field. It must be a landscape of distractionlessness. The arena should be completely empty and devoid: bare and bone dry as a desert, stripped and icy as a tundra. The stage must be silent and still. The pen, the thought, and the writer must be allowed to flow into eloquence onto the page choosing only the right words, without any possible misuse of language or misinterpretation. The right word at the right time in the right order, and in its proper place. It must be perfect – with none of the outer world’s trafficking, noise, movements, chaos, or sensory daggers intruding into the writer’s moment. An invasion only will dilute the writer’s work, transforming it into something other than which it is – the exact thoughts and words that the writer wishes to extrude from her or her being onto the page. The writer’s words must be pure. They must be untainted. Which is why writing must take place in solitary spaces, even in confinement if you will. Writing is discipline, not fancy. Writing is serious, not a feathered down. Writing is cut from the heart and mind; it is not messy.
Rip Apart a Poem
By Randy Mazie
I say rip it apart real good.
Demand something from it.
Make it say what it means.
No use existing, if it’s not clear.
Mold it, extract it, move it
Shake it, transform it, divine it.
Make it smell, make it stand up.
Make it moan.
Make it a man.
Make it a woman.
Make it crawl. Strip search it. Strip it.
Make it crazy.
Make it whine, whirl, or spin.
Make it stop.
Make it look at itself.
Make it cover its nakedness.
Make it dress itself in clothes a second time.
Make it go out on the town.
Let it come back tipsy.
Make it full of regrets and remorse.
Then, when it has recovered make it laugh.
Make it not take itself so seriously.
Then take it for a walk, and a talk.
Or better yet,
Take it for a ride.
Take it for a good long spin.
Open the sun roof. Let the top down.
Run it hard along the highway
And in-between the gaps in traffic.
Bring it to some hard stops.
Then take it home
And own it.
The Writer's Village 