When I’m writing the way I want, the way I love, which is without thinking about what I’m writing, a strange thing happens: I feel simultaneously the most myself I could possibly be, and at the same time totally relieved of self.
—Kathryn Harrison
I read this piece today, on writing by not thinking, or writing from an unlit place, or moving forward no matter what, which is exactly the kind of motivator that one needs when one undertakes a National Poetry Month blog challenge that nobody asked one to do, and that one knows no one is keeping track of but oneself. But also: this is how I write. In a sort of haze. I'm thinking back to this recent post on the physicality of poetic form, and this recent post on my early/forever love of Diana Wynne Jones fantasy novels, and this physical/unlit meditative writing state, and these things all make sense together. In so many Diana Wynne Jones books, magic is done not through spoken spells or rituals, but in subtle twists. Nudges on another plane. It is often described in a slanted way, not quite looking right at it, which is how I write. This sort of vague aspect becomes material, or at least material enough, or at least material to the person doing the nudging—who is, after all, the reader. I'm not sitting around writing poetry pretending to do magic, but aren't I?