I have just been reading several comments on WOL and further on some of the WOL'ers web or blog sites.
It occurs to me that so-called writer's block is seen as a negative issue and troubles people sorely.
My point and the reason for starting a new thread is this. Is creativity (and by that I suppose I mean inspired work) devalued by the perceived need to overcome writer's block.
I can understand a writer who has a deadline to meet (as I do myself every month) feeling under pressure to keep the words coming, but why a poet?
Put succinctly, does pressured work fall in quality?

There's no noticeable deterioration in the quality of my drivel, graham.

I like this, if only for its succinctness... 'Inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just show up and get to work'!


http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/12/27/chuck-close-on-creativity/

I thought of this thread when I put a comment on the plagiarism thread, because the thoughts touched upon were the same.

Whether writer's block bothers you depends upon your motivation for writing, I would imagine. If you feed off the interaction on a site such as this, or any kind of feedback and reward, then it must be a problem. Without writing, you can't keep going to performance venues, else you'd be churning out the same old stuff and soon lose motivation.

I don't think you could make a judgement on whether pressured work falls in quality. It depends on the poet, surely? I can only speak for myself by saying that I just have to feel the urge in order to write anything decent. It helps if I have strong feelings about something - writing to a theme someone else has chosen doesn't always work, unless I can really feel something. That's why I've given up on workshops - they are just not my cup of tea :)

I think if someone gave me a deadline I probably could not meet it. Many years back the stuff I wrote was all inspiration. These days it's usually only the theme that grasps me and takes me into it. The rest is perspiration. Pouring over forms and metrical requirements, reaching for the thesaurus, the dictionary, appropriate allusions etc... I have no idea how the laureates perform to order. But I find the perspiration method is ultimately more productive than waiting for inspiration and the results more satisfying over time. I suppose and hope we are all different in this respect.

As much as I'd like to say I can challenge this theory, I'm afraid I'm another of those who can't really write at all well under pressure. It needs to be a sudden idea or image coming into my head, or memory or association with some shape or sound, and then I've got the general feel for what I'm doing.

Before, I've even written blank verse just for the sake of writing (which is kind of similar as my subconscious is putting myself under some kind of pressure...I guess!), and it...wasn't very good, to put it politely. Haha.

Hi Graham, You (one) could think of the pressure to produce stuff -regardless of inspiration- as mental exercise. Exercise that keeps the 'muscle' supple and in form. I've produced some 'stuff' of which i'm 'happy' though it had started as a finger-exercise (00:01 an example) I did not work it (well hardly), I left it as is and submitted it to this site. Most such work ends up deleted. I think 'tortured soul' poetry is a tad Hollywood, though I'm not suggesting that hard work has not gone into someone's effort. Very interesting.

Deadlines don't half concentrate the mind though. I recently wrote something for a photo which was going into an exhibition (sadly it didn't get in) and I had to produce something in a fortnight. I came up with something I might not have written otherwise because I of the pressure. Sometimes poets spend an inordinate amount of time trying to create the 'perfect' poem (appropriate allusions et al) and a deadline can stop you from picking at it like you'd pick at a scab. A poem is never finished it's only abandoned as Verlaine says.

I have some fragments of stuff lying around going as far back as 1987! My poem Peter Goes West on the blogs began in 1987. I keep even the wildest lines, sometimes writing more than double the stanzas I put out. Once in a blue moon a poem comes whole entire and perfect. Oddly, i can produce prose (reviews, essays) to order.

Reviews, essays etc. are severely rule bound, being in the sphere of persuasive argument. The trick there is to have innovative examples, a perky turn of phrase. In this respect, they do require some inspiration, of course, but a good review/essay can be effectively developed through sheer logistics. It is 'work' using speciallized skills that improve with practice - hopefully - if you're good at it. Writer's block is usually looking for the inspiration of an 'angle', a particular point of view that is both catchy and accurate.

I'm not sure whether 'poetic inspiration' follows the same path. Although, it is often the perceived 'angle' or lack of it, that blocks the poet's pen too. IMO, you have to dangle an angle to catch a fish, no matter what you write.