I lied about this post. I said it would come about two weeks ago. I've got no excuses beyond the limits of my body and my own vices such as television and beers. I began writing it at work, pen and paper and all of that. Feels good to make words on someone else's dime.
The first difference between writing a poem every day and doing the 750/morning pages I find myself wanting to talk about is the flexibility of each. With poem-per-day project I allowed myself great flexibility when it came to time and length of writing and writings. I allowed myself to be more at the whim of writerly stimuli when it saw fit to strike. I wrote at all hours of the day and rarely ever scheduled writing or poem time unless I knew for sure I was going to be particularly tight on time that day. While the regiment & ritual of making a poem everyday was incredibly flexible the expectations I had for the products/poems created was fairly high (a fact I neglected to realize properly until I began the 750). I definitely have to admit that intention was more of a factor when creating poems specifically. Labor was evident in my body and fingers and frustrations as I was creating and winnowing and plucking at the various fibers to discern which are and are not a poem. I was working to weave something. And to some extent that work is a naturally tapped into in the act of writing (for me anyway) but usually it needs to be fueled from the less intuitive side of me.
750 taps into that but n a rare and sporadic basis.
750 happens every morning (usually 4/50 examples to the contrary) & before I do most anything else if I can help it. i am quite strict about it. Sometimes not even letting myself up to releave my bladder. Sometimes (esp if I am not staying at my own hose for the night) I wil have some food or coffee or conversation (sometimes to procure access to 750words). Occasionally I'll have a shower or some physical contact before writing but usually the writing happens in bed somewhere between 7:30 & 11AM.
In contrast to the daily poems, the content and aesthetic quality of the 750 matters very little. I sometimes write encouraging words multiple times, repeating things like "GO" & "move your fingers" & "keep it up/going" & "Keep typing".
Typing is the final and perhaps most potent difference I am finding. 750 is always typed-- which I have been experiencing great feelings of contention about. It has been a near constant subject I write about. I find myself alluding to the fact that there is much less actual physical contact and motion when using a keyboard vs drawing out the alphabet with my hands and fingers. Most of my daily poems began pen-to-paper, even if it was just the idea shorthanded for later typing. The first real lives of those ideas came from dancing fingers and ink. It wasn't just pushing buttons. At my worst that is how I feel about typing as a tool for freewriting. I worry anxiously about how I spell things (even after I turn the spell check off). And for some reason misspellings feel wronger and and less intentional when lined up in helvetica. This awareness of how much my writing pays attention to my body was a wonderful surprise to me. I looked back over my poetry blog and found that I write about my fingers and hands and generally use fingers and hands and ink in my images and metaphors to a startling degree. The upshot of this frustration is that I am working through it. Getting less and less bothered by my apprehensions about technology.
On a small and wonderful note which is slightly unrelated but is often receiving pretty word bits from my 750, I have started a twitter!
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