Consideration Corner Forum This week's topic...

Things are coming along nicely. We had a great response to our last writing topic! I expect things to pick up even more this week. Sharing your writing is half of the job here, so let's not forget to review and critique our group member's submissions.

A special thanks to all those of you who have invited friends and peers to join our group-let's keep that momentum going!

That being said, this week's topic will be "inspiration", where our comes from whether it be people or objects. Have fun!

Also I was thinking we could take a vote on which submitted piece best personifies the week's topic, the winning piece will be the "featured" piece for the rest of the week...what are your thought?

Finally, I would be glad to hear your suggestions for future writing topics, all ideas are welcome!

Happy writing!

Just a few ideas for future topics. The themes of bravery, patriotism and romance might be good? Or, how about a piece regarding where we live, either in terms of the country or home town?

                                       WHAT INSPIRES ME

No poet creates in a vacuum. He or she needs inspiration from life, from others, from inside and outside the self.

I am not a believer in the phenomenon advanced by some writers that a Muse comes out of the woodwork and dictates the perfect first-draft poem or story and then vanishes untiI she feels ready to return. There is no Muse beyond those mythological sisters the Greeks enjoyed touting at their temple festivals.

The danger of expecting inspiration from the so-called Muse is that, if you’re serious about writing and perfecting your writing craft, you will deny yourself the needed ingredient of improved writing: Practice, which may not lead to perfection, but at least reach its neighborhood a lot faster and more positively than the occasional writing exercise.

My inspiration is driven by my need to write every single day. I do not wait for inspiration to tap me on the shoulder and say, “Write me.“ I seek it out. Often it’s inside me when I let an emotion evoked by an event take me sailing. Or that inspiration is a scene I am privy to in the supermarket when a mother slaps her kid for asking for too many kinds of cereal. Or perhaps an historical event moves me to move my pen. Sometimes it’s the way clouds form in the sky. I don’t mean their shapes but rather the fact that a God created them for the purpose of not only producing needed rain but also as white, fluffy eye candy for us His favorite creations.

I look everywhere. I also read a lot of nonfiction and poetry. I seek out my favorite poets like Vallejo, Cohen, Shakespeare, Millay, Frost, and on and on. There are so many whose writings can spark a poet to write his or her own works.

I also enter contests for the same reason: to inspire me to write and edit so I can be perhaps one of the winners. Winning is fun but if you write another poem as a result of entering a contest, then there is no losing if you do not win. You already won by writing that poem!

I also believe it is the responsibility of poets to inspire one another. After all, poets love writing poetry, but some are easily discouraged: a lack of thinking on the part of someone critiquing another's work could silence that poet forever. I would not wish that sin on my head. I believe that when a writer praises the work of fellow writers, the gift is a tremendous one because from it the critiqued writer acquires courage to not only continue writing, but to feel not so alone anymore in the act of writing. How can the resulting poem or story not be better when the writer knows other eyes will see it and dole out more of the same praise that set his or her heart afire? So we need to be kind to one another. We need never to feel so superior to other writers that we dare comment about their efforts in a negative fashion. A writer who dispels the magic in another writer’s need to and joy of writing deserves one of Dante’s fiery rings!

When I was a middle-school teacher, I read some student poems that were horrendously bad, but I tried to find some line, some word, some rhythm, some element worthy of praise and I harped on it, held it high like a banner, like that bright lighthouse, because I did not want those children to put down their pens and never write again. I found that with praise and continued encouragement, they were more willing to learn how to write good poetry.

Another strong inspiration for me is my wife Sharon. I always say that she’s one of the angels God sometimes allows to leave heaven for a time to show His love for us. Sharon means the world to me, my greatest poem! I never write anything that she doesn’t read first. She is my inspiration and my best critic.

I pray to be inspired till my last day on this planet. I kid my wife by saying, “Let me die, not peacefully, but wildly: my hand flying across the page as I dash off the closing line of a last poem.” From my mouth to God’s ears.

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http:www.writerscafe.org/writing/sambpoet/342323/