Messy, Slick Roads / Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone

A Writer of Fiction Tries Poetry

Two questions to ponder.   How often do you step out of your comfort zone, and what happens when you do?

In a previous post, Growing As A Writer, I mentioned some of the things you can do to “grow as a writer” while revising your fiction for submission, such as taking a creative writing course, attending a writer’s conference, or trying another form of creative expression.

I thought of this when I stood at the podium on August 2 in front of 70 people at the Summer 2010 Tule Review Reading, sponsored by Sacramento Poetry Center.  I was there to read a poem called Messy, Slick Roads that I’d written as an assignment for a creative writing class through UC Davis Extension called Structure and Style.

When our instructor said she wanted us to learn how to “identify and shape our own unique style and structure when writing in any genre” and to “expand our repertoire of possibilities, I knew I was in trouble.  No, no, no, I thought.  I write fiction, not–

She introduced us to the poets Hayden, Carruth, Merrill, Thomas, Justice, and Kizer, and poetic pattern forms, including Stanza, Villanelle, and Pantoum.  I took notes, thinking, I can get through this.  But then came the dreaded moment when she asked us to write–I wasn’t sure my heart could take this–a poem.

I looked out the window that faced K-street in midtown Sacramento on a night they predicted wind and rain and messy, slick roads, and hoped that class would be over before the weatherman’s prediction came true.

As my instructor is my witness, I went into this assignment against my will, her message about creating our own unique style while writing in any genre falling on deaf ears.  Poetry?  Spare me.  A novel awaits.  Ten years of struggle, versus fifteen minutes of raving, hardly worth the paper it’s written on, open to interpretation by someone who finds value in fourteen lines of gibberish, spewed out in disgust, at a form too short to matter, too unappreciated to bring in anything that matters–but release. 

First she gave us a 7-minute quick-write with the topic, “What Matters Most to Me At This Moment.”  Ha!  My pen hit the sheet of lined paper–My writing of course.  Why else would I drive into Sacramento on a night they predict wind and rain and messy, slick roads?–and didn’t stop until she announced our 7 minutes were up.

Then she asked us to shape our prose into a poem.  We could use a verse form, such as a Villanelle or Pantoum, or a shaping form, such as a Elegy, Ode, or Pastoral.  With our textbook, The Making of A Poem, A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, as a guide, I chose the pantoum.  I liked the structure of it, but also that it sounded almost like prose.

When my teacher handed the poem back the following week with the suggestion that I submit it to Tule Review for consideration, I was shocked.  I was even more shocked, when a few months later I received notice that it had been accepted for publication in Tule Review’s 2010 summer edition.

Dumb luck?

In A Poem To My Teacher (a pantoum that no one has seen until inclusion in this post), I wrote:

Now? 
You light the candle? 
After the virus has spread. 
I feel it beneath the skin of my belly. 

You light the candle,
Expecting the flame to take hold,
Rather than extinguish from lack of oxygen
After ten years of toil.

Expecting the fame to take hold,
Mockery and discouragement
And ten years of toil,
To change now? 

Mockery and discouragement,
Fought with stubborn confidence that it would pay,
To change now,
In the end? 

Fought with stubborn confidence that it would pay,
A change in direction
In the end? 
I don’t think so. 

I can’t wrap my head around it,
After the virus has spread. 
I don’t think so. 
Not now.

The adage, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” took on a new meaning for me the night I read my poem,  Messy, Slick Roads,  in a 40-by-30 foot, freshly-sheet-rocked room, with framed oil paintings on the walls in vivid rainbow colors and insulation and beams still exposed on the ceiling and sky-blue plastic and chrome chairs, strip lighting, and portable fans blowing.

Sometimes the road to publication is slick and messy, and inspiration, cool and wet,  is all around you.  Your mind might be ready for a good soaking.

Push a little deeper, come a little closer, to that nugget within you, that you can mine and present proudly, a finished, polished gem.

Your voice, a voice the world has not heard before, a finished, polished gem, your small contribution…

Composing Messy, Slick Roads and then reading it on a Monday night in midtown Sacramento took me out of my comfort zone, as do so many ultimately rewarding experiences on this journey through the between.

But I didn’t trip on the way to the podium or mess up my lines, and my husband, whose exposure to poetry is limited to song lyrics, greeting cards, and nursery rhymes, was there to support me, so all I can say is…that wasn’t so bad.

Actually, I think it might have given me a new story idea.

As always, thanks for stopping by,