Always be a poet, even in prose.  ~Charles Baudelaire

Writing a novel is like building a house, with similar concerns about foundation, structure, architecture, logical process, and so forth.  If you’re building an entire house, you might have moments of zen-like concentration as you engage in each task, but you might also keep all the big questions of structure and form in your head as you put up drywall and check levels.

Writing a poem, though, is like building a garden wall, stone by stone.  As you work, you hold each stone in your hand, feeling its texture and weight, without bigger questions like “What is this?” and “Where is it going?” to distract you from your task.  It’s a wall, you answer quietly.  It’s going along the back of the garden.  Now pay attention to how each stone fits against each other stone, how they grow warm in the sun.

Years of writing poetry gave me a mason’s knowledge of words, even as I tackled the larger questions of structure, plot, and pacing.  Now, when I get stuck in fiction, I go back to my roots and consider my prose from a poetic standpoint, or write poetry in a character’s voice, or distill the meat of the chapter into verse.  I turn to poetry for truth.

We have seldom been in such dire need of poetry. ~Mark Baechtel

Luckily, StoryStudio is offering a 4 Week Poetry Workshop to reground us in the stones and bricks of worldbuilding.  Whether you’re a poet at heart, or a fiction writer who doesn’t spend enough time digging around in the dirt of words and lines, the Poetry Workshop will help you play with words. 

Do you find yourself doodling poems in the margins of your notebooks?  Chat about your inspiration and perspiration in the Writer’s Lounge.