A Good Beer Shit
Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like - then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping. ~Jean Cocteau It was about five years ago that I developed a creative writing habit. At first, it was mostly poetry and flash fiction that I would scribble in my journal. I would, from time to time, type these “pieces” up and mail them off to literary magazines only to have them rejected. Sometimes the editor would be nice enough to write a note explaining why the work was rejected. I have written something like ten different journals full of stories and poems since I decided to stop wasting stamps. I have not been published anywhere except on my blog and I probably never will be. For the longest time, when contemplating the above, I would go into a depression.My productivity would decrease. What was at various times a tsunami of creativity would dry up to a trickle. It is as if depression and self judgement were a dam or a levee, holding back the flood waters of my imagination. I apologize for the cliche. I am going to leave it in though because frankly I have never known a creative person who didn’t go through this. The shock of being actively discouraged. I have come to realize the righteousness of something said by Charles Bukowski. All good poetry is just a really good beer shit. It comes out of you fast, glorious and stinky.
Filed under: Poetry | Tagged: Bukowski, Fiction, Jean Cocteau, Literary Criticism, Poems, Poetry, quote
