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Saturday, November 26, 2011

A Confession

Here's a little secret I don't share with my artsy friends very often. I like to write on graph paper. Specifically I like to write poetry on graph paper.

I know this admission makes me look rigid and overly analytical. You probably wonder if I write neatly in all caps like many engineers do (I don't). I just find graph paper soothing.

My husband every year gets bombarded with calendars from pharmaceutical companies, and he always gets a dayplanner with graph paper as the blank pages from one certain company. Every year I claim this dayplanner as my own for writing poems in. My husband mentioned it to the drug rep, and ever since he has brought my husband two dayplanners each year, one for him and one for "his wife." But actually my husband dutifully hands both copies of the dayplanner over to me, hee hee.

Do you have any dirty little "non-poetic" secrets related to your writing practice? I'd love to hear them.

2 comments:

Mari said...

I love this! I say, do whatever works for you. Writers have all kinds of rituals and tricks to help them enter/be with their work and composing on graph paper is as legitimate as any other.

On another note, I have been missing Japan something awful and hope to get there within the year, if I can swing it. All best to you, Jessica, and thanks for your posts.

Jessica Goodfellow said...

Mari, I'm homesick for the holidays; we should swap! All the best to you too, and hope you enjoy this winter season.