Are you a plotter, or are you notta?

[Terry]

Yes I'm mostly a notta as well. A lot of my poems are at least in part based on true stories of things I've done or seen and like Robyn some start with just a sentence that springs to mind. I remember that phrase 'Out On The Western Shaw' being stuck in my mind for years before I wrote the poem. The poem more or less wrote itself because I just wrote about what I'd seen.

Terry

[Heather]

I've never plotted a poem but I do have a picture in my head of a scene that I want to describe or explain. Often a poem stalls because I don't know where I'm taking it and I have to stop, and think "what am I trying to say" in order to find the rest of the words.

I often write something - a line or single stanza that is frustratingly the end or the middle of the poem - and then I need to find the rest of it! I frequently rearrange stanzas to find the best arrangement - so the computer is my means of writing unless I am jotting notes somewhere away from home to use later.

Heather

[Robyn]

Yes Heather I don't think in a purely linear, logical order when the ideas are coming thick and fast, so rearranging is often part of my second, third or fourteenth draft.

[manfredvijars]

I love the feel of pencil and paper in my hand and usually have a bound notebook by my side. Frequently, a phrase or a random thought along some tangent strikes, so it's noted. I often sketch out structures and plots and do a partial 'brain storm and dump', with the results entered in the notebook. All thoughts and random meanderings are noted - in pencil.

As these phrases and constructs are transferred to the computer, they are crossed to indicate that they've been used. My notebooks aren't thrown out, as they're mined from time to time for unused phrases - the first port of call whenever a writer's block hits.

I must confess to looking at these scratchings and wonder, someday if I ever get to be 'famous', (long after I'm dead) and someone stumbles across these notebooks, would they be worth a fortune? The irony is that often I can't read my own writing. However, it's gratifying to see the development of a piece from it's Genesis as a random thought or phrase, to it's conclusion.

In answer to your question Stephen roughly, plotter - 60%, notta - 40% ...

[Terry]

I guess even if you're writing about something you've seen or heard you still have try and weave a story around it.

I have always thought that doing homework is a great way of getting yourself motivated if you're having a spot of writers block, it makes you think outside the square so to speak - It helps to free the mind of the clutter old ideas that are going nowhere at the moment.

Terry