#practice perfect

Ruby Lang, Hard Knocks

Ruby Lang, Hard Knocks

Ruby Lang, Hard Knocks

Ruby Lang, Hard Knocks

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I've been reading Practice Perfect for work and I keep thinking about how it really resonates for me in regards to poetry and Tumblr and the meeting of the two here at The Target Bird (TTB). I've always sort of considered TTB as a practice studio more than a formal writing blog/website, but it's only while reading this book that I realize that's what it's been. It's also helped me put a name to different parts of my process, and it's cool to see both how these techniques are useful/applicable outside of writing and how to further improve upon them. By no means am I saying this book is a surefire way to get better at writing or whatever you want to get better at, but it also probably wouldn't be a waste of money. I got my for free, so, grain of salt. Anyway, here are some of the things the book talks about and their relevance to this little ol' bird blog: Objective over purpose - I started TTB with an objective: to write a poem every day for a year. The purpose behind this was twofold: to get back into the habit of writing and to actually develop good writing habits. I could have started with the purpose like I have with past blogs, and those all petered out after a period of time (months, years, whatever). Part of why I stuck with this blog rather than give up at some point is because I knew there was a definitive end. If I didn't finish the year out the project would be a failure. If I just started with the purpose of writing more the "failure" becomes vague and thus unsustainable. In making writing the objective, rather than the purpose, it becomes actionable and you're able to actually measure the success of your goal. Drilling/scrimmaging - a drill is an altered reality where you focus on strengthening smaller skills; a scrimmage simulates game time to try and put those skills into action. Just about every poem I've written in the last 3ish years has been posted here, but that doesn't mean every poem is a fully formed "thing." Some poems are deliberately written to practice with a certain technique/theme/metaphor/image/blah blah blah; others are a rough draft synthesis of things I've been working on (if you check out some of the different poems listed under "experiments" you can see both of these in action). Sometimes these things culminate in me actually sitting down and writing objectively to use these, sometimes it's just to practice them. Isolate and integrate skills - goes along with drilling. Let's say you're no good at writing sonnets (I know I'm not). You can sit there all day writing 14 lines of iambic pentameter until you've got carpal tunnel. Fine, you might get better, but this isn't the most effective use of your time and wrists. A more effective approach would be to break down the sonnet into it's different parts: the meter, the rhyme, the rhyme structure, and so on. You work with just one, trying to build your ability to write the proper meter. Then you work on the rhyme (this sounds dumb, but rhyme is an "easy to learn, difficult to master" skill -- it's the fucking healer type of poetry RPGs). Once you have built up those skills, you integrate your practice to do a quatrain, then two, then the whole poem. You scaffold your practice so that it's manageable and easy to see progress. I've done this a lot with fugues and gaps (though mostly just for practice -- the ones I've posted here are ones that have come after many attempts). Data-driven - notes have always seemed fairly valueless and arbitrary to me for a variety of reasons, but they are an incredibly powerful tool if you know how to use them. When my poems started getting consistent notes in useful quantities, and later on features, I was happy but not like, stoked on myself for writing a "good" poem. What they did was make me pay attention to what I was writing -- how many notes a poem got, if it was featured, if it got a large amount of notes despite not being featured, etc. This isn't a vanity thing, because I became interested in the "why" of these measures. Why did a poem that I didn't particularly feel was successful get a feature and x amount of notes over a poem I thought came out pretty good? Why are these thematically related poems being relatively "ignored?" What's the ratio of likes:reblogs, and are people saying anything when they reblog? Seriously, I think about these things with every poem in relation to the rest of my work. Shortened feedback loops - this is one of the beautiful things of Tumblr: you post something and can see "feedback" in real time. This is mostly why I never submit to journals, because by the time I've heard back, the poem has gone completely cold and I have a hard time getting back into the what's and why's of the poem. As a rule, I generally only pay attention to a poem's life for 24 hours, because we all know everything dies a quick death on Tumblr. But that immediacy is important, because it lets me see take the pulse on what I'm working on and internalize it while I'm still involved with the poem. Accountability - this is a huge one. Part of accountability comes with objective: if you don't complete your objective, you've not held yourself accountable. Another is peer accountability. The only person who knew I was writing TTB when I started was David because I knew I wouldn't write if I was being held accountable to everyone I know, but I also knew I wouldn't write if I wasn't being held accountable by someone (especially someone who is part of my feedback loop). Plain and simple, you're more likely to complete something if you know there's an expectation. Having a peer group is important, it's a serious driver of improvement. If you have one, fucking nurture that shit. If you don't, get off your ass and make some crit friends. Creativity through repetition - by far the most critical piece for me as a writer. Once in a blue moon I get asks about how to become a better writer, and I always say the best way is to write. The work I'm doing now is a thousand times better than what I wrote when I first started TTB, but it's not because I've gained some crazy new knowledge or have had deep insights as to what makes "good" writing or because I've radically altered my habits. It's been because I've practiced good writing habits that have made some acts of writing (starting without prompt/inspiration/idea, stamina, techniques, critical reading, etc) near automatic, so I don't have to worry about things like "what am I going to write about" or "I want to write a longer poem" or "how do you use this form of repetition" and instead can focus on whatever goal I want to achieve. It's like showering -- you have a lot of your "genius" thoughts in the shower because it's automatic and frees your brain to think about other things. I've only gotten to be the writer I am today because I've spent a lot of time simply writing. So there you have it. Sorry for taking up your dash real estate. And if you're one of those people, tl;dr - WE TALKIN' BOUT PRACTICE.