Poetry Isn’t

The thing about 

P O E T R Y

is that it is not

a bunch of prose

***like a diary entry***

written all strung out in poetic lines.

Most of us got quite a few bum steers about poetry from school. Often they never ask us to read poetry and one day they hand us an assignment to write a haiku or free verse or whatever. The assignment sheet often included a few poem attempts written by other school children to keep us down to that level. The teachers would elicit the kind of poetry they wanted— in ghettoized minority-group schools, kids were expected to write about their poor, miserable lives to make readers feel racial guilt— the kids mustn’t be allowed to let their spirits soar or anything. Kids had to write environmental crap and pollution and how people must quit having children since kids are just another form of pollution— for reasons of indoctrination, rather then any intention of letting kids write actual poetry with actual poetic values.

School poems were praised for political reasons or just because every creative thing had to be praised to the skies to raise ‘self-esteem.’ And so we have teenagers or twenty-somethings who pull out their self-concerned, whiny, prosy diary entries and write them in poetic lines and expect to be praised somehow. 

Poetry is not just prose in poetic lines! Poems are full of meanings and images and sounds and rhythms and are more like condensed prose than prose-in-poetic-lines.

The way to learn poetry is this: READ poems of all sorts, good and bad, rhymed/metered and not. Avoid poetry from university poetry mags which can be heavy on dreck. Read poetry for YEARS, find some favorite poets and if they are people like Robert Service, so be it. Read your favorite poems over and over until you can recite them.

Then, when your poetic brain has ripened, start throwing words against the wall. Don’t revise them or plan them or make much of them. Just compose, write it down, and file the poems. Write on the computer or legal pads or a bathroom wall. By the time you’ve written a hundred or so poems, there are probably some good ones in the collection. If desired, get ‘Poet’s Market’ from Writer’s Digest Books and find some places to submit your poems to. In time you will get published. If you get published in more than one ‘zine, perhaps you are a Real Poet and can self-publish your poems in book or ebook form. Or perhaps you aren’t. Who knows?

And this is the One True Way to write poetry and become a poet. Or that’s what I’m claiming today, anyway.

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haiku

cats are melting

into the blue tiled floor

heat wave

(c) 2016

How to Write Aspie Characters

How can a writer portray a character with Asperger Syndrome (a form of high-functioning autism) realistically? Even writers who actually have Asperger Syndrome themselves may have difficulty.

One of the troubles these days is that Asperger Syndrome has been folded in the label ‘autism spectrum disorder’ along with Kanner’s autism (which is often low-functioning autism.) Since Aspies often have high intelligence and are very verbal and may have ambitions to be writers, they don’t have much in common with a person who has Kanner’s autism, is believed to have a low IQ, and never learns to speak.

I remember an experience of my own with the diagnosis changed. I told the lady at the Michigan food distribution that I had an ‘autism spectrum disorder’ and she presumed I would be unable to sign my own name on a form. She was probably looking about for my ‘caregiver.’ As a person cursed with a Mensa-level IQ, I didn’t like that. My intelligence is one of the few possibly-good things about me and I am testy when people presume I don’t have any.

To write an Aspie character you need to learn more about actual people with Asperger Syndrome from good sources. It’s not the same as having ‘autism’ and, contrary to news reports, it’s nothing like being a sociopath. The organism Autism Speaks, oriented towards parents of young children with autism, isn’t very helpful in learning about people with Asperger Syndrome. Even the diagnosis lists on good web sites don’t actually give you a good picture for character creation.

A few years ago I found a children’s book called ‘All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome’ by Kathy Hoopman. Yeah, it’s a kid’s book, but I liked it enough to bring it to a session with my then-therapist and we spend a few sessions going through the few pages and comparing it to my life. (It’s a great book for Aspies or their parents to give to significant people to explain the condition because it’s a quick read and has cute cat pictures. Get this book!)

I was not diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome until adult life— in school I was diagnosed as being a lazy troublemaker, or shy, or sad, or needing to go to a therapist. I associate my Aspie status with my being bullied by kids in school, humiliating experiences of misunderstanding by teachers, loving books, and massive fandom for TV shows like Star Trek and Dark Shadows. 

It’s not untypical for an Aspie like me, who moved from city to city in childhood, that I grew up with zero friends after a certain age. But once I got internet access as a adult, I had a few online friends, initially from my blog and later from Facebook (which I joined to gain more readers for my blog.) I even have friends with Asperger Syndrome, officially diagnosed and self-diagnosed. I’m in a couple of Facebook groups for Aspies, and so I’ve learned that different Aspies have different ideas of what is ‘typical’ for Aspies. Also, I’m not sure that the online Aspies are actually sharing all the gory details of their real lives— though many of us share too much! 

When writing an Aspie, even if you are an Aspie, you have to trim back some of your knowledge when creating a character. You can mainly pattern your Aspie character after two or three real-world Aspies that you know or have read about. Take a trait from one and a trait from another. Some Aspies have real-world friends, others don’t. Some lack most social skills, others have more such skills. And sometimes an Aspie person just seems to have contradictory traits. I myself am afraid to initiate phone calls and find it stressful. I can’t even call some family members that seem to care about me, I’m afraid to disturb them. Yet I phone my mother (who’s in her 90s) every single day (we both seem to be ‘addicted’ to that contact.)

I believe our Aspie characters have to serve a greater purpose in our fiction than virtue-signalling support for the ‘differently-able.’ They should have an important role in the story or not exist at all. It’s probably better to pick a character that you already suspect must exist in the story and give him Asperger Syndrome. Pick the set of symptoms for that character that still allows him to do the things you need him to do in the story. For example, if your Aspie is a receptionist for your hard-boiled private detective, she will probably need minimal phone skills much of the time. If your Aspie character will have to talk to a lot of other people, he should somewhat able to talk to other people, though it may be difficult for him. 

So good luck in creating your Aspie characters! If you do it well— or do it poorly but tell a good story— I may count myself as one of your readers some day.

Finding Your Genres #IWSG

It’s not enough to aspire to be a real writer— you have to be a writer OF something. That’s where genres come in.

A genre is a book-selling category. If you go into a real-world bookstore, there may be a section of science fiction and fantasy, a section of mysteries, a section of romance. In a big bookstore there may even be a bit of literary fiction around somewhere. 

Genres are the way most of us find stuff to read. We learn that certain genres reliably give us a good reading experience and other genres do not. We pick up Westerns or mysteries or thrillers or military SF or gothic romance or whatever other kind of book we have learned delivers the kind of story we want.

When you are becoming a writer, part of the job is developing a self-identity as a writer. And writers are known by the genres they work in— there are romance writers and horror writers and Western writers and science fiction writers. 

Of course there are writers who write in multiple genres, or who write a book in one genre but then write in a different genre— as in the case of Louis L’Amour, whose first published book was poetry and wrote many many Western novels, which are still in print today. 

But your writer-identity ought to have one or more genres connected to it. It’s not a limiting thing— you are still free to write and publish what you like— but it helps you think of which playing-field you will likely be working in. But how do you figure out what genre(s) to pick?

What Genres do you Read?

When you are reading for your own pleasure, what genres are you most likely to pick? Don’t be ashamed of what you like— even if your English prof told you that intelligent people only read literary fiction, that doesn’t mean you should feel bad for reading things you actually enjoy. Learning to be a good writer— of ANY genre— means a lot of reading since if you are a Regency romance writer you need to learn what current writers are doing IN THAT GENRE. It’s easier to do that reading if you don’t hate the genre!

What Genres do you get ideas in?

Some well-known writers enjoy READING in certain genres, but they don’t really THINK in that genre. They may read every science fiction novel that comes out, but their brains don’t come up with valid science-fiction story ideas. Or they may love historical fiction but not be able to do the massive amount of research involved. (I might want to set a story in the Roman empire but I don’t speak Latin well, and don’t have access to a library that would have the books I’d need for research or the money to buy a library’s worth of books about Roman history, so any mystery novel ideas I have where the Emperor Claudius solves crimes will have to remain unwritten.)

What Genres currently sell well?

This is where many aspiring writers go astray. They think the genre they love doesn’t sell or is too competitive so they randomly pick a genre that’s currently ‘hot.’ But if you think Amish romance or Dystopian YA is utter dreck, you will likely not be able to write in that genre in a way that fans of that genre will appreciate. 

But there is room for writing in popular genres in the world of writing. The top Gothic romance authors, when the genre tanked, called their books Romantic Suspense and kept on writing. Fantasy writers might try writing some ‘paranormal romance’ if that category is selling. Science fiction writers might try a ‘dystopian YA’ novel, especially of some of their science fiction novels have been described under that term. 

Even when you are a mere unpublished— not even indie published— writer, picking your genre(s,) reading in your genre(s,) and thinking of yourself as a future writer in those genre(s) is a good step towards becoming a writer for real. And that’s always a good thing.

What genres do you read? Get ideas in? Write? Publish? Are there other genres you might like to try someday? Share about it in a comment!

Yours in genre-identity,

Nissa Annakindt

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This was a post in the Insecure Writer’s Support Group blog hop: https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html

Need to know more about book marketing? Read ‘How to Market a Book’ by Joanna Penn. (Not my book, not a paid ad. Just a recommendation.)