Sarah Waits
Photo by Amy LV
Students - one of the great things about keeping a writer's notebook is that your writing just hangs out in there. You may not see value or meaning in one day's piece of writing, but it will be there, waiting for you. And then, a week, month, or year later...you may come back to it and find the value, find the meaning.
I wrote a version of this poem several months ago and let it just sit. And then on Sunday, our cat Sarah sat staring out of the front window as several fat Blue Jays zipped in for suet. "Snap!" went the picture. "Hmmm!" went the brain. I remembered this old poem, dusted it off, revised it a bit, and here you go!
I learned this song in Girl Scouts. Do you know it?
Make new friends
but keep the old.
One is silver
and the other gold.
Here it is with a few little changes...for writing!
Write new thoughts
but keep the old.
One is silver
and the other gold.
Sometimes thinking and writing grows better with time and layers, the same way that trees grow ring-by-ring. Try going back to some of your old writing, in notebooks or paper piles, and find something you'd like to visit again. Set a time to just sit and reread what you've got. Then, when the perfect day arrives, you will remember, "Oh! I have an entry about that!"
You can peek inside some different notebooks (Naturalist! Artist! Novelist! Poet!) at my other blog home, Sharing Our Notebooks.
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(Please click on POST A COMMENT below to share a thought.)
Hi Amy-Your 'recipe' is quite tongue in cheek, or bird in cat, as it goes. Fun, but not so much for the bird of course. I like your words that says writing in the notebooks are just 'hanging out' and waiting for the right time. Thanks! And, as for your invitation about my memoir students. I may have 3 or 4 poems that are good to post, but it can't be for a couple of weeks. Is the invitation still open?
ReplyDeleteThank you, Linda! And hooray for the memoir students. The invitation is always open! I will see if I can find your e-mail address over at your blog! Yay! a.
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