[New-Poetry] What keeps me motivated/lack of laurels

[Anny Ballardini]

Very interesting. My story is similar to yours, only diverting point: I have
been writing little. Maybe I should just seize that Sabbatical by the hair
and go ahead...
Maybe in a couple of years, maybe...

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 4:42 PM, David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu> wrote:

>
>
>
> On Dec 12, 2008, at 9:09 AM, TheOldMole wrote:
>
> Anny -- don't think I don't appreciate it. I'd say, then, that it's maybe a
> combination of the respect of at least some of my peers, and the lack
> of  laurels, that keep me motivated.
>
> --------------------------------------
>
>
> I was asked a number of years ago to give a talk in a colleague's
> Psychology class, where they were studying Motivation.  People of various
> vocations and avocations spoke about why they did what they did.  Oddly
> enough, I'd never thought very deeply about that particular question in
> regard to my own poetry, though by that point I'd already published a few
> books, earned tenure at my teaching job, and felt comfortable enough calling
> myself a poet.
> I'd certainly thought lots about poetry itself, and still do, but not much
> about my own motivations.  I had the ambition; I'd just never reflected much
> on it.  And over the years I had certainly felt all the usual passions
> writers feel--naked ambition, frustration, jealousy, self-doubt, vanity, and
> the rest.
> My main conclusion was to notice how much my motivations had shifted over
> the years, from external validation to internal.  To what extent this
> constitutes sour grapes and/or making the best of my utter failure to make a
> splash in the literary pond, I don't rightly know.  But I did make a
> conscious resolution, about 1992, when I noticed that my teaching job was
> eating up more and more of my energy and time, to put writing back near the
> top of my priority list.  I was talking about poetry & teaching it, in other
> words, but writing less and less myself.
>
> That seemed wrong both in terms of my life as a writer and my life as a
> writing teacher, so I resolved to write in my journal daily.  Simple enough.
>  Writing would take priority over publication, if I had to choose what to
> devote my time to.  I've kept that resolution ever since, even when
> traveling, sick, uninspired, or swamped with work, scribbling daily in my
> journal.  Oh, thousands and thousands of pages.  On a recent sabbatical I
> upped the ante on myself and resolved not just to write something daily, but
> to write a new *poem* daily.  I've now been doing that for a year and a
> half, happily enough.
>
> My rate of submission to journals and presses, predictably, plunged; and my
> so-called career, which before then had never quite lifted off, pretty much
> stalled entirely.  I still responded to solicitations, and sent out my work
> in a desultory way, but for the most part stopped playing submission
> roulette.  Which had the predictable effect on my rate of publication, of
> course, and my profile in the little world of poetry.  But which also had
> the less foreseen result of making me much happier, generally.  I stepped
> aside from Po Biz, more or less, and just enjoyed writing, talking about
> poetry, reading it, teaching it.  I still really enjoy seeing myself in
> print, I admit, but I don't do a whole lot to hustle up pubs.
>
> What motivates me, I guess, is mostly the act of writing itself, which has
> become something more than habit.
>
> And in recent years, out of laziness, lack of interest, and some other
> reasons, I've published mainly online rather than in print.  Which is a
> whole other topic. . . .
>
>
>
>
> ========================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
>
> Home Page:
> http://web.mac.com/drjazz
>
> Poetry Library:
> http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
> ==========================================
>
>
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
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