Rhian Ivory (pen name: Rhian Tracey) has written four YA novels published by Bloomsbury (When Isla meets Luke meets Isla, Isla and Luke: Make or break?, The Bad Girls Club and True Colours). Rhian has written the following guest blog for LWC:
1. Listen to a piece of music, instrumental works best, for 5 minutes with your eyes closed. Let it inspire you. Try to internalise the memories, images and words that emerge.
2. Write – take pen and paper (not computer) and for 5 minutes exactly (use a timer or alarm) freewrite. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, and least of all about meaning. Don’t try to write anything correct, poetic or even legible, just pour down everything that came to you in those 5 minutes in random order.
The most important rules: DON’T STOP. DON’T LOOK BACK.
If you’re losing momentum, start the next sentence or line with “and” or “if”, “but”, “when”, or “the way”.
Try to avoid using the first person (“I”, “me”), and you might want to stick to descriptions in the present tense.
3. Create – Go back over what you’ve written, without worrying too much at this stage about where it’s coming from or what it’s really about.
Select 5 phrases from it, of no more than 5 words each, which for one reason or another strike you as interesting.
Do not change anything about those lines, leave them as they came out initially. They do not need to connect.
Write out your 5 lines, this is a verse of poetry that should sound very different from how you usually write.
4. Name – Create a title for each of your 5 lines as if they were each separate poems.
1. A descriptive title – setting the theme
2. An evocative title – hinting at something to be revealed
3. Quoting a specific word or sequence of words from the poem
4. An odd title – strange-sounding and in no way relating to what is there already
5. An action title – movement, motion, drama.
Choose your favourite title for your poem.
5. Connect – Now that you have 5 phrases and a title your next step is to try and connect it all.
Write words around the phrases to bring them together sufficiently to make a unit of them – of maximally 10 lines (less if you like).
You are completely free to change the order of their appearance, but DO NOT alter the phrases in themselves by dropping or inserting words.
Don’t worry about meaning or making the whole thing understandable – this is what poetry is all about, the implied, meanings, interpretations, hints, suggestions, the unsaid, the poetic elements of life!
Remember…you are simply finding a voice you didn’t have before.
‘The best writing is rewriting’ – E B White