>So tell me how you write, you writers - on the wild moorside? in the heart
>of the mean city? from deep within your tweedcovered chairs? I'd like to
>know... Here's a short e-questionnaire - behind the normal jokinesses
>which you'd expect are serious questions which I'd value your thoughts on,
>which may help others, and which, in due course, may contribute to the
>issues under review at the SVP colloquium. Answer front-channel, to the
>list, if you want to stimulate further discussion; backchannel to me if
>you're bashful but want to contribute to the zeitgeist. The questions are
>deliberately open to your interpretation, and Candidates May Choose To
>Answer all or none of the questions, or indeed answer other questions of
>their own making. Here goes:
>
>1. Do you write daily?___ weekly?___ irregularly?___ Is the writing a
>fixed part of routine, or does it follow other pressures/dictates? Please
>specify:


Irregularly. In bouts that are often very intense and difficult to let go
of. My professional life (a general manager) does exert pressures on the
writing, but also feeds it by offering connections with people and places.
There isn't really a routine, in fact I would disrupt it if there were one.
Sudden feelings of creative expansiveness, of feeling connections with the
world or other patterns of thinking uuually lead me into bouts of writing.
Often bouts of feverish reading precede bouts of writing too.


>2. These days do you write in the same place e.g. in the kitchen/bathroom
>etc; on the bus to work? Is the workplace in any sense a protected space?
>Please specify:


I've tried having a studio several times. I've got one now but very rarely
end up writing in it. I do however value this as a place to edit the work.
The editing phase is often long and protracted. I generally write on a lap
top, sat on an armchair or on a sofa anywhere. Editing more often goes on in
the study. The notion of having a protect space is more important than using
it to write.

>3. Drafting: notebooks, scraps of paper, word processor or what?


On a lap top often typesetting the work in Quark Xpress, but more frequently
these days in MS Word.

>3a. How are drafts organised - in linear/sequential mode, or in a more
>complex structure? Please describe:


This varies enormously. I find the initial draft can be made in one creative
burst. I usually find it difficult to let go of this and wrestle with it
overwriting the same piece without keeping drafts. At some indistinct point,
this early phase hardens into fact and then drafting begins to take place. I
don't like keeping older versions of a work. I hate having to administrate
over several versions of the same poem. So, drafts may be complete or may
include just a title, or a word, as a kind of trigger. The dormant editing
period can be quite long. These days I try to keep on top of live material.
I having a growing dislke or rescuing older material although rewriting can
be a useful way of getting new work underway. Kind of like kick starting the
creative process.

>3b-e. Why? How long has it taken this practice to evolve? Are you
>consistent in this? How aware are you of other writers' strategies in this
>respect?


For me the why is the how. I've tried various strategies and as a writer
find them fascinating. I do seem to change mine fairly frequently. Always
searching for a better way. The current practice has taken ten years to
evolve.

>4. A route-to-work question: what, in general terms, is the relationship
>between draft and completion?


Draft is play and slowly becomes graft, then a puzzle with a few fainl
peices to get in place. The desire to complete can be overwhelming.

>4a. Does your motivation/intent change during this process? If so can you
>say how? An example might help.

Yes. The motivation at the creative phase is often quite wild. There is
littel consideration and often a great deal of extraordinary surprise
involved. Some of these surprises can be almost spiritual in the intensity
of seeing soemthing almost alien to myself emerging.

>4b. What do you mean by "completion"?


Feeling that the pieces are in place and that the voice, not always mine, is
right. The feeling of rightness varies month by month as ones critical
faculties are influenced by mroe growth as an artist. So words can get
replaced often after having declared something done. This editing in light
of new feelings and concerns seems to go on forever!

>5. Input: is there a way of generalising your raw materials? Are there,
>for instance, groups of books, musics, other artworks, or people in your
>life, which you plunder repeatedly? Name the most significant:


Francis Bacon. Frank Auerbach. Michael Tippett. Ben Britten. String quartets
and piano music. Concertos in general. Georg Baselitz. Janacek. Where books
are concerned: Lowell, Hughes, Simic, Kees, Beckett, Artaud. Seminal texts:
JG Ballard's Crash and probably Joyce's Ulysses. Films: Paris Texas unlocks
something quite enriching. I mustn't go on too much.

>5a. What conditions input? Weather? Nation? the Sports pages? Rejection of
>all of these?


In the main internal events. If you know Myers-Briggs, I'm an INTP and the
art comes from my response to significance in how other art reflects upon my
life experience. Events sometimes do bring about poems but often at a great
distance. Some poems don't come from my experience at all and their
authenticity as works of fiction can be extremely surprising.

>6. How open to mistakes are you? What steps do you take to encourage or
>discourage them?


Oh god, all the time. I don't create them but mistakes can point the way to
growth more than one's successes (whatever they might be)

>7. Roadtesting your writing: on a few friends? at readings? read to the
>cat? leave in a drawer for 6 weeks? Not at all?

Leave to fester and only inflict when my own critical faculties remain
loyal. Then in magazines, on this list . . . very rarely if ever on friends,
spouse or extended family.

>7a. Does this process transform the work? If so how?


Confirms or crushes. In the former, tweaks can begin. Particularly in
preparation for a mailshot. If there is rejection work can get dropped for
long periods.

>8. Do you have lots of pieces of work on the go at the same time? Are they
>separate or all part of the same fabric? Or do you work methodically at
>one piece, then the next, then the next? Or in none of these ways? Please
>specify:


Yes. Literally scores of poems on the go. Rarely part of the same thematic
fabric. Sometimes work can appear in themes. I'm beginning to enjoy this
kind of approach. But that initial crucial burst is the thing that generates
most enjoyment, and the most discomfort. And the need for separateness.

>9. How do you plan/prepare for performance? To what extent is this
>incorporated in the drafting? Is performance a fixed point in your intent?


Read it out loud nad hear the thing internally. The music is very important.
But the page is king.

>10. Are you obsessive about the practices you've described? Or could
>you stop and do something else?

Yes. The practice is very wound up in my notions of identity and purpose. I
could't let go of being a poet and the idea of vocation continues to bemuse
me. Having found a job as a manager that differntiates me from the poems
helps keep me on an even keel. But brings about sometimes terrible internal
conflicts.


Christopher Emery




%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%