Kortney Garrison

Every morning, before the rest of the day crowds in and my attention is scattered, I come to the page.

But what counts as writing every day? Just showing up? A few lines of journaling? A completed poem? Something in between?

For me the answer shifts. I intuitively follow a practice…until it feels like it’s time for a change. That usually happens maybe once a season. Here are a few recent schedules to give you a taste of what my mornings include:

There’s a lot of overlap between these two lists. Items move in and out organically. One relative constant? There’s a reward at the end! Reading Shaunta Grimes and investigating her resources is my reward for moving through the practices.

Morning writing practice isn’t revolutionary, and it’s not a perfect system. But it is enough.

To see all the posts in the series Listening to My Life :: Homeschooling an MFA in Poetry, click here.

“I want to consider what William Stafford’s daily writing pages contained and how they worked for him–
how something like his approach might work for any of us who choose to give such daily writing practice a try.”

There will sometimes be an “aphorism” –a freestanding sentence, an idea, a question, a note about a pattern he perceived, a puzzle.

William Stafford would write a sentence that “lifted off” from daily experience.

This provisional understanding from daily life begins to raise the writer’s attention out of the mundane into the gently miraculous realm of poetry.

–Kim Stafford

Four Elements of a Daily Writing Page in William Stafford’s Practice

Click here to see all the Listening to My Life :: Homeschooling an MFA in Poetry posts.