RachelVB.com

Category: Writing Life

  • Revise

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    rachelvb
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    I’m trying to revise a new poem, but my mind keeps wandering off and I can’t concentrate and my computer is staring at me telling me to check all the portals, the internet portals, to distract myself further. I know you’re supposed to sit with things when you are stuck, but I’m feeling this one…

  • Tiny teacup

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    rachelvb
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    When I think of the publishing world, I think of myself sailing across the ocean in a tiny teacup with an umbrella broken at the joints as a sail. And I get nervous and unsure and my armpits start to sweat. There’s so many of us, there’s so many of us, there’s so many of…

  • Step up

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    rachelvb
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    I was running a high last night. Driving through the dark, cranking the music up, feeling as if dreams are so fragile I need to cradle them like an egg inside me. Some are just not ready to come out yet, some need to be tended before they are released. And what a giddy feeling…

  • Tending the fire

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    rachelvb
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    Finishing a poem is the best high in the world. Something happens in your entire body – you can feel fingers  working, molding, creating. You can feel a warmth being created under you and you’re tending and poking and rearranging the logs to the fire of this poem. You know it’s good when you’re reading…

  • !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !

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    rachelvb
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    Why do some poets put so many exclamation points in their poems? Like every line or every stanza? It’s like the life-size blow up Snowman in a sleigh being pulled by a polar bear I saw on someone’s roof yesterday. Sometimes, it’s just too much to be put in my poetry.

  • write night

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    rachelvb
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    I feel a marathon coming, a need coming. We are so tidal, pulling and pushing, our waves rolling around the sand in our toes uncovering shells and weeds and treasure. By morning we wash it ashore like naked babies crying, just born. The things inside of us revealed – we knew they were there all…

  • The places we go

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    rachelvb
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    Writers go places. Deep into the mind, into emotion, into fear and love and dark crevices that have never seen light before. I’ve always been an explorer. I’ve squeezed through sandpaper boulders in Joshua Tree National Park so I could get to the top of the world and look down. I’ve lost myself in the…

  • So many states to live in

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    rachelvb
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    I watched ‘The Duchess’ last night with Keira Knightley. I’ve never really had any intention to watch this movie, but I thought it would be full of good sex scenes and the green English countryside and pretty dresses and sheep. And it was certainly full of that, but also full of so much sadness. I’m not…

  • Great Expectations

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    rachelvb
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    How do we live as artists? I don’t mean what we do when we’re alone, the couple of hours during the morning or the night that we are actually doing the thing we love, the writing or painting or singing or photographing. How do we live, every minute, every hour as artists in the world?…

  • Joni, the great

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    rachelvb
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    “I was demanding of myself a deeper and greater honesty, more and more revelation in my work, in order to give it back to the people; where it goes into their lives and nourishes them and changes their direction and, you know, makes light bulbs go off in their head and makes them feel. And…