I’m Merrill Lee Girardeau, and I’m a writer.

[Writers Anonymous, together: Hi, Merrill Lee.]

Lance asked me to write about poetry for the site, and here I am. Psyched to be here and connect with y’all.  

These posts will document my attempts to stick to a writing regimen this year. The plan is to write and/or revise poems at least five days a week, every week. I have no wild word counts to hit or lofty plans to complete a manuscript. At this point, now a few weeks into the year, I’m just showing up to the page and getting my crazies out.

By way of introduction, some thoughts on writing regimens:

One of my teachers once said poetry comes through indolence. What an odd word: indolence. It supposes a lack of intention, a slack stillness during which the unconscious can run wild. It’s the magic that happens while we’re taking a shower or falling asleep, and our minds unleash sudden, golden similes.

If you’re a professional writer, can you afford indolence? It’s a fickle state of being—as fickle as indolence’s opposite: frenzy. Frenzy suggests an excess of intention: ravenous obsession, late nights, unkempt hair.

These are the poetic modes I somehow learned to revere. The inspiration, unbidden and holy, lights upon you, then you hurtle into the night with a quill and a mussy bedshirt and one flickering candle, setting your opus to paper.

I have no interest in dismissing this idea as fantasy or amateur hour (Amadeus hour?). Plus, the indolence/frenzy combination (frendolence?) has served me pretty well over many years. I’ve received poems whole. Great ideas have come to me while showering, driving, wandering Mississippi forests. I’ve burned the midnight oil on a lyrical bender or two.

Rilke claimed to receive the first line of the Duino Elegies while walking the grounds of an Italian castle. It spoke like a dictation from the divine.

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’

hierarchies?

It took Rilke just a few hours to write the rest of the First Elegy the same afternoon. What he received is a perfect poem.

We’ll return to the Elegies another time (the story of their provenance from beginning to end is a real doozy), but I proffer that example to balance everything I’m about to say and also a reminder that no matter how it comes to us, beauty is a miracle.

Here’s my thing: I don’t have the output I’d like on a frendolence regimen (if that can be called a regimen). When I wait around for the heavenly orders to speak, my poems are few and far between. Plus, when I only write, say, one poem a week, I’m more spiteful of bad first drafts. But when I write every day—inspired or not—the words aren’t as precious. The bad stuff doesn’t seem as bad, and the good stuff needs revision.

And I think spells of inactivity sparked with sudden bouts of inspiration have really worn me out. I long for steadiness. A habit that relies far less on the paroxysms of my imagination than on a repetitive and cold-blooded act of will. If the divine chooses to speak in that hour, hallelujah. If not, at least I showed up and did my part.

Inspired by a John Patrick Shanley tweet, I intend to, every day, pry open the box I hide my joy in.

Where do you hide your joy?

We find the answer, I think, in our child-selves. Mine embraced all things musical, theatrical, magical, silly, and romantic. In short, I was born a prolific fantasist, and the box where I hide my joy must own and operate the paroxysmal imagination that often so counteracts my attempts at productivity.  

Through habit, might I find joy?

My friend Tiffany says the goal of self-care is integrating your childbrain with your adultbrain. How can indulgent, imaginative indolence integrate with relentless, cold-blooded routine, which, after all, aren’t mutually exclusive?

Let’s find out.