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

The following essay was written by Kim Stafford, the poet William Stafford’s son. Kim is an amazing author and teacher in his own right, and if you haven’t read either Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft, or 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: A Memoir, I suggest you correct that error immediately. The text below was published originally on the Powell’s Books blog, and if you aren’t familiar with that resource, well, heck, you should correct that immediately as well.

I’ve read almost everything that William Stafford has written, and that’s saying quite a bit, since he wrote hundreds of poems and many books about writing and teaching writing. I admire his work, and I admire the spirit in which he created his work. His poetry has been a touchstone for me now for more than half my life, and I hope that the following essay will not only give you something to think about, but also perhaps lead you to read William Stafford’s poetry (or read it again) and pick up Kim Stafford’s work as well.

Have a great week and try to get some writing done.

take care,
Erin

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

1. Each page includes the date of the writing. Is that even
   worth mentioning? Well, it turns out to be strangely helpful — in the act of
   writing, and of course for keeping track of the writings. “Once I write
   the date on a piece of paper,” William Stafford said, “I know I’m
   okay. I have made it to my writing.” This is the “open sesame”
   move of the daily writing practice, for by jotting the date down on a page, you
   have accomplished the most difficult first step: you have shown up, and you
   have begun. The pen is active before any wisdom is required, and you have
   stepped humbly into what William Stafford called “the realm where miracles
   happen.”
2. Some prose notes from a recent experience, a few
   sentences about a recent connection with friends, an account of a dream. This short
   passage of “throwaway” writing, it turns out, is very important, as
   it keeps the pen moving and gets the mind sniffing along through
   “ordinary” experience. You are beginning the act of writing without
   needing to write anything profound. No struggle, no effort, no heroic reach.
   Just writing. (As he says in his classic statement, “A Way of
   Writing,” “A writer is not so much someone who has something to say
   as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he
   would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.”)
3. An “aphorism” — a freestanding sentence, an
   idea, a question, a puzzle. Often, William Stafford would next write a sentence
   that “lifted off” from daily experience to observe a pattern, a
   truth, an idea, or a private joke (“It still takes all kinds to make a
   world, but there is an oversupply of some”). This provisional
   understanding from daily life begins to raise your attention out of the mundane
   into the gently miraculous realm of poetry. It is your own koan. These
   aphorisms in William Stafford’s daily writing rarely become part of poems
   (though some of his poems are built from a series of such lines). Most often,
   they are little wonders left to resonate as private treasure, threshold, key. A
   bell has been struck, bringing the writer to attention.
4. Then he would write something like a poem… or notes
   toward a poem… or just an exploratory set of lines that never became a poem.
   To write in poetic lines, rather than prose — this can begin a process for distilling
   from ordinary experience the extraordinary report of literature. For this day,
   again, you give yourself a chance to discover worthy things. Nothing stupendous
   may occur… but if you do not bring yourself to this point, nothing stupendous
   will happen for sure… and you will spend the balance of your day in blind
   reaction to the imperatives of the outer world — worn down, buffeted,
   diminished, martyred.