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

Originally posted by Kim Stafford, March 20, 2014 on the Powell’ Books blog.
This year we celebrate the centennial of William Stafford’s
birth — in Hutchinson, Kansas, 1914. He started in the Midwest but published 59
of his 60 books in Oregon (not to mention the dozen published since his passing
in 1993). When people would ask him, “Bill, when is your next book coming
out?” he would often answer, “Which one?”
How did he do that? Well, the answer is very simple and
lavishly inviting: he wrote something every day for 40 years, and his books
were made from about one day’s writing out of eight that he found worthy.
In this little remembrance of him, I want to consider what
those daily writing pages contained, and how they worked for him — and how
something like his approach might work for any of us who chose to give such
daily writing practice a chance.
His pages, which are now housed in the William Stafford
Archives at Lewis & Clark College, exhibit a varying daily mixture of four
prevailing elements:
  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. 

÷ ÷ ÷
Most of us do an assignment shortly before it is due.
(That’s often true for me.) It’s better to begin the project when it’s first
assigned, not when it’s due. And, I realize again and again, it’s even better
to practice self-directed searching, writing, thinking on the page — when there
is no assignment given. This empowers the free range of mind, of “hands-on
thinking.” By something like this daily practice, you build up a personal
sheaf of riches, a democracy of inner voices, an archive you can draw from as
needed for work and pleasure over time.
My students once said to me, “You give us a deadline
for our writing. Who gives you a deadline?” A terrible sentence came to my
mind: “Death is my deadline.” There are myriad latent discoveries in
me. Daily, I must bring them forth. So, for this William Stafford Centennial
year, I am trying this four-part practice every day. And I have to tell you, I
carry a private satisfaction into each day’s struggle.
This was my father’s way, each day, for the long run of his
adult life. What I tell my students about daily practice is this: You may not
consistently compose something of lasting value — but it will be a better day!
Something like this structure may lift your journal-keeping into a realm of
episodic discovery reaching beyond your days. Gradually, inexorably, you will
accumulate riches to return to, an archive of discrete beginnings to nurture on
the path of your devotions.

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