Thanks to Liz Strauss at Successful Blog for a very enjoyable chat on the phone yesterday and for featuring me in her Blogger A Day (B.A.D.) series.

Picking up from our blogging conversations, it was great fun swapping stories and ideas with Liz, about creativity, coaching and writing. I’m really impressed with the summary she’s written about my work - and I’m particularly pleased she picked up on the links between my blogging and poetry.

If you’ve not seen Successful Blog yet, you really should. Different bloggers have different strengths - with Liz, as well as producing a constant stream of thought-provoking content, she’s got a phenomenal ability to build a sense of community around her blog. Stopping by her comments section is like popping into a cafe in the middle of a lively discussion. And no matter how many people are there, she’ll remember who you are and give you a warm welcome.

I’ve just launched Mark McGuinness|poetry, a blog about reading and writing poetry.

It includes links to my own poems and articles that are published elsewhere. Currently there’s a link to a recording of me reading a poem at the launch of The Wolf magazine No.3, and some of my reviews and articles for Magma. Other poems and articles will be added as they appear online in archives.

I will also be writing about poetry I’m currently reading and some of my old favourites. I originally intended to include all of my poetry posts on this blog, but it feels as though the poetry wants a space to itself. So the Wishful Thinking blog will continue to focus on media-neutral creativity and its application in business and the arts.

There will be some cross-over between the two blogs, with some posts (or parts of posts) appearing in both spaces, so the poetry has not been completely banished from Wishful Thinking - it’s just built an annexe of its own. Let me know what you think of it.

Technorati Tags: writing poetry

Here are some tips for dealing with writer’s block, based on my own writing experience and the most common patterns I encounter with coaching clients.

Although this post concentrates on writers, many of the tips can be applied to other kinds of creative block.

Let me know if you find them useful!

1. Make a deal with your Inner Critic
All writers have an ‘Inner Critic’ or editor at the back of the mind. We need one, to maintain quality control. The purpose of your Inner Critic is to make you a better writer - but sometimes s/he gets a bit carried away, and starts pulling your draft to pieces before you’ve even got it down. So every time you try to write, you end up listening to a nagging inner voice telling you everything that’s wrong with your work and why you’ll never cut it as a writer.

If this starts happening, imagine sitting down with your inner critic over coffee, and make the following deal: Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: writing, creative block, Inner Critic

At the start of his book Art Worlds, Howard S Becker quotes the following passage from Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope:

“It was my practice to be at my table every morning at 5.30a.m.; and it was also my practice to allow myself no mercy. An old groom, whose business it was to call me, and to whom I paid £5 a year extra for the duty, allowed himself no mercy. During all those years at Waltham Cross he was never once late with the coffee which it was his duty to bring me. I do not know that I ought not to feel that I owe more to him than to any one else for the success I have had. By beginning at that hour I could complete my literary work before I dressed for breakfast.”

Becker points out that the old groom played a vital role in the creative process that produced all those classic novels, even though he is far from the conventional image of a ‘creative person’. Trollope fits the Romantic image better: the solitary writer toiling away at his desk by candlelight. Yet without the old groom he would probably have overslept occasionally. That might not have seemed important at the time, but if we totted up the figures over a lifetime (something it would be fairly easy to do, given his famous habit of writing 1,000 words per hour) a lie-in once a fortnight could have cost Trollope several novels. Read the rest of this entry »

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I wasn’t joking when I said I read a lot of poems - over the last few months I’ve read literally thousands of them, as the editor of Issue 34 of Magma poetry magazine. This is my first time as an editor, and it’s very interesting to be on the other side of the fence for a change. Having submitted lots of poems to magazines, like most poets I’ve received more rejections than acceptances. So it’s been a slightly surreal experience to be the person opening the letters and e-mails and making the judgements myself.

After ploughing through so many poems I have a new-found admiration for all those editors out there who keep the poetry world going. It’s exciting, challenging and eventually tiring work. I’m lucky because we rotate the editorship at Magma, which means I’ve handed over the baton to Tim Robertson for Magma 35, but I’m amazed to think of the enthusiasm and sheer stamina of editors who edit issue after issue single-handed.

I’m also hoping the experience will be useful for my own writing, by sharpening my critical judgement and helping me to weed out mediocrity in my drafts of poems. I wouldn’t have taken on the editorship unless I was fairly confident of my critical judgement, but having to get through so many poems has certainly forced me to focus my attention quickly on the essential qualities of a poem - Does it catch my attention and hold it? Does it have the spark of energy that brings it alive?

Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: poetry