Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Quickmuse and process

This looks nifty: QuickMuse, a poetry jam site that exposes writing process. You can see the finished poem and then do a playback of the writer compsing the poem, writing and deleting and shuffling things around. The interface, well, I could wish for it to be more like a video where you can slide a bar and speed it up or pause. But I love the idea. Poems on assignment or on a subject have always made me yawn - even assignments I try to give myself. But how interesting it would be to capture the natural process of writing... not always, but occasionally. I have a moment between when i'm rambling and casting about, and then suddenly get in the groove, get my vision, and know what I'm doing. I can stay in that state of mind for hours, then drop out, exhausted emotionally. My paper notebooks have those few first lines and "casting" maybe pages of rambling or clumsy lines that I know aren't "it". It seems to me that part of inspiration is knowing what is not it, but knowing you have to go through creating Not-It anyway.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh! What a neat idea. Like watching other people make sausage.

But you're right about the poems.

--wired