What are My Organic Thoughts?

When the topic of what organic writing is came up, it confused me. I feel as though you can’t really decide whether someone’s writing is organic because how can you know someone’s intent unless they tell you and everyone’s organic thoughts can be interpreted differently. Someone can feel that my writing can be cliché because it’s often about different kinds of love which can seem overdone but whenever I write, it’s as organic and unique to me as possible.

When I first found my passion in writing, it was usually about my different relationships with family members. This was one of the few topics that I had concrete memories to add to my narratives. There were specific moments and faces that I could paint with my words. But even though as I get older and my relationships with these people are changing, giving me more to write about, I’ve switched my focus on what’s fun for me to write about.

Lately I’ve been very fascinated with writing about the body or more specifically physical relationships and the emotions that come with it. I find that ways to describe this topic come to my mind very organically. It’s so interesting to think of the different ways to describe something as simple as holding hands. I love that what comes naturally to someone’s mind could be the furthest thing from someone else’s mind.

How to Steal to Start

I really enjoyed writing for the third exercise which was writing a poem with stanzas. I think this exercise was easier for me because as part of the exercise, there was a suggestion to steal a line from a poem we’ve already read in class to begin our poem. I stole a line from the poem “You can take off your sweater, I’ve made today warm”. The line goes “what if it’s cold”. Immediately when I went back to this line, I knew what I wanted to write about. It feels a lot easier to write when I’m given a specific starting place. As soon as I read the line on it’s own, I thought of a situation of unrequited love and staying together even when it’s cold. Writing about the physical side of relationships has always been so interesting and fun for me because there are so many verbs, body parts, and descriptions that can be used to describe it. I love seeing the way a single moment or touch can look on paper and the different ways it can be described. I like the way the words slide together and that even if you’re not the one that experienced it, the words can help you feel the way the speaker did.

Dis/ruption

When writing a poem for exercise 2, it was hard to fathom what direction I wanted to go in to discuss disruption. I feel like I started off wanting the form to mimic the disruption that the meaning should show as well but i began to feel lost. I just began writing with a vague sense of my confusion about my life in my head. I find it really hard to talk about vague topics because I always feel dissatisfied in the production and outcome. I like having specific images and/or events in my head because that makes it easier to know what words to use and what colors and descriptions I should be focusing on.When I try to start writing a poem by just focusing on an abstract feeling, I find myself lost and grasping at straws. It’s difficult to describe a feeling without thinking of specific moments or actions that I can associate it with. I am not the proudest of the poem that was elicited from this exercise but I am learning that not every piece will be perfect but it can still help generate new ideas.

 

Being One

I really enjoyed the exercise on writing a poem about “one”. It really confused me because I often write my poems have a lot more of a specific starting point. It felt really limiting at first because I was thinking of the prompt from the perspective of being connected and whole so I tried to avoid using the word “I” but it proved to be more difficult than I had imagined and it really limited my thoughts from making it to the paper so as time went by I tried to avoid using articles then I tired to only use we but my thoughts kept feeling like there was a disconnect. I decided to take a different approach and talk about myself as two different people in one. At first it was hard to articulate the ideas i had in my head but eventually it became easier to express the feeling of duality competing within myself.