Writing my poetry sometimes feels like playing Monopoly - Ian McMillan
I like playing Monopoly, the addictive board game that originated in Leeds, and as I was thinking about doing some writing the other day the phrase ‘Advance to Go’ popped into my head just as my fingers were about to touch the keyboard and I realised that I could apply the principles of Monopoly to my authorial life.
Getting the board out of the box is like opening my laptop and getting my thoughts in order.
Putting the Chance and Community Chest cards in their places is a reminder that, when you’re writing, things don’t always go according to plan.
You might think that your sentences are gorgeous but one of these cards will tell you that you have won second prize in a beauty contest. Only second prize!
On the other hand, if a lovely metaphor pops into your head it’s like when you pull out that card informing you that it’s your birthday and every other player has to give you a tenner.
Mind you, in writing there no other players, unless you count the alphabet, but we’ll let that one pass.
Which piece will carry you around the board? The Top Hat of prosaic solidity or the gambolling dog of poetic possibility? Or, indeed, the iron of redrafting, smoothing out the paragraphs until they’re neat and the creases are sharp-edged?
I’ve been a full-time writer for decades but still, after all these years, I find that starting whatever I’m writing is the hardest bit.
Once I’ve got something on paper (or on screen, these days) I can rewrite it and rearrange it but at the beginning I try to put things off by making a cup of tea or staring out of the window or checking my social media or going to the door because I thought I heard someone knocking although of course I didn’t.
The writing equivalent of this is shaking a six on the dice to start. Shake: five. Put the kettle on. Shake: two. Is that somebody at the back door? Shake: six! Ah, there’s the start of a sentence like the first footsteps across a snowy field.
So I’m off and the writing has begun. My first draft of anything, these columns for example, isn’t always as good as I would want a later draft to be.
The sentences are clumsy and laboured. I check back over a paragraph and find that I’ve used the same word too many times. (Often the word ‘that’; that’s a word I tend to overuse.)
Sometimes a first draft shows off to much, with images that are meant to dazzle but in the end just give the reader a headache.
And that’s like starting at Old Kent Road when you really want to be in Mayfair. Never mind, you’ll get there. You just have to keep shaking the dice.
You just have to keep moving and eventually one of your sentences will be Park Lane.
And then you start the next paragraph at Old Kent Road again. Sometimes, as I’m writing, things come along to knock me off course.
A train of thought runs into the buffers or gets held at a red signal, which is like getting that card that sends you to jail. ‘Go directly to the full stop. Do not pass any inspiration. Do not collect 200 words.’
Let’s get to the end of the paragraph. Let’s get to Mayfair and crown it with a hotel of resonant and euphonic symphonic language!
Oh, and then let’s start again at Old Kent Road. Let’s collect the 200 words and set off. Chance, anyone?