Villanelle -- Writing to a Specific Form

Most of you have probably never heard of a villanelle. It is a 19-line poem composed of five tercets and a concluding quatrain. It is a rhymed poem with only two rhymes and two lines that repeat alternately throughout the poem. Sound intimidating? I assure you, it is.

 I know that the bulk of you reading this are never going to write a villanelle, or even poetry for that matter. I am just using this as an example for how your writing -- or anything else creative you do -- can actually be enhanced by having to work within  rigid structure once in a while.

Back in my poetry days I was faced with writing one (ultimately several) and I was a bit taken aback. How was I going to do this?

Having to write to a prescribed form is always difficult. You must take your creative genius, which is vast and wild, and cram a bunch of  into a little box that it doesn't seem to fit inside. It is kind of like learning to pack a suitcase with a maximum of stuff -- you have to learn a new way to fit everything together.

I struggled a lot with this. First of all was coming up with a topic. So I thought about my favorite things. I love rocks and once wanted to be a geologist. So I took that as my subject. Two rhymes only is tricky because you want to choose rhymes that will give you a lot to choose from if you can. So "rocks" was obvious for one and "stones" worked for the other.

This being settled upon I took a sheet of notebook paper and laid out the rhyme scheme I needed to follow:

A1
B
A2

A
B
A1

A
B
A2

and so forth. This helped a great deal -- like having a road map to where I was heading. It turned out that once I created the first tercet I realized that I had finished a good share of the poem because of the repeating lines.

I wriggled uncomfortably and twisted and turned many a word to get the lines just right. At times I felt like I was sweating blood. In the end I was amazed at what I had before me on the paper. It was far better than what I had hoped for.

Mother Ship (a Villanelle)

Here on our great starship of stones,

We oft forget the importance of rocks,

These are the mother earth’s skeletal bones.

The desert wind of the Sahara moans,

Blowing sands that scour pyramid blocks,

Here on our great starship of stones.

Boulders huddled like ancient, hunchbacked crones,

Gathered for one of their gossipy talks,

These are the mother earth’s skeletal bones.

Elegant towers of wind-carved sandstones,

That rise above shepherds tending their flocks,

Here on our great starship of stones.

Down charming streets paved with smooth cobblestones,

Up lichen-covered stairway walks,

These are the mother earth’s skeletal bones.

From the gold and lapis on royal thrones,

To pebbles lining the gullets of hens and cocks,

Here on our great starship of stones –

These are the mother earth’s skeletal bones.

This was my first time writing a villanelle. I entered it into the contest and won first place. When it was read out loud to the members of the Poetry Society of Colorado at the annual awards luncheon there was an audible "wow!" at the end. It made of the struggle worth it. 

By having to follow a tight framework I had had to amp up my creativity to a new level. I had to dig deeper, reach further. I found there the writer I was working to be, the writer I wanted to be. 

Gems and jewels are made from high amounts of heat and pressure. So don't be afraid  of the pressure and constraint. It is good for the writer's soul -- and you never know when you will strike gold.

Udderly Amoosing

Trying to write to a specific topic can be very difficult and challenging. It requires  some serious

lateral thinking. The example that comes to mind is from back when I was writing a lot of poetry and I was faced with writing a love poem. This was a baffling topic for me since I am not exactly a hearts and flowers kind of gal.

Each year the Poetry Society of Colorado would have their annual contests for members. There were twenty or so contests and I became determined to enter every one every year. Unfortunately for me there was a category for writing a love poem. I wracked my brain for days. Nothing was coming to me. I reread the description. ANY kind of love. Hmmmmm. I could work with ANY. What kinds of love were there? I didn't have to stick with the gushy, gooey romantic stuff that is ordinarily associated with a love poem.

So what was love to me? What examples of love did I note around me? Mother and child. Brother and sister. Father and tools. Humans and pets. My stepmother and housecleaning. I was getting closer. Having opened up alternate definitions of love was having an effect on me. From out the the blue I remember seeing a news story of a moose somewhere back east that had fallen in love with a cow.

Those gears in my head started grinding to loudly that the neighbors were complaining. I didn't need some saccharine tome to love. No indeed. I could go with my true strength in life -- humor! So I set to work. Boy, was this gonna be good. And it was. The resulting poem took second place in the contest.
Check it out here:

Opposite Attractions

©2000 by Laurie Kay Olson

The course of true love makes no excuse –

As was the case with a certain moose.

Though I can’t really tell you how,

He fell in love with a Jersey cow.

In the field where she placidly chewed her cud

He stood as though rooted in ankle-deep mud.

The townspeople tried to remove him in vain.

The harder they tried the more it was plain.

He watched his true love with adoring eyes

While she regarded him with mild surprise.

I’ve heard that those two are standing there yet,

As much in love as two species can get.

The moral of this story is simple and sweet –

Love may be found wherever two hearts can meet.

It is short, to the point, humorous and definitely falls into the category of ANY kind of love. I learned that I can write to just about any topic I'm given as long as I keep my mind wide open to the possibilities and don't just say "Oh, I can't do that!" The truth is that yes, I can. If I am really saying I can't I need to be honest with myself and say "This topic is so intimidating that I choose not to." 

Are there topics that I would choose not to write on? Well, certainly there are. I'm not into porn, Goth, punk, heavy metal and so on. I'm not taking some moral stance, I just don't have the background to go there -- not even with lateral thinking.

So before thinking that you can't write about something, take a small step to the right or left and take a look at the topic again. That may be all you need to see the subject in a different way and give you the inspiration to write something wonderful.

Failure: The Path To Success

When you are a writer you have to get used to failure -- lots of failure. But that's a good thing. The path to success is lined with failure. If you haven't failed you aren't really trying.

Few writers just walk onto life's stage with an agent, a contract, and a publisher. We usually spend years honing our craft and collect stacks of rejection slips for short stories, articles, and essays. Some of us get a degree in English, journalism, or creative writing, while others of us get our education in the school of hard knocks. I have seen many an educated writer start waving their degree in frustration when their writing expectations aren't met when they meet the real world.

Being academically correct in your writing doesn't guarantee a thing in the real world of writing. At the other end of the spectrum is the writer who is functionally illiterate but thinks having a great idea and getting it on paper is enough.

Whichever path you are on as a writer you have to put in the work, accept your failures and learn from them. Learn the difference between constructive and non-constructive criticism and discover for yourself when to accept and make use of the criticism and when to stay your course.

Back in the days when all manuscripts were sent by snail mail I received a rejection slip from Redbook magazine that I still have to this day. It was one of those form notes that publications sent out by the millions to writers. I kept it because someone had taken the time to add a handwritten scrawl at the bottom of how much they liked my story, though it still needed work, it just wasn't right for their magazine. It was one of those failures that contained just enough victory to give me hope.

When I was in junior high I had an English teacher who was extremely supportive of my writing dreams. In high school I had a creative writing teacher who said that I was a derivative hack who would never amount to anything as a writer. My father hated my writing, sure that I was just out to try to become famous and would shun dealing with the real world in favor of the dream. My stepmother went through my scribblings (without permission) while I was away at college and was sure I was deluding myself because my stories never seemed to have endings. A psychic told me that I would never write except to please myself, indicating that I would never be a successful, paid writer.

I had to shut down all of the voices that were out there encouraging me to fail. I had to follow what I knew was right for me, no matter what. I wrote piles and piles of utter garbage. It took a long time, but my writing started getting better, more original, and cleaner. Every time I got an idea I wrote it down. Every time I stopped writing a story, with or without an ending, I started another one.

There is that old cliche out there that says "failure is not an option." While that makes a great movie tag line, it doesn't wash for most of what we face in life. Failures create the steps we need to climb to move upward.

Failure helps us know when to make changes to make something better.  Failures can tell us when to let go of one story or poem and move on to the next. Sometimes all it tells us is to try again.

Years ago I wrote a poem comparing myself to a butterfly, having shut myself into a protective cocoon of my own making and now choosing to break out and flex my wings. It was short and pithy and good. So I sent it into a contest. It did not win. Not only did it not win, a note from the judge was scrawled on it telling me how awful the poem was. The poem was too short, the lines were too short, it was boring and so forth.  I took everything the judge said into consideration and ultimately decided that the judge was wrong. A year or two later I entered the poem into a contest again. This time I won first place.

Another time I sent a poem to a contest that told the tale of the first time my mother tried to show me a rainbow. I couldn't see it. I kept looking for a ribbon tied in a bow somewhere up in the sky. It just didn't take. The judge in this case wrote a note that the total poem was implausible and that of course a child would be able to see a rainbow.

My point here is that the person reading your work is just as prone to failure as you are. Just because they are in some elevated position over you does not necessarily mean squat, be it judge or editor. Sometimes they get it wrong too. That includes with your work.

When something is not performing I set it aside sometimes for a few days, sometimes for a few years. When I take it out again I see it with fresh eyes and can make more critical changes with a bit of perspective. Some things go back in the "vault" while others get reworked and are sent out into the world again.

"Failure" can encompass a world of things that aren't so personal either. I sent a poem in to Poetry.com for a "contest." They told me I won some level of prize for. Then they wanted me to buy the book to see my work. I realized that this failure was learning that the site was not truly legit. This was especially shown to be the case when they kept sending me emails trying to get me to buy other stuff. Most notably was them trying to get me to purchase a lovely copy of my poem mounted on some sort of plaque that I would be able to display to the world. This may have worked if I had only had the one poem in me. Instead I have written over 1,000 poems, many of which have won legitimate cash prizes. So this failure was just a learning process to never, ever deal with them again.

So, while I am still on my journey to be able to support myself full time as a writer, I have climbed on top of a considerable pile of failures to be able to reach higher than I could before.

Comedy -- Writing Funny

Historically the jester was the only one in the court who could make fun of the king. He was able to do this by hiding it within the jest. By making it funny and couching it in just the right phrase it becomes fairly painless. That doesn't mean that the jester never missed the mark and got sent to the dungeon, but for the most part he got away with murder.

These days comedians like Jay Leno, David Letterman, Stephen Colbert, and Jon Stewart point out the idiocies and absurdities of the moneyed and powerful elite. These guys are at the top of their game because they are so capable of hitting their target accurately. They strip bare the absurdities and juxtapositions down to the bare truth that we really knew was there all along. We laugh because we are surprised that they will say it. We laugh because we understand. We laugh because they are right.

They are funny instead of venomous because they back it up with love. Love? Yes. They aren't spewing angrily about any of these issues. They love the very absurdity they witness all around them. On some level they love the people that perpetrate the absurdities. It is about teasing with the truth.

 The first time I wrote something funny I was not at all aware that I was being funny. I was writing my annual Christmas letter and was relating the story of how I had been charged by a buck while raking leaves that fall. I found out that I had been funny when my cousin later told me that she had nearly died laughing over my tale.

So how do you make your writing funny? I had to go back and look at the story I had told.

First of all you need to go beneath the surface. It isn't enough to say I was terrified. I had to explain how terrified I was in pretty specific terms -- and very human terms. I need to be showing you the part of me that you can identify with. So when I realize that this enormous buck is running across the street and lowering his head at me there were all sorts of things running through my head in the space of a few seconds. I was measuring the distance from me to the front door. Nope. I would be a bunch of little Laurie kabobs on his antlers before I could reach shelter. Could I defend myself? The wooden rake in my hand seemed so tiny compared to him and those antlers that I may as well trying to defend myself with a toothpick.

Second, it is HOW you say things. I didn't just say that I imagined being gored by the antlers. I added to the imagery with an off-beat comment about Laurie kabobs. It made light of a serious situation without dismissing how serious it was. Another part of the story was that he had been tracking a doe that had come running through the neighborhood just seconds before he had shown up. She had dashed between two homes before he came along so she was nowhere in sight. All he saw was me instead and I was not his type and that really ticked him off. Describing the eight point buck as a horny beast allowed me to employ a double entendre.

I was also able to be a bit self-effacing by adding that this was the sort of reaction I got from males -- now apparently of any species.

Third part is how you write. Short, zippy sentences keep the story moving quickly. Take little time describing the scene. How you tell the story should take care of that. I was raking leaves in my yard. That should conjure most of the setting -- grass, autumn, dry leaves crunching, a cool day. It is hard to be funny when you get too verbose. On the other hand, if I had been writing this into a romance I would have gone into the details to set a mood whereupon Ryan Reynolds (or George Clooney for my age group) could sweep in and rescue me from certain impalement. In my version, if either man had shown up, he would have caught his designer sweater in the branches of the wild plum tree and I would accidentally stab him in the eye with the rake.

Ultimately Bucky caught the scent of his lady love again and the valiant ungulate swain took off on her trail again. My knees gave way and I sat down where I was and tried to get my lungs working again. Now that I was safe again I was able to wish them well on their honeymoon.

My second comedy outing was trying to write a funny poem for a contest. I was wracking my brain for what was funny. The answer came to me in the bathroom (a.k.a., the thinking room) when I looked at myself in the mirror. Ah, yes, the bad hair day. So off I went describing how difficult my hair could be, including the fact that it seems to be deserting me. I was stumped for an ending though. I finally remembered a former coworker who used to threaten to shave her head every time she got stressed. Aha! My ending appeared out of the mists of time. I ended up winning third place for my first foray into humorous poetry:

Bad Hair Day (Attitude to Match)

(c) 1996 by Laurie Kay Olson

I have that hair, you know the kind,

It won't settle down and make up its mind.

It flies, it lumps, it bumps, it swirls,

It won't like flat, and it won't go in curls.

I'm getting to work late again this week,

But I hate to go out with hair that's not sleek.

I brush it, I spray it, I comb it and then -

Just one little sneeze and it's hopeless again.

I know that I'm lucky to have hair at all,

I don't have to shop for it down at the mall.

Be that as it may, I just want to yell!

Sometimes I think I'm in follicle hell!

I'm getting so mad, I'm in a huge snit -

I'll just shave my head and be done with it!

 This success led me to apply to write a humor column for the Colorado Daily Newspaper. For samples of my column, click here. The column on sports even garnered me my first piece of fan mail.

I find writing humor and comedy extremely rewarding. I love making people laugh. I love laughing at myself.

Humor is the best medicine and the doctor is IN(sane).

Verses vs. Verses

I write poetry. A LOT of poetry. To date I have written more than 1,000 poems and have published

four poetry books for Kindle on Amazon.com. It should come as no surprise to anyone that they do not sell. Very few people read poetry and many people write it. It is a strange juxtaposition, but there you have it.

There is a bit of conflict in the world of poetry over whether it is better to write free verse or standard poetic forms. Since I write it all, I have an opinion on this. I don't get the argument. Write what works for you.

Here are some guidelines based on my personal experience and preferences:

• I hate long poems. They tend to wander about and accomplish little, leaving me to wish that I could get that part of my life back. I don't care if you are the next Longfellow or Tennyson, edit the hell out of your work. They lived in a time when long poems were far more acceptable. Their poetry was not in competition with television, video games, and the Internet. Be concise and direct.

• I love free verse. For many years that is all I wrote. It was my basic training in writing poetry-- like calisthenics to build my writing muscles. After I won a poetry contest with a free verse poem I started down a poetry rabbit hole that took me in diverse directions.

• I love standard poetry forms. Obviously I didn't start out that way. After I won that first contest I joined the Poetry Society of Colorado. Every year they sponsored a large number of contests on a variety of subjects and/or forms. This caused me to challenge myself to start writing more of the forms I knew and learn those that I did not.

• Forcing myself out of my comfort zone to work in unfamiliar ways and pushing to write them well enough to win contests was some of the best writing training I could have found -- not just for poetry but for everything. I learned to say what I meant concisely, to fit size limitations and to stay completely on topic. I learned to edit heavily. I learned that, given enough time and effort, I could write anything.

• I discovered new things about myself through writing poetry this way -- that I have a talent for writing cowboy poetry, that the best poem I ever wrote was in a very difficult form so facing the difficult engendered excellence, and that I am WAY more competitive than I ever thought I was.

• I love words. I love the way they fit together and the way they can ebb and flow. I love the way I can use them to reach into the hearts souls of the people around me. Learn to play with them fitting and refitting them. Make lists of words that go together. Make a list of colors and remember to reach as far as you can and add amber and amethyst and the like to your list.

• Don't be obtuse. Poetry is not meant to be vague and loaded with mysterious meanings that would take a college professor to interpret. Much of the poetry that seems that way was written at different times in history when meanings and metaphors differed from what we know today.

• Push yourself to try new things. Dabble in Haiku. Play with a Limerick. Try a Senyru, a Tanka, or a Sonnet. 

• Learn to recognize when you are over-writing. You can't put in every detail, but you can brig the reader to the point where they will fill in the details tor themselves. It is okay if they fill it in wrong. It is their half of the reader/writer partnership. I wrote a poem (free verse)  about my father leaving me when I was a child and likening the shock to losing my innocence. The finished poem sounds like it is about being raped. I have never changed a word. It works as is. I learned that when I was having trouble writing I was usually over writing. I would step back, find the core of the subject, and start again. The results were usually spot on. This works with prose as well.

• Have passion for what you are writing.

• Never give up. Never give in.

Oh, and as to whether you should write free verse or traditional forms, it doesn't matter. Just do what works for you. And keep an open mind about trying new things. It will make you a better writer.