I’ve been working on a page in sporadic fits. There are still a thousand ways it can go, yet it’s “mostly” done. What I did this morning is take a black&white copy of it, and use that copy to explore, freed from the stricture of “ink is forever.” Here’s a pic, with the original on the left, and the worked-on copy on the right:

Notice the final couplet was already done. Like many murder mysteries, this poem started with a theme (the double acrostic HERE ARE THE ELSEWHERES) and the “reveal” (the final couplet “Hope is Blissful Silence–just ask these/Everlasting Peacefulness agrees”). The bestselling mystery author Mickey Spillane once said cheerfully in an interview that he wrote all his books backwards, starting with an ending and then figuring out how to get there. And, Friends, speaking from the experience of the construction of, no kidding, more than a thousand acrostic poems, starting with the first line is the rare exception, not the usual way to succeed.

With my copy I composed a draft of the first four lines, but did it beyond the page border, using white Conté crayon. This is out of a concern that if I fill in the acrostic on the page itself, it might spoil the visual effect enjoyed by the similarity between the letters and words already on the page and the floating, flexing rectangle-with-cutout in the foreground. Also, the lines are a draft, and so subject to change. (I’m not sure, for instance, that it’s such a good idea to have a “Beauty and the Beast” reference in a poem addressing more eternal issues. But maybe it will be more relatable this way. SO many ways this thing can go!)

I filled in the letters for HERE on the left acrostic column and the HERE of the ELSEWHERES in the right column. Trying the resulting motif-tension on for size. I like it–it seems to work. The final version will include that.

I did a few other things too, and the reader is welcome to look for them. But this post is all about the anatomy of the creative process, and I felt it valuable to preserve this one step. There will be many more decisions to make, and more lines to compose. I hope to be done by midnight, but one BAD decision that has afflicted much of my work is to rush things. Don’t want to ruin this one by rushing it!