11-30-2013, 06:14 AM
Editing and keeping your poem true to your experience need not be mutually exclusive. That's where experience and confidence come in. A good writer has the confidence to consider and disregard plenty of advice before deciding which piece to apply. Most often, the workshopping process is where you learn the most about why you wrote your poem in the first place. Were you really telling the story of your grandmother, or was it about your own aspirations? Is the dog at the end of the street the tragic figure, or is it your father? Is everything you write really about sex or are your readers just perverts? 
The advice you receive in a workshop should never be seen as an imperative. Editing is as much an art form as the initial writing (and I would strongly argue that it is moreso).
My own writing process is much like justcloudy's, for the most part. Unless it's something silly (which these days is most often milo's fault), poems don't drop fully formed onto the page. A line or two at a time, that's where it starts, and they grow when they're ready. But then again, maybe those are the ones you find distorted and fuzzy
The advice you receive in a workshop should never be seen as an imperative. Editing is as much an art form as the initial writing (and I would strongly argue that it is moreso).
My own writing process is much like justcloudy's, for the most part. Unless it's something silly (which these days is most often milo's fault), poems don't drop fully formed onto the page. A line or two at a time, that's where it starts, and they grow when they're ready. But then again, maybe those are the ones you find distorted and fuzzy
It could be worse