Notes from the Tree

This is where I keep the working notes — the offcuts, the things that aren’t finished and may never be.

I have a hazel at the end of the garden. It was there before the house had my name on the deeds, and it will outlast the arrangement. Most mornings I take a cup of tea out and stand under it for as long as the tea lasts, which is a measure of time I recommend.

Almost nothing happens in that ten minutes. That is the point of it.

Writing, for me, has very little to do with inspiration and a great deal to do with keeping the pen moving until something honest gets past the guard. The guard is good at its job. It is quick, and it has excellent taste, and it will stop a true sentence just as fast as a bad one if the true one is embarrassing.

So the practice is: write badly, early, and often. Go outside. Come back and cut.

A few things I’ve found useful, offered without any claim that they’ll be useful to you:

• Write the boring middle first. Openings are vanity. The middle is where the piece decides what it’s about.
• Name the actual thing. Not “a bird” — a wren. Not “a tool” — a slean. Specificity is a form of respect.
• Ten minutes under a tree beats an hour at the desk, roughly two days out of three.
• Keep the offcuts. Half of what’s here started as a line I couldn’t fit anywhere else.

I’ll put things here as they come: notes on what I’m reading, what’s flowering, what I got wrong in a poem and had to go back and fix six months later.

Nothing here is finished. That’s the arrangement.