Ask the Author: Heidi Baker
Answered Questions (3)
Heidi Baker
Begin with practice. Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones is an excellent place to start. Find others who wish to write with you sometimes, to follow writing prompts wherever they lead, and only offer each other positive feedback (and only sincere). Practice for a while (weeks, months, years?), until something else begins to happen between you and the page. Only then add intentional writing. But always continue to practice.
Heidi Baker
From Renee Angelah, the friend I dedicated it to. She asked me what I want to write, and challenged me to make a second collection of poems my next book. I had never approached poetry so systematically. How strange it was to draft a poem knowing ahead of time I might place it between a front and back cover and say to whoever would listen, "These poems have value. Here is my book." To write them, I had to let myself drop down into the shared space between this world and the next, listen as I always havem and forget a considered destination. I think it worked out well.
Heidi Baker
I write whatever is in front of me as beautifully or simply as I can. Right now that would be our seventeen-year-old cat asleep on my legs. I would have moved by now, stretched, collected ripe tomatoes in the garden. Instead I eat handfuls of chocolate chips, sip warm decaf, listen to the first sounds of afternoon, and access the world from my dining room table.
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