319. a good way to write

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) was an American lyric poet and playwright. A prominent feminist in New York City during the Roaring Twenties, Millay won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 for her poem “Ballad of the Harp-Weaver,” becoming the first woman and only the second person to do so. 

I read a rare interview she gave to an American reporter in 1931, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I quote from that here -

“When I am working on a book, I work all the time. I always have a notebook and pencil on the table at my bedside. I may wake up in the middle of the night with something I want to put down. Sometimes I sit up and write in bed furiously until dawn. And I think of my work all the time even when I am in the garden or talking to people. That is why I get so tired. When I finished the poetry collection 'Fatal Interview' I was exhausted. I was never away from the sonnets in my mind. Night and day I concentrated on them for the last year and a half.”

She says that her husband, Eugen, interacts with the servants, shows them around, and tells them everything. “I don't interfere with his ordering of the house. I have no time for it. I don't want to know what I'm going to eat. I want to go into my dining room as if it were a restaurant and say, ‘What a charming dinner!’ And it is this concern with my household that protects me from the things that eat up a woman's time and interest.”

She considered writing poetry an extremely delicate process and took pains not to let everyday worries disrupt it. She says that when you write a poem, something begins to take shape within your thoughts and life, and you become increasingly aware of it.  

I appreciate her process. She explains that after finishing a first draft, she revises it multiple times, sometimes setting it aside for months or even up to two years. Then she steps back and views it as a critic, waiting until she can analyze it objectively. Only then does she consider it ready for release.

I feel it’s a good way to write.