Writers often wonder where to find inspiration, especially those who have recently started writing. Interested in gaining advice from someone who has experienced publishing success, I reached out to Deborah Burnham, a poet and novelist, for some tips on where she finds inspiration for her writing.
Deborah Burnham is the author of two full poetry collections, three poetry chapbooks, and a young adult novel. She was born in West Virginia but came to Philadelphia early in her career to teach at a Quaker School. Burnham is now the associate undergraduate chair of the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has taught many writing classes. Recently, she’s led poetry workshops for cancer patients at Kelly Writers House and Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine. Her most recent release is a chapbook, Among the other Dead, published in 2021.
In an interview with Penn Today, Burnham said, “Writing makes people feel better. It makes people feel more competent when experiencing something out of their control, helps them feel less angry, or even gives them an outlet to express anger.”
Here are some of Deborah Burnham’s tips on how to become a better writer:
Looking at Artwork
Having something you want to express is the initial spark that gets you writing. Often it can be difficult to find reasons to keep coming back to a blank page. One technique Burnham uses to keep writing is looking at a lot of art. This gets you thinking deeply, which can lead into ideas for writing. Ekphrasis is the term used to describe a written work based on a piece of artwork. Ekphrastic poetry is one of the most popular uses of this technique.
Reading
Reading is especially important in the early years of writing development because it familiarizes you with good writing—how plot and theme build on top of each other with each sentence. The more you read, the better your writing is going to get. At first, form and wordplay will be choppy, but eventually it will become natural.
Reading is an important source of inspiration regardless of the stage of your writing career though. Just as reading will initially familiarize you with recognizing good writing, reading will continually remind you of good techniques and will get you thinking about ideas you want to write about.
Revision
Revision may be the toughest task for a writer, often harder even than writing a first draft because you must simultaneously understand your original intent and reinvent that intent by coming up with a new idea that still connects with the rest of the poem. Revision can be as simple as a single word change or as complex as an entire rewrite of the work.
To be a good writer, you must love putting words together, which involves understanding the differing connotation of similar terms and enjoying the challenge of creating sentences that haven’t been written before. Although revising a manuscript can be arduous, the practice should be seen as a creative challenge, as it will enhance the quality of your writing.
Varying your Style
Experimenting with different forms of poetry can act as a source of creativity for writers. In her writing courses, Deborah Burnham focuses on the difference between traditional and experimental forms of poetry, as well as using narrative and lyrical devices.
Along with this, she focuses on different themes in her writing. For example, Anna and the Steel Mill is about rural life in Ohio, Tart Honey is about marriage over a long period of time, and Among the other Dead is a series of elegies. These major changes in theme fuel her desire to keep writing.
As an example of varied writing, take the opening sentence of Burnham’s poem, “Forgetting,” appearing first in Poetry magazine then in Anna and the Steel Mill:
It’s the third act of Three Sisters; Masha’s weeping
at the window; she’s forgotten the Italian word
for “bird,” they’ll never leave that village, snow has
turned
to rain and with each freeze and thaw she’ll lose a few
more foreign words that once she’d hoped to use in
Moscow,
flirting.
This is largely a narrative poem, written in free verse and in the third person. A key feature of this poem is the rhyming—third, word, bird, turned, flirting—which creates a sense of meter. Compare this to the first three lines of Burnham’s poem, “For your last meal,” from Among the other Dead:
I’d scrape the rich stuff from a marrow bone
Rub it across your lips as if you could absorb
the oxen’s strength—pulling drays piled with stone
This poem is more lyrical, with the first and third lines rhyming. The bleak imagery provides the author’s attitude toward death and the person dying.
Changing style and/or theme is a way to maintain the excitement of writing when it starts to become laborious.
Chris Faunce studies Civil Engineering at Drexel University. He is from East Norriton, PA and enjoys poetry.