Joanie Mackowski Recommends...

"It helps me to remember that inspiration needs courting; it won't come if I wait passively. Also, let's say I get inspired but have a rusty hand...then the inspiration plugs into a faulty outlet. So, when I've time to write but no mojo, I count. I write iambic pentameter or sapphic stanzas, or I make up some rhythm pattern and repeat it for a while (like writing lines with spondees, which is way hard!). If these attempts fail, then I go to a park or a café for an hour or two and write down what I see—not trying to say anything, but just attending to shapes, juxtapositions, data. These things all help, plus, lately, reading John Ashbery—this shakes me alive."
—Joanie Mackowski, author of View From a Temporary Window (University of Pittsburgh Press, January 2010)