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What’s Essential [1]

Fiction [2]
5.12.21

In an article for the Guardian [3] featuring six poets and their reflections on the past year, Kae Tempest writes about the process for their short, four-line poem “2020.” Tempest mentions that the poem was longer, and then they realized the poem only needed four lines: “Sometimes it takes writing the thing to know what it is you are trying to write.” Inspired by Tempest’s process, choose an abandoned draft of a story and rewrite it as a concentrated version of itself. Does this exercise help you get closer to what’s essential about the narrative?


Source URL:https://www.pw.org/content/whats_essential

Links
[1] https://www.pw.org/content/whats_essential [2] https://www.pw.org/genre/fiction [3] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/may/08/windows-on-the-world-pandemic-poems-by-simon-armitage-hollie-mcnish-kae-tempest-and-more