Stuck?

Early mornings are a hard time to write, because everything comes out sounding the same. It's dark. It may be raining. Or it's spring, and the birds and the light have awakened me too soon. And it's time to get dressed and brush my teeth.

How to transcend the rigors of routine and explore—or find what I want to explore? Now, in the late afternoons, I have thoughts and ideas and images and usually no time at all to sit down and spill any of them out, much less follow them and see where they go.

I've thought about stopping off early at a coffee shop and sitting down with a cup of tea and scribbling some things down—but home has a strong pull. There are children and a cat and possibly rejection letters at home, maybe even some other interesting mail.

So it's the same old, same old, and not a lot of new work. Even when the poems are different, I start to feel like I am writing the same poem over and over again. It's different from developing a theme—more like being caught in one place. Do you ever feel like you're stuck in a writing rut?