During the winter months, I find myself channeling my bear relatives and hibernating. I stay in my cave, and watch old movies and write.  A friend attributes it to SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder – something about sunlight deprivation. Yeah, I’m feelin’ that.

During those months, my poetry is sometimes pretty depressing. Getting out those feelings helps, but it isn’t necessary a good thing. When I write from my heart, I bare my soul. I read somewhere that helps make a good poet – people respond when they know you have shared an intimate feeling with them. I don’t share those poems often - just not sure if I’m ready for that much bonding with strangers, you know?

As the days get longer, and the sun peeks out, my mood improves and so does the tone of my poetry…but there’s usually a transition. Inspiration comes from everywhere – old movies, music, books, photo albums, or stories I read on the internet. Lines from these things strike me as profound or poetic, and suddenly I’ve got a poem rolling around in my head. I’ve been known to hit the ‘pause’ button and rush to the computer, moved by something I just saw. I didn’t say they were good poems – but poems, nevertheless!

Now and then I’ll open up my folder and look at what I’ve done in the past month or so, and work on the incomplete things. But the poems I work at don’t seem to have the same spark of emotion as those written, complete at the first sitting, with a sudden surge of inspiration. Maybe it’s that ‘baring the soul’ thing. Maybe the mood has passed and I’m no longer feeling it. Okay.  So not everything I write is genius. I can live with that.  I can also learn from it, trying to determine why it happens and how to keep the spark in the words.

I’ve also discovered prose and poetry are different processes with me. With prose, I can decide ‘I want to go write’ and something will happen – I’ll open something  still in progress, or remember a mental note I made a few days before. But the line, thought, or image has to occur to me before I’m ready to write poetry.  It seems to be a reverse action.

I know I’m not the only one whose mood affects her writing – after all, we writers are an emotional bunch! How do your moods affect the way you work?  Some friends say writing actually helps – especially if they have a work in progress. They can forget their current state of mind and become enveloped in the project. Do you work to get yourself OUT of a bad mood, or use the emotion in the writing itself, and see where it leads you? All of the above?

One thing I’m sure of.  My best poetry comes from my emotions, whether high or low – so they are a necessary part of my muse.  How about you?