Dusty to Polished: Grace Downer
What sparks your urge to write, is it always the same?
Emotional things. Trauma. I get the most inspired to write after I’ve been reading a lot. So I think that always helps. It gets me back into it, if I’m in a slump or something, reading. I think inspiration hits when I go outside. As soon as I leave my four walls and get some vitamin D in me, maybe that’s when happiness hits and I get the serotonin I haven’t had in a while. I feel like maybe life is worth living. And maybe it is beautiful and needs to be written down. Although I can’t say I write happy stuff all the time so maybe that is a lie. I think I write both sad and happy poems. Because life is both. I think a lot of poets are depressed, though. That’s fair. For me, it’s the medication. Get poets medicated. Let’s go.
What sparks my urge to write is not always the same. I think my process is always the same. I write by hand first and then I go and write it on my computer and do my first round of edits. But sometimes things don’t make it off the page. Sometimes I go up to my little laptop and I think, “Ooo. That’s interesting that I wrote that down. That was brave. To be that bad”.
Do you follow a specific process or set of steps when editing?
I would say that I start by writing freehand mostly. I write my poems kind of in one go. Then I go to type it down and that’s when I do most of the editing for line breaks and stuff like that. I would say reading out loud helps with that too. I love thesaurus.com. I do. I really do. And I will be the first to admit it. I know most people are like, “that’s embarrassing.” No. I love the word “verdant”. I knew of the word but it came to me from thesaurus.com. We have dictionaries so we might as well. I’m using my resources. The first tool of my editing process is thesaurus.com. Forsure.
Editing my own work is definitely the hardest for me. I have to beg myself to do it. It’s not that I get attached to certain forms a poem is in, but it’s kind of a thing where I don’t know when it’s done. Most writers deal with that. But instead of continually editing, I just walk away and go, she’s done. She’s as done as she’s going to be. I guess I don’t really have a process, but if I did, this would be it. I write it by hand and then I type it. When I first type out the poem is when most of the edits happen. I’m basically rereading it. I’m getting into how I want it to look visually. When I write it by hand, I usually use slashes to indicate line breaks. But usually that’s not where the line breaks end up being or anything like that. So yeah, typing it out for the first time is the major edit of the process.
Workshop happens after I type the poem and get that first round of editing done. I love workshop because I feel like I’m the worst at editing my own things. So once it’s in that typed form, the first time, and I’m not going to take it to workshop, that’s its final form. But getting into workshop helps with inspiration and ideas – stuff like that for how to make it better. Because I think that’s usually where I get stuck. But then, I also have to make the effort to take people’s advice and actually go change things. Usually I just write a bunch of notes and then leave. Then I think, this is so good, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna make it so much better… I wonder when I’ll find the time. In times previous, when I’ve actually been able to get myself to sit down and do the proper edits that people have given me, which are usually really good, I would say it’s a lot easier to edit with people’s suggestions from workshop. But I actually have to get myself to do it. I don’t always get to it. I kind of need a reason to. My first semester here for my final workshop, we had to do a chapbook and so I did all the final edits for those pieces because I wanted them to be really polished for the chapbook and I had a great time doing that. I think I edited because I had a reason to.
How do you know when a piece is truly “done” and ready for publication?
I don’t. Hahaha. I have never submitted my stuff for publication. I really want to. Maybe that’s my next step. I think I’m very intimidated to start that process because it’s such a big step. Obviously, I could just go on submittable and just submit my stuff. But I think I’m scared of not only getting rejected, but being lost in the ether, because I feel like that happens a lot. You submit one poem to one place and they take six months to get back to you with a rejection. Like, do I submit this poem somewhere else? Or is it done?
But when do I know a poem is done? I think I’m pretty good at that in a sense because I don’t like editing my poems. I know how much work I am willing to put into this thing. I think for me, I know a piece is done when I don’t think I could make it better. I think, this is what I’m capable of. It’s this poem. And so it’s done. It’s in its final form. Then workshop is what helps with editing so I can make it into its extra final form. I guess that’s the process. That’s how I know. When I feel like it I don’t want to deal with this poem anymore. Is that fair? It doesn’t even have to be like, oh it’s perfect. Because I don’t think anyone ever thinks that. I mean I’m sure some do. Lucky them. But if I feel like I’m physically incapable of doing anything to improve this poem, then I know it’s done. That is my capacity. I truly gave it my all. That’s all I have.
How would you describe your writing process with an image?
Frustration. The race of frantic fun. The frustration aspect of the writing process usually comes from the very start. Usually, I’m feeling emotions about something to the point where I need to get it out and that itself is a frustration of something, even if it’s like, I love the earth so much. I need to talk about how beautiful it is. I mean, that is a frustration of some sort. I feel like there is something so physical about writing, which maybe doesn’t make sense. But it is a bodily experience. I think I feel it very deeply when I’m writing that there is something that has to come out of me and it’s especially frustrating when I feel like it’s not going well. But even when it is going well, it’s frustrating because it takes effort to try to express yourself.
What do you think makes the writing community at The New School unique?
I love all the people I’ve met here. I did a minor in writing in undergrad, so I have some experience with some other writing cohorts. I would say the difference with The New School is that it does feel like there is community here. I feel like the writers, we know each other, especially within our genres, and even beyond that. As poets, there’s not that many of us. So we know a lot of the nonfiction students which is nice. It’s unique that we have friends here. We like people here. I would say that we are diverse and that we have people that have had a lot of different life experiences. And so it’s nice to be able to read work from people who haven’t lived the same life as me. That would get old. It’s not generative. So it’s really great that there’s so many different kinds of people here.
Bio: Gracey Downer is an Oregon raised poet who enjoys writing about the body, queerness, and femininity.
This interview series is produced by Hijab Ahmed