To be a poet (#4 in a possibly infinite series)

It's a truism that poets keep notebooks. I keep mine on the computer but I used to have actual physical notebooks of mostly unfinished and unusable poetic work. Not everything can be a finished poem. Sometimes you just need to jot down a line or two, try something out, play with the wording, the meter, the rhythm. Get it down somewhere, before you forget it! Open a file, buy a notebook, sign up for an online service that saves information. Whatever. Keep a notebook of continuing efforts at poetification (No, I don't think that's really a word. Call it poetic license).

This is part of practicing the craft and part of learning to think like a poet. Poems do not spring forth from the air by magic. For every finished and readable poem, there may be a hundred fragments that didn't quite work. Fragments you might be able to work someday, or that may even inspire something better. To be clear, this is not a journal of the poet's life. Keep one of those if you want but keep it separate from your working notebooks.

You have to be your own scribe. Keep the thoughts. Work out the words. Try different approaches, themes, styles. Don't worry if it seems that there is more of that partial  work than finished poetry. Every house needs a foundation, unseen beneath. Build it and build on it.