Think of revision as an opportunity to approach your writing with all the skill and experience you’ve achieved by now. To re-vision is a joy. Even when you feel like you are plodding through muck with cement shoes, know that you are following in the footsteps of every writer you ever admired.

Here are some highlights from a double session class I’ll be teaching at The Loft, May 4 and May 11, 1-5 pm. To join us contact Loft Education at 612-379-8999 or enroll online at loft.org.

Remember, these are simply guidelines. No rules are hard and fast, but it’s good to learn the rules before you break them:

1. Start strong. A compelling first line, be it unusual or visual or sensual, welcomes your reader into your poem or other writing.
2. Patterns are pleasing. You can use sound patterns, almost rhyme, a bit of repetition and alliteration, to name a few of the tools at our disposal.
3. Use your five senses. Train yourself to use more than just sight. Is there a scent of lemon? Rotting leaves? Is there a swoosh of a bird’s wing? A feather of a breeze? You get the idea.
4. Be vivid and specific. Your work comes alive with tension and emotion. This is the old “show, don’t tell” and adjectives are not your friends.
5. In poetry, stanza breaks let us take leaps through time or space, to give the reader a little surprise. We don’t want to lose our reader, so make sure your leap isn’t too reckless.
6. Line breaks, oh line breaks. Poets spend months considering line breaks. Long line or short line, breaks build the shape of the poem. The first and last words of the line get extra notice. Breaking a line in the middle of a phrase is sometimes very effective. Never stop experimenting with line breaks.
7. Read your work out loud and listen. Is there music? Is it clunky in places?
8. Eliminate “prewriting” and adjectives, unless they are surprising or quirky. Prewriting is all that blather you put down before the action of your poem or prose begins. Dump it.
9. Use your skills but don’t think too much. Let the work tell you what shape and form and tone it needs to take. Be honest. Be generous. Be emotional. Be present in your writing.
10. Phrases: If you have heard it before, it’s trite. Find a new way to say it… if you need it at all.
11. Respect your reader. Readers are smart. Resist the urge to tie up the ending neatly with a little bow. Instead, bring your readers along with you and give them the little gift of pointing them to the ending. If you’ve done your job well, they will meet you at the end.
12. Your writing will never desert you — even if you desert it for a time. It will always be there for you, never judging, never being angry, even if you’ve left it alone in a dark room without food or water or shape or sound. It will always accept you and, I believe, even love you.

Why does some writing bring us to tears while other writing leaves us cold? One of the most important lessons for us as poets and writers is to capture the image– or the scene.

Another way to put this is “show, don’t tell,” which I am sure we’ve all heard often enough. While the concept might be fairly easy to understand, it’s a challenge to make effective images in our writing. It’s a challenge to be descriptive in ways that will touch people.

First, we must kill the generalities in our writing. Here is a little list to help illustrate:

The day was beautiful. (How was it beautiful? Was the orange balloon of the sun perched overhead? Did the heat shimmer off the pavement? Could you taste the salty sweat on your upper lip?)

She loved the long-eared hound dog. (Okay, well that’s nice, but why? And how? And what did she do to prove that? Did she whisper secrets in his ear? Did she put her arms around his pudgy body like her father used to hug her?)

He was smoking a cigarette. (We get that, but what does it mean? How can we see this picture? Does he suck hard on the filter and blow smoke out his nostrils? Is there a burnt sharp smell that follows him around? Are his stubby fingers stained yellow?)

Be specific in your writing. Name things and describe experiences. Be clear about details and use your five senses. You want to aim your writing at your reader’s heart rather than head. Readers are smart. You can point them at a particular experience (or image or sensation) and they can enter your poem or story right along with you.

To say that a person’s hair is brown is accurate, but to say that her or his hair is dirt-colored or the color of cafe latte creates a big difference in how that person is perceived.

Don’t be discouraged if you continue to find generalities when you are trying to form vivid images. Keep reading your favorite writers who do it well. Keep practicing. Like any art, to write is to practice.

This is our lesson. This is our frustration… and our joy.

I admire the people who take my classes and other classes at the Loft and elsewhere. Not only do they step into the classroom with courage — not knowing who else will be in the group, or what kind of experience they’ll have — but they also allow themselves to be vulnerable to whatever their muse has in store for them during that time period. They face that terrifying blank page alone, as all writers do. They generously work together and support one another. They listen kindly, but actively, making thoughtful comments that encourage improvement. They often form a tightly knit community that sometimes continues to meet even after the class is finished. What’s not to love?

Over the past several years, I have developed a system to communicate my admiration as well as to strengthen the bonds between individuals in the class. I call it my “Loft Class Loveletter” and it goes out via email during the week between class sessions. It’s not quite an online class, but it does deliver extra content, and the students are sometimes bemused but always appreciative. Here is an example of a loveletter:

Good morning, Poets. According to the late and much-beloved William Stafford, “The action of writing is the successive discovery of cumulative epiphanies in the self’s encounter with the world.” First of all, notice that Stafford refers to writing as an action. Writing is an active activity. It’s not just plodding along, putting one word after  another. It’s a wild and wonderful adventure. Think of writing that way next time you feel stuck. Verbal jumping jacks! You can’t force epiphanies but you can be there to recognize and greet them.

I hope all your encounters with the world this week are full of discovery. Here are a few suggestions to keep in mind:

1) Dump the adjectives. Unless they are fresh and somehow surprising, they rarely add anything to your poems. If you don’t believe me, take one of your lines, read it aloud, dump the adjectives and read it again. See?

2) Make sure your tenses are consistent. A poem set in the present tense is often more immediate than past tense. Just make sure you don’t switch back and forth or you will lose your reader.

3) Line breaks. We need to have a rationale for our line breaks. Rule of thumb: Don’t have a wide variety of long and short lines in a poem. It stops the reader because the reader is wondering about how the poem looks on the page rather than entering the poem itself. You want your beloved reader to be with you all the way.

4) Rule of thumb regarding rules of thumb: You can break the rules later, after you are famous. …

(I often add a model poem and one or two extra assignments before I sign off.)

I try to offer a variety of prompts and assignments. If people are having difficulties accessing something, there are always more choices. My goal is to keep people writing. I sometimes offer links and discussion points, resulting in some lively email conversations within the group.

Yes, the goal is to keep writing. If we keep writing, something good will happen. It’s like any kind of practice. If more people wrote — from the heart, the soul, the spirit — more good would happen in the world. If politicians wrote poetry… well, don’t get me started. Instead, why not send out your own loveletter to someone who might be surprised by it? Include a poem or inspiring quote and some heartfelt thoughts of your own. Again, what’s not to love?