For the Intrepid Ones...

...pursuing the craft or sullen art

There is no template, and there never has been one. You're not trying to discover an already established frame or manner of speech; nor are you seeking to uncover some obscure secret formula, though it may sometimes feel that way.

No.

You're out there on the insubstantial blue, no less, without anything but the random winds to keep you up. And when the wind is down your only help is the visceral trust you have gained by living, and also by being an obsessive reader, taking in every printed word you can get your hands on: poems, plays, novels, stories, memoirs, history and biography--and learning to recognize those synapses in the nerve endings that fire when a thing is right, even when you don't necessarily know WHY it's right.

And when it IS right, you feel it, evanescent as fog on a window pane. And you learn, step by step, through all the doubts and the worries, to go on with it anyway. Think of that. You're in what seems to be one lone- and frustrated-feeling place, but you're actually sailing, too, on nerves and bravado, trying with each painstaking line to make something memorable out of material you do not quite fully understand.

What a beautiful, brave thing.

And it's something to celebrate with everything you've got.