What do writers do anyway?

Practice your chops because when stories come you’ll be ready to play? Or go ambulance chasing so you’ll have excitement to beget motivation to see it thru to said well? Does it matter which? To improve writing is a route to improve life, perception-capacity, experience or visa versa? In 12 or 20 interviews came across this,

Twenty-five years ago, the British poet Peter Levi thought there was something odd about me. Usually young poets, he said, develop technique and wait for the voice. In my case, I had a very clear voice but no technique. I had to work on that. It occurs to me now that the woods are full of capable young poets who have absolutely nothing to say. They are smooth, smooth, smooth.

It takes content and form to make something really worthwhile but having developed either in a compelling way is something valuable. Nourishing that or the other half and one is better positioned for growth and for being a catalyst for another’s growth. A certain amount of writing is for getting a fix on what is for self and some is working out what is possible and throwing that out towards others as well for them to build with it what they will.
In a different interview, rob mclennan said,

Writing doesn’t care how you feel, and its not about self-expression. Once you get over what you think you “have to say,” then you can start getting down to the business of writing, and that’s when it starts to get interesting.[…]
Writing is an ongoing process, and writing out pages of notes to later salvage as little as a single workable line to build upon is simply part of that process of composition. Why agonize over it?

Like that outlook. Why waste rare and valuable energies on getting started. Why waste emotional energies on editing when they could be used for the editing part of editing. Antagonizing self is purely optional.
That de-precioushing and looking at what works and what doesn’t and making something from words rather than from intentions can make for some interesting things to read, instead of those unavoidable poems out there that get prefaced with, and it really happened just like this too which often sends me to a flashback to the old gospel song’s logical fallacies of I Was There When It Happened (So I guess I oughta know).
The problem lies with taking the Dewey Decimal System as scriptural. Poetry doesn’t have to comply to rules of non-fiction. It can be novel, in any sense.
I like planning poems, storyboarding them, sketching, taking notes on them, cobbling and hacking them to bits. I like prompts to give a direction to run in or a wall to react against but to insist on a pre-decided perspective from the outset is a kind of closed-minded. (Xenophobe uncle’s taunts rise in the mind, his stories about the guy who was so open minded that one had to question whether there is a mind there at all. And this stand up about jump on my bandwagon on indecision.)
I’m nonplussed. Why would people who know where a thought is going (to a foregone conclusion) still go there? To convince themselves because they are not as sure as they want to be. To preach and hope to find some unconverted by route of 2×4 to head?
Or is there intrinsic interest in the how of the route? Or to prove it really is a self-fulfilling statement closed to other options? Is there not more pleasure in surprise than in seeing what’s expected arrive? Maybe that too is a matter of temperament?
I like my poems to agree with me and then disagree with me. By “my poems” I mean the ones I write and the ones I read and keep.
Back to the first interview,

rm: What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
RG:Writers do a number of things – imagine selves we will never get to, remember goodness that is passing away, dismantle the present – essentially you resolve your experiences into laughter and silence. I suppose a good writer is like a Shakespearian clown – one who makes a big show of being silly and separate, but is in fact quarrelling with the culture.

That’s one of the better answers I’ve seen to that question.
This interview with Richard Greene pales me and stops me cold at one point.
Why? Because I know — probably somewhere in this very room — I have his book. Which I bought with gladness in the afterglow of a good reading, and haven’t read.
There are four 8″ stacks of poetry books around my desk and floor. And bags concealing more, and shelves.
And then there’s the matter of other rooms.
I want to google my physical home, but control the database, not google.
Would it be bad to gps chip tag every item I own and scan it in?