I am not doing NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve simply got too many irons in too many fires right now to devote the needed time to write toward a new project.
What I had planned on doing was writing some poetry. Well, you know what they say about plans….
In other words, often what we plan is not what necessarily happens. And, you know, I’m okay with that.
I went on Twitter late last night because I couldn’t sleep and all these words, and what I consider poetic phrasing, kept flowing and backing up in my brain. When I attempted to put them on paper, the writer in me got in the way and started explaining and gushing purple prose.
So, I tweeted: “Trying my hand at poetry. It’s not easy. Any hints.”
Well, I ended up going back and forth with someone who recommended that I go read a bunch of poetry, discover what I like, and then set my voice free. This struck me as such a lovely sentiment because so often my voice is controlled and boxed into perimeters by things like grammar and editorial diction.
The individual at the other end of the Twitter-verse also suggested that I get a tune in my head and then put some words to the beat and I’d either end up with a song or a poem.
My twisted writer brain does have a mind of its own as it wanders, strays, and discovers things on it’s own but what I realized in this exercise is that freeing it completely and allowing it to sing could, in fact, lead to poetry.
If you don’t fail, how will you ever succeed?
I’m excited to see where these discoveries take me and I’m hopeful that I’ll find a poetic voice sooner, rather than later.
Another suggestion is to do erasure poems. There are two ways to do it. Find an article(magazine, newspaper, etc) or any length of writing. Pick out any random words from you like as you read through the text, then rearrange all the words into a poem. The second way to do it is to take a marker and block out certain lenghts of text/words/sentences of your choice to form a poem.
Hi Lidy! Thanks so much for the suggestions. I’ve never heard of erasure poems but will definitely give them a try. I like the idea of the magazine article and picking random words. I’m determined to get some poetry written. Thanks for commenting–I appreciate it.