Confession Tuesday

Happy Tuesday, folks! You know the drill.

Feels good to crack the seal on the first poem in a poem-a-day series. In my experience, the first few days are exhilarating but the poems are just OK. At some point I hit poem fatigue. Then mid-month, I’m in a nice groove, where the mere mis-hearing of a word or phrase can trigger a few stanzas. Then fatigue again. Then a sprint (or a crawl) to the finish line!

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I’m really hoping I don’t write a lot of divorce poems. I don’t want to go there but … well … I probably will. Maybe that's a good thing because in 2011, I will begin a new project that's completely different from than anything I've done before: writing poems from a historical perspective. So it's probably a good thing to write whatever I'm going to write right now.

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With the start of November, I feel the need to de-stress and get the most out of my days. There’s something about this practice that feeds into the rest of my life.

I’m trying to align my activities so I’m able to write a poem a day, exercise, eat well, drink plenty of water, AND (this is the kicker) get some sleep. That's on top of working full time and raising a family. Going to bed at a reasonable hour is the one thing I usually give up. I’m hoping I don’t have to this time around.

The amount of discipline I have to muster to do this is incredible but well worth the effort. It's nice to know I'm not alone.

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These poems could suck--I'm well aware of that fact. I'm also looking forward to setting new limits, trying new things, and commiserating with other poets. Here's hoping I get a few worth revising.

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Wishing you great poetry in November!


Comments

Catherine said…
I suspect you need to get those divorce poems written and out of the way! I have a similar resistance to the idea of writing earthquake poems, I think there are going to be a lot of bad earthquake poems around at the next open mic series I go to :)

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