Wow. I’m feeling a bit of heaviness settle in after the push to write thirty poems in thirty days. Hats off to anyone else who did it. Hooray! I’m cheering because it’s over, and because we accomplished our goal. Thanks to the all the crazy poetry ladies who handed out prompts with me at Read Write Poem. Phew.
But what came out of these so called poems I wrote? I started scrolling through them, seeing if I liked any of them enough to work on them and send them off into the world, but to be honest, they all read to me like a jumbled blur. I need some time to sit back and reflect, distance myself.
In the meantime, here’s my napowrimo post mortem:
- I don’t like writing to other people’s prompts unless it suits me. This month I obliged myself to address each of the PAD prompts, and it was hard. It was like school. Homework, albeit fun homework.
- When I try to write a poem every day I lose my sense of the normal flow of time, or clock time. Where did April go? I’m still in myth land.
- I missed writing to my inner sense of what is important to me now, although I did manage to squeeze in a few of those ‘close to the soul’ poems.
- From now on I won’t be posting many brand new poems. It’s like going to the supermarket in my pajamas, I feel so exposed.
- There are several short stories gathering dust on my desktop. I’m going to work on them for a few days until those crazy poems stop vibrating in my head.
Balanced On the Edge 
Hats off to you for doing the challenge.
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I can’t believe you wrote 30 poems, wow, kudos. Especially given all the magazine work we’ve had going on 🙂 Love the pajamas line……very funny. Shifting to short stories for a day or two is a great plan.
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I had the intention to write a poem a day, but it didn’t work out that way, and I so admire that you managed it, and managed to stick with the prompts. Sometimes I like prompts sometimes I find them restrictive. I did write more than usual though. I wrote perhaps ten poems this month, which is much more than normal
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i am catching up slowly on my reading and with the poem a day thing going on it has been difficult…
i for one would love to see a short story or two come across this page.
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congrats on making it through the month with such great results!
and depending on what kind of pajamas you have, the metaphor of going to the supermarket in them could vary considerably! 🙂
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Well done, Christine. I hope to see you in Blount County (which is actually better than Knox county), or Knox County, what the heck… in July or August.
I agree about the fresh poems / pyjama thingy. With me, I sometimes have to post because most of my poems cross a barrier once they’re posted, they graduate and demand new things, new attention, like a PhD asking for a better job than washing cars. So I tend to ge ahead and post, and almost always, I see things that require immediate attention, commas to move or words to change. I have learned to accept this.
Looking forward to some fiction from ya.
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Congratulations for persevering and stepping up to a huge challenge!
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Congratulations, Christine. I think you did an excellent job. As someone who is looking at the poems from the outside, I am truly impressed. The poems don’t look crazy or jumbled to me. When you go back to work on them later, you’ll have a goldmine. This is a big accomplishment. Huge congrats & admiration for a job well done!
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I agree with Julie! Your poems were really wonderful!
I feel the same way though, when looking mine over. I am ok with them, but all together in a lovely maroon folder, I am still kind of flumoxed! What to do with them? How to edit? Which of the little darlings do I really like?
And I agree with your feelings about writing to prompts and not writing from the soul. I enjoyed napowrimo, but it was far more draining than i expected!
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Thanks, everyone, for reading all the poems, and commenting.
Rethabile, yes, let’s meet up!
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Great insights, Christine, and thank you for sharing them. Besides having that gold mine of info, your learnings validated some of my own ideas about what happens when one forces a perhaps unnatural rhythm of writing. And kudos for completing what you set out to do.
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Hey woman! Please send me your password again. I missed a WHOLE MONTH of your poetry! I suck.
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