How am I doing? I assigned myself a job to write a poem a day during the month of April. It’s a month to celebrate poetry, to celebrate the art and the artists. My chosen goal was to create material for a themed Chapbook on aging.
I fell behind on Day 2. Not a great beginning for a big plan. But, most poems aren’t created on a conveyor-belt plan. There are long stretches of empty belt.
Today is Day 20. I have written thirteen poems in rough draft form. I’m behind my daily goal, but I’ve written far more often than I have in the past. For me, I count my goal as actually working for me. Today’s poem was inspired by something that I read. Too many times, the gnawing need for perfection has stopped me. For me, I would read today, without a second thought, a pioneer’s experience recounted in a daily journal. Wagon ruts and broken pencil tips be damned. The perfect does not interest me. My sister found a handwritten recipe in a book for plum pudding that our mother wrote on a scrap of paper. Its value goes beyond any publishing editor’s evaluation for a proper printing. That’s one of my poems.
And so, my themed Chapbook writings go on. Unplanned and raw– and ready for revision.
Writing in Sand 