December Update

So I didn't do Poem a Day in November, or much of anything really. I've added to the store of notes and first lines on my phone but that's about it. I find winter a tough time to get motivated - it's dark when I leave home for work, and dark when I leave work for home. And December's so full of other things - work parties, present buying, present wrapping, seeing family, cleaning for family visits, food shopping, food prep... There's barely been time to stop and it's hard to believe there's only a week until Christmas.

Stories of Music: Volume 2 will be released on 10th January, and is available for preorder. Having looked at the proofs for my section, I'm really excited to see what the rest of the book looks like.

I've spotted a couple of free online poetry courses that I'm thinking about taking in the New Year. Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop is run through Coursera. There's a new session starting on 2nd January, so a good way to kick start the new year, although there are at least three other session in the year. It wants four to five hours a week though. EdX is running The Art of Poetry, although it looks like it's an archived course with future dates to be announced. Both courses run for six weeks. I'm honestly not sure I wouldn't just be better of with a How To book, though - at least they're portable and don't send you spam. While I haven't had any trouble when I've taken Coursera courses in the past, last year I took an online poetry course (and I can't for the life of me remember from which site) and got dozens of emails every day - which weren't at all easy to turn off since you had to look in at least two different sections of the website. The forum interface was terrible, too. I bailed on that course pretty quickly.

I'd like to do something though, and the structure of an online course might help me to keep on track. Something to think about, anyway.

Poem a Day

It's that time of year again when novelists are doing NaNoWriMo and poets are doing the Poem a Day challenge over at Poetic Asides. I've done both in the past, with varying degrees of success. As in, I've completed NaNo twice but not with anything that's seen the light of day since, and I've never finished (or even got very far with) Poem a Day.

Part of it is the difference in the way I write poetry and prose. Prose needs momentum, words building on words. Poetry starts with phrase or image and is a slow process: first I brainstorm, then write out a rough draft with all the ideas in the right places. Then I tweak, delete, and reorder until I have a first draft. It can take a while to even get that first draft. Even poems I've written in one sitting have sometimes bounced around in my head for weeks beforehand. So while I can bang out a piece of flash fiction in a day, it's rare for poetry.

Strictly, I don't need to complete the poem every day. I could just brainstorm the prompt given out every day, and work on the poems in December. It feels very messy as an idea though, with interrupted thought processes as likely to lead to 30 unfinished poems as anything else.

So, I'm not sure what to do this November. I'd like to do something, stresses and strains of the day job not withstanding. I miss the feeling completing NaNoWriMo gave me, of being someone who could fit in writing no matter what.

Poetry Foundation app

I've been trying to fill my tablet with useful and inspirational writing apps, rather than games. There's actually not that much that's useful, outside of word processors or note-taking, but I did find the Poetry app by The Poetry Foundation. It presents you with a random list of poetry to read, although I'd prefer if it just presented you with a single poem. There's a mix of old and new, and if you don't like what you get, you can spin for a new selection. Definitely one to download if you want a poetry fix.

There are a few apps that claim to provide writing prompts, but I haven't tried any of those. Also several white-noise generators, which can be quite handy if you don't want the distraction of music. And, of course, I've downloaded the Kindle app so I can read writing books (which are the only ones I've downloaded). Probably that's more than I need - I never used to carry a library around with me!

On using a pseudonym

I thought for a long time before submitting my first poem using a pseudonym. In the end I chose to, although it's the transparent sort that anyone who knows me well will see through.

One reason I chose to was branding. I also write fiction under my own name, but not being literary fiction it''s likely to confuse if I suddenly start announcing poetry publications.

The main reason is because I have a feeling that people think poetry is truer than prose. Possibly this is because prose is divided into obvious categories - fiction, non-fiction, creative non-fiction. Poetry is just poetry. Unless you're writing something unambiguously made-up, say "The Owl and the Pussycat" or "The Hunting of the Snark", there's the risk people will see what you write as autobiographical. It might be - the submission call for Stories of Music asked for true stories, as do the Chicken Soup for the Soul books - but equally it might not. A poem might be inspired by something in the news, or overheard, or a response to another poem.

If fiction suffers from the friends and family of the writer looking for themselves in stories, I think this affect is probably magnified in the shorter form of a poem. If you write about your terrible relationship with your stepmother it can only be about that, rather than a retelling of Snow White.

I want to explore, to write without the worry of who's looking over my shoulder, judging me. It's something I've lost with fiction because of my active online presence. It's why I'm using a pen name, and not posting anything on my personal social media accounts. It's also why, if I ever decide to start writing erotica, I'll be writing that under a pseudonym too!