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.