NaPoWriMo
It only seems five minutes since I was doing NaNoWriMo and yet here we are with April fast approaching and a new challenge before us.
I say us, I mean me.
For some people April means CampNaNoWriMo, where you set your own word count and spend the month trying to hit it – like NaNoWriMo but a bit more flexible but not for me, this time.
This year I have signed up for a different project encouraged by Carrie Etter, my Personal Tutor from university, who I am happily still in regular contact with – the project? NaPoWriMo: National Poetry Writing Month.
The task for the month – to write a poem a day. They could be unrelated, a series on a topic, or sections of one big epic poem – whatever you fancy. Just one poem a day, no wordcount.
I don’t feel like I could commit to a wordcount like NaNoWriMo again at the moment, not to mention the fact that I am still finishing off my NaNo project ‘Faerie Or No‘ and I don’t want to start something else and abandon that one – I want to finish that, not add it to my pile of things I never completed.
With that in mind, NaPoWriMo appealed because poems can be any length – on days I have less time and energy I could write a short poem and on days I have more (such as Tuesdays when the Smalls are at their father’s) I could challenge myself to write something longer or more challenging. I want to experiment with different forms over the month – try some new things, revisit old favourites, try and find some love for ones I previously dismissed (prose poetry, I still don’t get it {Sorry, Carrie!} – maybe this challenge will help change that).
I won’t be publishing every poem on my blog – that would be both boring for everyone and would mean that should I randomly ever decide that poetry is my thing then I couldn’t publish them as ‘new’ later because they’d have been technically already published. I will put some up though, to prove I am actually doing something!
So April – 30 days, 30 poems.
Wish me luck and anyone else who fancies giving it a try – just drop Carrie a note on her blog or on Twitter (links above) and she’ll add you to the list and we can all cheer each other along.
