30 Days of Poetry

I'm proudly joining Denise Hopkins in her 30 Days Challenge.  Denise began this type of challenge this past April, where she completed 30 paintings in 30 days, including blog posts that left me marveling.  This September, she invited others to join her in doing something for 30 straight days.

I waited until almost the last day to sign up.  You may notice from my last blog post that things involving the word "challenge" involve a great deal of thought from me.  So do things that involve doing something for an extended period of time, re my quitting the 100 Happy Days challenge.

But when I think about it, those instances may be more exception than rule for me.  I successfully completed my personal "One Good Thing a Day" for 365 days.  And my most treasured accomplishment: I successfully completed the full month of NaNoWriMo, where I wrote over 1,600 words a day for a month straight.  I didn't plan for that one, either.  I signed up to do it two days before it started, with no plot and no sense of direction.  Since November of 2012, those 50,000 words have turned into an entire novel that I'm in the middle of editing.

And yet, having been inspired by Denise's first go-round of 30 days of paintings, I attempted to do a month of poetry in May.  I survived 8 days of that before giving up, exhausted and frustrated.

Of course, I had no one to hold me accountable, and I had bound myself with a couple of rules for my poetry that left me feeling confined and uncreative.  This time, I told myself, I would just let go and write, the way I had done for NaNoWriMo.  But I still woke up today feeling nervous, and when I sat down before my notebook, I felt an odd sense of loneliness.  I knew I had the solidarity of the others doing this challenge with me, in their own unique styles and media, but I felt a bit helpless alone with my paper and pen.

I write, a lot.  But no one reads it, and when I do post it, I'm more or less anonymous.  People will (presumably) be reading my work for 30 straight days.  People I probably know.  Yikes.

But I'm committed.  I wasn't certain about how the sharing would go, since I never post an explanation or disclaimer of my writing.  Denise was the one who taught me that, about 5 years ago, and I've stuck pretty closely to that rule.  So how would I go about sharing my poetry via blog post?  Just put a poem up each day and leave it at that?  Seemed kind of boring.

So I'll be sharing the poem each day on the 30 Days blog, along with a scanned picture of the original version of it as I write it in my notebook.  But still no explanation.  I'd like my words to mean what they need to mean for each individual who reads them.

Sometimes I think I'm way too serious about this sort of stuff.  Enh.  I'm not even really sure what I'm looking to gain or get out of this endeavor.  I'm just trying not to be afraid of it.

See you at the end of September... and every day until then!