22 Poems in Two Days

The notebook exercise, done the past two Fridays, yielded first drafts of 22 poems (!!!!). There were more but I chose to transcribe only those. Got my crafting and editing work cut out for me for probably the rest of '09. So nice to have something on paper.

Fill a Notebook in a Day

Get a one-subject notebook. Clear a day so it’s nice and quiet. Then write in the notebook all day. Draft like crazy. Try to fill the notebook in just one day. Write what you want without censoring. This ain’t for publication. See what you come up with.

I finally got around to doing this favorite exercise (in a Hello Kitty notebook). It always unearths what I’m really interested in writing about, which gets buried under “should” and “ought to,” red herrings, and imagined obligations. A friend says: “You have the problems that you want to have.” When I think of writing as a problem, I have made my own problem, haven’t I?

I invented this exercise in creative profligacy when I was 12 and a notebook cost me most of a week’s allowance. I imagined growing up and the joy of being able to buy and fill all the notebooks I wanted.