Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Deadlines and Freewrites


          It's a good time of year to be thankful, and I'm thankful today for deadlines. They make me work. There's the end of the month for NaNo, the end of the semester for college, and the end of this week for my creative writing group. I decided to submit a poem, rather than a short story, since I can write them in a shorter amount of time.

          With poems I usually start by free writing. I try a few different themes or descriptive phrases until they come to dead ends or I find one that yields to my shaping. Riding my bike to and from campus almost every day, I've gotten to see fall turning to winter step by step. From the leaves starting to turning red to them getting brown and curling, every change is beautiful, and beauty is the theme of my poem, "Maker." It is a spin off of a very strange, modern Gertrude Stein's prose poem called "Picasso," an excerpt of which you can read here.
To read "Maker" click here.


What are you thankful for today? 

No comments:

Post a Comment