FollowSo my favorite poem I have written so far is “Write Poorly”. It’s not really close.
It even ended up in Colleen Hoover’s follow up to “Slammed”, “Point of Retreat”. I felt very grateful to have the poem in her book and also thrilled that two bloggers published the poem in full on their blogs. One was just yesterday (I would just look at the blog and not the review if you haven’t read the two excellent Colleen Hoover books.
I hope it inspires others to write. Write terribly, write awfully, write with abandon, suck and maybe be really, really good.
Here is the poem:
Inspired from a line in Ryan McLellan’s poem on Tuesday at Local Sprouts for Port Veritas.
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Write poorly
Suck
Write awful
Terribly
Frightfully
Don’t care
Turn off the inner editor
Let yourself write
Let it flow
Let yourself fail
Do something crazy
Write 50,000 words in the month of November
I did it.
It was fun, it was insane it was 1,667 words a day.
It was possible.
But, you have to turn off your inner critic, off, completely.
Just write.
Quickly.
In Bursts.
With joy.
If you can’t write run away for a few.
Come back.
Write again.
Writing is like anything else.
You won’t get good at it immediately.
It’s a craft you have to keep getting better.
You don’t get to Juliard, unless you practice.
If you want to get to Carnagie Hall, practice, practice, practice.
(or give them a lot of money).
Like anything else it takes 10,000 hours to get to mastery.
Just like Malcolm Gladwell says.
So write.
Fail.
Get your thoughts down.
Let it rest.
Let it marinate.
Then edit. Then edit. Then edit.
But don’t edit as you type,
that just slows the brain down.
Find a daily practice,
for me it’s blogging every day.
And it’s fun.
The more you write, the easier it gets. The more it is a flow, the less a worry. It’s not for school, it’s not for a grade, it’s just to get your thoughts out there. You know they want to come out.
So keep at it. Make it a practice. And write poorly, write awfully, write with abandon and it may end up being really, really good.
(c) 2012 – Edmund Davis-Quinn
Blessed be and feel free to post it on your own blogs.
Edmund