Wednesday 2 May 2012

NaPoWriMo: Done. Dusted.

In the thirty days of April, I wrote 16 independent, prose-poetry sections (of which we used 14) for the commissioned piece, "Meditations," on Peter Coker's 1958-9 painting, "Sunflowers," eight sections taken from the words of Esther Summerson's first chapter in Charles Dickens's Bleak House (I didn't realise till today I'd completed the chapter!), and five independent poems. Thus it turns out that for all my activity in April, I missed the 30 in 30 goal by one, but I'm nonetheless delighted. I think "Meditations" has turned out well (if not excellent, as I'd hoped) in spite of the time pressure I faced, I'm excited about the Bleak House project, and several of the independent poems I think are good. So hurrah! How did others fare? 


Thanks to everyone who joined me. Stories of your own experiences consistently encouraged me to strive for my best and to make the most of the time, and I dearly appreciate them. Thanks so much. 

10 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:02 am

    NaPoWriMo unfortunately collapsed for me after Day 12, and some of what came before was too lame to be countenanced. The remnant that remains is on my blog: http://lucysixsmith.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/in-which-the-blogger-is-wholly-unable-to-do-anything-about-wordpresss-dedication-to-double-spacing-things-unnecessarily/

    Carrie, congratulations on what sounds like a very productive month! I will be particularly interested to read the Esther Summerson pieces when they become available for perusal by the general public.

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  2. Jenny Martin10:13 am

    Hi Carrie. Your various projects sound so interesting and fun! It inspires me to try writing with an actual focus/subject rather than whatever random thing occurs to me.

    I wrote at least one poem every day in April and I have a grand total of 35 - which includes a redraft that's so massively redrafted it's basically a totally different poem in its own right, so I'm counting it. I'd say I'm very happy with about half, while the other half require some serious grouting or feel a little bit embarrassing. Overall I really loved writing (and reading!) in April. It was soothing.

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  3. congrats! I failed to launch.

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  4. This was the first time I completed the full 30 days, and I got 30 poems. Sifting through them since May started, I think around 20 are worthy of sprucing up; some don't feel as if they'll need a lot. Since the only other time I tried the exercise, I bombed out on day 13, this is a radical improvement for me. I determined early to try as many different things as possible, from sonnets, pantoums and villanelles to free verse and performance pieces and even a couple of cut-ups, I'm very happy with my experimentation. Knowing that at another 60 or so people were trying the same things was a great inspiration. Virtual cameraderie is definitely a good thing. Carrie, thanks for the kick in the bum which got me started.

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  5. Marie Dullaghan11:33 am

    I'm not, generally, a very consistent person. I tend to work in intense spurts that rarely last more than a few days, so this exercise was very difficult. I missed several days, but I did keep coming back to it. As a result, I have 2 really good poems (as judged by Frank), 3 that might be worth re-working, a couple of light-hearted pieces that will be fun to read at poetry group meetings, and some failed experiments. In total, there's about 12 poems and the start of 2 short stories staying in the file; I deleted several pieces of drivel.
    Thank you so much for the inspiration.

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  6. Writing from the shade of a palm tree in Caravaglia, Italy. It's in the Piemonte region some way north of Turin with a gorgeous view of the snow-covered alps. I should be writing poetry instead of writing this. Anyway I am still working on the revisions of my last (18th I think)poem of this NaPo-whatever month. Ciao for now.

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  7. Kristina C1:28 pm

    Yes I finished too. And some were indeed light in tone and content but as I tend towards more intense subjects, this was a new direction for me and yes some of them could certainly be light relief in a reading so all in all, worth it. Have decided to try to follow a field rotation system - 1st week, a poem every day; 2nd week revising, rewriting etc; third week ruminate. Thanks Carrie for the April path.

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  8. Anonymous4:53 pm

    I am elated to have produced thirty poems in thirty days, though there were days that had to be skipped for various reasons. It seemed easy enough, on other, less complicated days, to catch up by writing more than one. Whether I will see the poems as substantial, when I get some perspective and look back at them, say a year from now, remains to be seen. I wrote a poem yesterday too, and feel that this whole thing has put me back in touch with my notebook, with invention in general, but not necessarily through my usual channels. I tend to get an image or an idea and gestate it for a while before putting it into words. I also often warm up by revising older work, but I did quite a bit less of that this month. Poems were inspired by whatever I was doing during a day: by a ride we took, by a music performance we went to, By observation, by quotes from novels I was reading, by things friends posted on Facebook, by news items, by the joy of language itself. Needless to say, I want to keep it up for as long as I can.

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  9. THANKS for having invited me to participate in this, Carrie, which produced a wide variety of poems for me as well as a large number of prosy journaly scribbles! It was lovely to check in with your blog and to read other people's thoughts and also about their successes and struggles to keep up with the daily project! Best to you!!!

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  10. I didn't write a poem a day, but I did complete turn push | turn pull and got positive responses to it. I feel a bit written out now, and haven't done anything for nearly a week.

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