Archive for the ‘Pep Talks’ Category:
Written on April 30th, 2013 by adminno shouts
It is the end of yet another poem a day challenge – April’s National Poetry Writing Month. Hopefully you have collected quiet a few first drafts and that the resources here have been helpful.
Put those poems away for a bit now – maybe get out the ones you did at the beginning of the year and begin to look through these older poems. Once you have forgotten what it is you’ve written you can read the poem with fresh eyes – a poem that seemed awful is a goodun and a precious piece is seen as the tripe it actually is.
Now it is editing time.
Regular writing exercises and tutorials on form plus guest bloggers will be appearing on this site too help you.
Written on April 1st, 2013 by adminno shouts
It is April the first and that can mean only one thing… no not the silly practical jokes and false status updates on Facebook but rather the start of the years third Poem A Day challenge NaPoWriMo. This was the first of the Poem A Challenges and as such has a special place in the hearts of us here at team WoPo.
The website has some fantastic stuff on it so check it out. Here on WoPo we will have daily writing challenges and guest bloggers plus general poetry how to.
The challenge for those who are new, is too write a poem a day for 30 days – the whole of April. It was modeled on the novel writing challenge NaNoWriMo.
To get you all started why not use April Fools Day as inspiration. Think about the silly playground pranks and how they sometimes go wrong, make a list of ten jokes and their consequences. Now write a stanza for each bullet point. The poem may want to grow using just one of the jokes – let it. This is the bones of a poem. Let it sit a while and come back to it on a later date. Do not worry about pinning it down into a specific form or rigid structure at this point – that will come with the editing.
Now get writing!
Written on March 21st, 2013 by adminno shouts
It has been several weeks since the manic poetry scribbling of World Poetry Writing Month – hopefully it helped to get you into a pattern were you are writing each day. If that is the case then keep going, put your poems away for about six weeks before attempting to edit them.
If you are not in that space and just stopped writing as soon as the challenge was over then it is time to start writing again. If you have something it can be edited but until you touch pen to paper or fingers to electronic device or hit the record button you have nothing. Many find that their had seems too full of fragments of poems – this is not a problem – no it is great! Write those fragments down, fill note pads with them, they are the beginnings, they are the sparks of future poems.
Once you have a selection of these fragments use them for response writing exercises, write the fragment at the top of a page, set a timer for 5 minutes and just begin writing, continue the fragment. Do not worry about what you are writing or weather it makes any sense just keep the pen on paper or you fingers moving until your timer bleeps. If you are struggling stop when the timer bleeps, if you are inspired just keep going. One of the WoPo team often doesn’t notice the timers bleeping if they are really into the writing!
Now off you go and fill that note book!
Written on March 1st, 2013 by adminno shouts
It was the morning after WoPo and all the poets sat forlorn not knowing what to do with their spare moments or those pesky poems that waited until the challenge had finished before saying ‘Write-Me! Write-Me!’.
The solution is obvious!
Keep writing – that’s right you heard correctly.
Try and sit down and just write for ten minutes everyday.
If you want to use writing exercises, there are plenty on this site under the heading of Exercises or there is Three Word Wednesday and Blue Monster for more inspiration.
The competition winners will be announced next week and some great guest bloggers shall be sharing their poetic secrets with you all soon.
But now well done! And make sure you’ve collected your Normali Tea web-badge.
Written on February 7th, 2013 by adminno shouts
We are at the end of the first week of the WoPo challenge and chances are that some of you are doing really well and that you have whizzed a head even, maybe even finished! Well if that is you well done but don’t stop keep going and continue writing everyday, why not see just how many poems you can produce!
Or alternatively maybe start editing them though we suggest you pop them away somewhere for a while first before going back and editing.
If however you have that life has gotten in the way do not panic!
No there is still plenty of time, even if you have not yet started the challenge just buckle down and get going with it you could still produce over 20 poems!
And part of the challenge’s worth is to help you learn a writing habit!
Written on February 1st, 2013 by adminno shouts
So WoPoWriMo begins again. A month of poetic madness.
The challenge should you choose to accept it, is to write a poem a day for the month of February. Now these do not have to be whole complete poems but rather the beginnings of poems. They are a base to work from and we here at WoPo plan to give you all the tools you need to craft your poems during and after the challenge.
If you wish to sign up go to here and make a comment, remembering that if you are putting the poems on your blog or other site to link to it. You do not have to put your poems on line – many poets do not as they want to keep the poems for traditional publication routes or are worried about copy right issues, but if you do we would love you to share!
We are running on the idea of honor for the sigh-up and completion after all if you lie about how you are doing the only person it hurts is you. Also we realise some people do not want to make it public that they are in fact taking part and that is ok too – lurk all you want there are lots of good resources around the site and advice from established poets too!
Ok so those of you who are ready to go wax lyrical, hold your horses and pick up your free web-badge!
If you’d like to put it onto your blog or web site, just copy and paste this HTML into a blog post or your site template:
<a href="http://wopowrimo.wigglypets.co.uk/" alt="WoPoWriMo">
<img src="http://wopowrimo.wigglypets.co.uk/resources/2013/Creativitea.png"
width="128" height="194" />
</a>
For those who want to just the image here is the code you need. If you feel happer with just copying the image from the site you are welcome to do that as well.
<img
src="http://wopowrimo.wigglypets.co.uk/resources/2013/Creativitea.png"
width="128" height="194"
I'm releasing the image under a Creative Commons licence, so you can copy it and distribute it under these terms:
Creativi-Tea by Sarah Snell-Pym is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
If you are stuck with Ye Old Writer’s Block already then you might want to have a noodle around the Exercises section.
You may have noticed a tea theme going on with WoPoWriMo this year instead of the normal muse monsters – this is because it is actually our 5th Birthday! So we are having a birthday tea but more on that tomorrow! Mean while enjoy the Creativity of Creativi Tea, think of her as a mascot as well as a web-badge!
Now go get writing!
Written on February 15th, 2011 by adminno shouts
It is over half way through the month which of course is one of the boons of doing the challenge in the shortest month! Now some of you are on target which is brilliant and some of you still only have one poem – but it’s a poem you wouldn’t otherwise have and there will be other ideas taking root in your mind as the month progresses!
“Keep going!” is the advice, even if you are ahead – even if you have more than 30 poem drafts – keep going! Put in your session every day! Or if you have really and truly poemed yourself out and have the month’s worth all ready maybe have a little look at what you have produced; but it is often best to leave the poems for a while before editing them.
Written on January 31st, 2011 by adminno shouts
So why do a poem a day challenge? Most of what you’ll write will be drivel and need to be thrown away, won’t it?
There are many reasons to take part in WoPo least of which is that it will bring you into contact with other creative writers, some maybe starters some more advanced maybe even coughs published!
Then there is the fact that the writing exercises will help get you into the discipline of writing something everyday. What you may end up with is a series of ideas and strong imagery at the end of the month the actual form it is written in may be trash but there are seeds there for you to grow. And equally you may find yourself walking away with a body of work that needs a bit of editing but is generally good!
You may feel you can not commit to a poem a day what with work, kids, small empire to run etc… in which case set your own target say ‘I will put five minutes a day aside’; that is all it takes to get some ideas down you can use later on.
If you wish to warm up there are last year’s writing exercises! Not to mention guest bloggers with excellent advice and inspiring words!
You do not have to use the exercises we will be post on the site for your poems; they are just there in case you get stuck!
Good Luck to you all 🙂
Welcome to the WoPo challenge!
Written on February 18th, 2010 by adminno shouts
The month is disappearing fast and this last third of the month is the sprint zone – the new letter coming up this week will contain a tonne of useful writing stimuli. So remember to sign up for it if you haven’t already!
Well done for all of those who have made it this far, and remember – keep writing 🙂
Those who have fallen by the wayside – hey, if you got one poem out of this month then that’s worth a victory dance all on its own 🙂
Good luck all
Team WoPo
Written on February 14th, 2010 by adminno shouts
It is the end of the second week and though you may not want to hear this, that means you are half way through this month of poetry mayhem!
Many have already finished – and if that is the case then fantastic and well done! But don’t sit back on those laurels, why not aim for a doubled target? That’s right, we are suggesting you write another 28 poems – just keep doing a bit of writing every day until the end of the month. Or if you feel confident enough you could start editing. We here at WoPoWriMo prefer to leave the poems to lay fallow for a while, meaning we like to ignore them for a month or so before looking at them again. This gives us time to forget what we meant and see instead what we have actually written!
And for those of you who are behind? Do not worry – just keep trying every day – if you are finding it hard then don’t try to catch up, just try for ‘damage minimization’ and do a poem a day from now on! Who knows, you may get into the swing of things and do a poetic sprint towards the end!
Of course today’s poem should be easy enough to manage – love it or hate it, it is Valentines Day! So write a romantic love poem or an unromantic hate poem or an unromantic love poem or a romantic hate poem.
Good luck from team WoPo!
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