It is that time of year again when we all start to think about what is on the writery horizon! Here at team WoPo we have been thinking about pacing and how that can be difficult for writers in general and often even worse for poets. Now you are probably thinking: what do we mean by pacing in poems? Go and read a few from different styles of poetry, did you notice the beat and rhythm? Was it the same through out? If it was a long poem did that start to make it seem like a run away train or to drag on for eternity? Whilst these effects themselves can be what is sought after to emphasise the feel of the poem, they often are not and have occured by accident.

Try playing around with the lengths of lines and where the rhymes fall, and even the font sizing. What effect does this have on the poem? What makes the pace fast? What makes it slow?

This is a good exercise in general but can, as a concept, also be applied to our general writing habits, but in a slightly different way – what is your annual writing pace? Do you start with good intentions and then fizzle out? Do you get enthused by workshops and only write around them? Does it slowly ramp up through out the year and then stop when the kids are out of school… or some other pattern? Once you know what your general year-long writing pattern is you can work on getting a little bit more writing in, or in some cases less writing but more content and quality for time spent.

So maybe it now is the time to think about these overarching patterns rather than rushing off to do new year writing challenges – and then sinking when it all seems a little too much.