30 Days of Poetry: NaPoWriMo 2015

Mar 30, 201513 min read

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Published: Mar 30, 2015

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NaPoWriMo is almost upon us! (That's National Poetry Writing Month, if you're unfamiliar with the term. It starts April 1st.)

Here's the run down of what NaPo is all about:

Write 30 poems in 30 days.

Yep, that's it. That's all you do, but it can be harder than it sounds if you're not used to writing that much!

What is it that we'll be doing at CRLiterature and theWrittenRevolution?

We'll come up with 10 Prompts every week to help give you some inspiration! Of course, you don't have to follow any of the prompts, but they will be there to help you. The prompt articles will also serve as a "check-in" of sorts so you can update us on how you are doing, if you're behind, or ahead, or whatever!

Advice from Vigilo

(Vigilo is a NaPoWriMo World Champion who has completed it a number of times.)

How to Prepare

Some people find it easier to get through the month if they have a running theme for all of their poems. This can be anything from having a particular topic to a particular type of poetry - I did thirty micropoems on the theme of the sea for one year, and this year, I'm doing found poems.
Make sure you're enjoying it! This isn't supposed to be stressful: it's supposed to be challenging and fun. If it's stressing you out the wrong way, change the limits. You do you.
Keep sources of inspiration handy. You probably have a better idea of what inspires you than I do, so keep them around.
Talk to people! You're not doing this alone. The NaPoWriMo official site has a list of participant blogs, and a lot of people on DA participate. Just follow the trail of tears - I mean, just look around, they're not going to be quiet about the fact that they're doing NaPoWriMo. Or even try collaborating on a poem or two if you feel like it. (Maybe you could do an Exquisite Corpse!* version of NaPoWriMo. That would be awesome.)
You don't have to organise your entire monthly schedule (though, I mean, that sounds like it'd be pretty helpful) but it's good to have an idea of what your month's going to be like. If you know there's a day you definitely won't be able to spare time for poetry, there's probably going to have to be a day where you write two poems.
Get used to the likelihood that not all of your thirty poems will be as good as you want them. That's okay - in the long run, it's all about practicing and improving on something you enjoy doing. I usually end up getting around five good poems and twenty five 'meh' poems, but it's worth it for those five. Hey, while you're at it, if you're having a bad poem day, have fun with it - try your hand at writing the worst poem you can come up with.
But only for bad poem days, unless your running theme is bad poetry, okay?
Reward-based systems work for some people - so treat yourself to, I don't know, some Nutella crepes at the end of every week if you've successfully made it!

*Exquisite Corpse is a collaborative game where participants are put into a specific order and then each contributes something to a poem. Usually it's writing a single line, before passing it on to the next person. It then rotates back to the first person and goes on and on, my friend. The really important rule is that participants are not allowed to see the whole poem until the end.