World Class Poetry Blog

I had to laugh. The comment was simply funny.

Literary agent Barbara Bauer is suing Wikipedia. Evidently, she thinks the online quasi-encyclopedia is guilty of libel because one of its editors called her the “dumbest of the 20 worst (literary) agents”. In actuality, it wasn’t Wikipedia at all that first let the cat out of the bag.

It was Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware, who published her list of 20 worst agents on her website. The date at the top of the page says it was updated in January 2008, but Strauss posted her list on Absolute Write’s forum in 2006. This post on Making Light actually details some of the saga, which includes a mention of the now defunct Miss Snark Blog, and is dated April 2006. You’ll notice that Making Light mentions a cease and desist letter put forward by BB. I’m always delighted by such letters. As an aside, my favorite C&D letter of all came from my battalion commander while I was in Iraq telling me to instruct my wife to cease & desist from making comments that she never actually made. We had an interesting conversation the next day after I let him know that I was well aware of the fact that he is a walking, talking dumb ass. He was pleased to know we were on the same wavelength, a superb feat for him.

Diversions aside, I’ve never met Ms. Bauer, but she doesn’t seem to be any smarter than my former neo-con ball-sucking slave driver BC whose first name rhymes with swill. Angela Hoy of WritersWeekly fame has a humorous anecdote about her on the WW forum. Again, that was in 2006.

I’m not one to go around calling people dumb (well, actually I am, but I usually know them personally), but Barbara Bauer can’t be too smart because if you Google her name, all you see is this negative reputation stuff from 2006, most of which could have been avoided if she had simply ignored the remarks made about her from others and started a blog of her own to engage in some positive reputation management. I guess it never occurred to her that the best defense against the negative words of others is to live the opposite of what they say you are. Novel concept, no?

Anyways, I just wrote this blog post to say that I don’t know whether Barbara Bauer is one of the 20 worst agents or not, but the comment that she is the “the dumbest of the 20 worst” is frickin’ hilarious! That’s one of the best insults I’ve ever read online.

Caveat: Hey, I’ve never claimed to be a nice guy.

Poets and the storms of depression.

A love poem by Frank O’Hara.

Rilke’s “The Swan”.

Doctrine of Signatures.

The National Book Critics Circle recommends ….

A “Bard Double-Dactyled (in Sioux City) and Other Odd Pieces” (including one on Humpty Dumpty).

Lebanese art and poetry that unites.

A poem for Heath Ledger.

Recombinant Poetics.

The Library of Congress Blog is nominated.

Why poets should blog.

Can you write 30 poems in 30 days?

The wisest words ever written:

So the message of this post (I really should try to have a message, shouldn’t I?) is that you shouldn’t get caught up in wondering what’s going to happen to your poetry after you write it; you should just write it.

Yesterday, Ron Silliman published the first half of his answers to a questionnaire sent by the Poetry Foundation. Today, he published the second half of his answers. I am struck by how much we are alike in our thinking on these things yet so unlike in our poetry. Here are a few gems from his online rant:

And the role of the self-published book, the commercial object with perhaps the least prestige of all, has been important to poetry in the U.S. from Whitman to the web editions of today.

Poetry is the one area of literature where you can self publish and people won’t look at you like you’re some kind of odd creature of mythological lore. That is, after they stop looking at you as if you are because they discovered that you do write poetry.

The days when major publishers brought out poetry as a “loss leader” (or because some poet might turn into a profitable novelist) are almost entirely behind us.

Summed up perfectly.

The number of trade publishers who even touch poetry are so few, and their collective aesthetics so very narrow, that they have largely relegated themselves to irrelevance.

Book publishing in general is so averse to risk that it is difficult to understand why poets are so full of it. There is no other type of writer in the world willing to take so many risks as a poet worth his salt. Yet, there is hardly a book publisher in the world, even publishers that specialize in poetry books, that will take risks along with the poets they publish. Good poets are squeezed out by the trite, blase Hallmark verse of Helen Steiner Rice. If the publishing world were to rest its eyes on today’s equivalent to William Shakespeare or Alexander Pope, they’d mistake him for a bus driver.

The same social forces that are creating pressures on the book industry are having an impact on society at large – they register as as rising demands upon time and the decline of literacy overall. What a curious moment in history to have more poets than ever before. And more good poets at that. One sometimes imagines that we will soon become a nation of poets, but simultaneously a nation without readers.

I’ve heard poets criticized for “writing to each other” as if we’re some overly large country club. We almost have to write for each other because we’re the only ones reading poetry. When I go to an open mic poetry reading there are so few people in the audience who just want to be in the audience. Almost everyone feels like they should read. At most readings I go to, there is only one person there who doesn’t write poetry and therefore doesn’t read aloud. My wife. She understands that good literature must have good audiences. Where are the rest of the poetry lovers who don’t write?

Where Silliman’s Brilliance Really Shines

I would love to see some of the money that is currently being misused by the National Endowment of the Arts to promote dead British playwrights redirected to ensure that each major metropolitan area has at least one decent retail outlet for poetry.

I’m not a big fan of the NEA, but I have to laugh at this. Dead British playwrights? I wouldn’t redirect any NEA funds. I’d cut them off altogether. But the idea of ensuring that every major metro area has at least one decent retail outlet for poetry is a good idea. If I did support funding for the NEA, that would be one area where I might agree to spend it.

By substantial I mean a minimum of 1,000 titles, not more than 25 percent of which are published by trade presses nor more than 25 percent by university presses, with at least five percent of the stock being chapbooks.

1,000 titles. That’s pretty substantial in terms of poetry books. Not many book stores carry that many poetry titles. Of course, they’re more interested in selling the autobiographies of strippers and other such pickled pabulum. But I like the 25/25 requirement. I’d up the 5% for chapbooks to at least 10%. I think self-published chapbooks is an area that should be encouraged as much as possible. It’s the one area where I think most poets can see the best return on their time and energy investment. We go through so much trouble to create the output and most of us never see a dime for our efforts. For me, I know I can spend hours revising a single poem and publish it in chapbook form with ten or a dozen other poems and sell two or three chapbooks at every reading I attend for months. The $3-$5 I charge for them will usually pay for my gas to drive to the readings and sometimes even a beer and/or a snack afterwards during social hour.

A separate mechanism that might be created even by the Poetry Foundation itself would be a mechanism for the sale and distribution of chapbooks and print-on-demand volumes, perhaps coordinated by Booksense, but with a common front end on the web so that readers could turn to a single source for finding these difficult-to-obtain items.

I actually prefer this solution above the first. I’m a believer in free markets. Poetry is being read. It’s being written. And a lot of it is good. One reason poetry doesn’t sell is because there is no distribution outlet as Silliman craftily points out. When I walk into Barnes & Noble or another major chain store and go to the poetry section, almost every title I see is a classic. I love the classics, but how will contemporary readers of poetry ever be exposed to anything else if they aren’t exposed to contemporary poets at the places where they shop? Universities seldom sell their journals through retail stores. University and small presses seldom distribute their books through the retail chains. One reason I suspect they don’t is because the return policy of distributors makes it a money-losing proposition for them. This somehow needs to change.

Teaching Poetry K-12
Let’s get real. The state-run education system is failing miserably. It’s failing the students. It’s failing the parents. It’s failing the teachers. It’s failing society. It’s failing itself. As a society, however, we are in denial of this fact. One of the areas where this failure is most evident is in the teaching of literature.

I love how Silliman states the obvious (what is obvious to those few of us who know it):

Whether you are a new formalist or a slam poet, a visual poet or a language writer, the absolute materiality of the signifier, the physicality of sound and of the graphic letter, is the one secret shared by all poets to which nonreaders of poetry seem literally clueless.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read a poem and someone will say to me, “I don’t get what it all means, but I like it.” I always just feel like punching them in the face. Most of the time, the people who don’t get it are the same people people who misinterpret simple wording of Bible verses and the Fourth Amendment. People don’t understand hyperbole or metaphor anymore. At one time, these figures of speech were so common that if you didn’t know how to recognize them then you couldn’t get by socially. Today, it’s just the opposite. If you can identify the figures of speech then you are the social outcast. People have been so ingrained to take things literally that when it comes time to analyze language for any purpose at all they are entirely lost. Oh, but they “like” it. I have to remind myself of that.

This is a larger problem than just one for poetry – it is one consequence among many of the larger issues confronting our schools in general. Dropping a few poets-in-the-schools into programs like a Marine strike force is hardly going to undercut the message students get continually, day after day, that language is to be mined for “information” that can be later regurgitated in test formats. It is more, even, than just the goal of developing critical thinkers, tho it is one important aspect of this. Until such time as our schools are given the resources they need in order to really address the whole child, not just managing to standardized tests, we haven’t a chance.

Again, I’m with Silliman all the way up to that last sentence. The schools have plenty of resources. They aren’t using them. They don’t know what to do with them. Or someone somewhere ties their hands so that they don’t fully realize the benefits of them. Some parent wants to restrict the reading of great works of literature because they are offended by some racial slur, or an innocent sex scene, or simply an idea that they can’t get behind. Works like Huckleberry Finn, Pride and Prejudice, and Lord of the Flies have all been targets of censorship by parents, school boards, or some religious or political group. Instead of teaching children how to think critically on difficult subjects we teach them instead to hide their heads in the sand so they don’t have to deal with them. It is hardly any wonder that students being home schooled are outpacing students in public schools in almost every area. How ironic it is that these are the kids who are made fun of by the C students from public schools who are elected president (or selected for Speaker Of The House) and their bully-on-the-playground friends.

Ron’s Brilliance, My Delight
In all, I’m very impressed with Ron Silliman’s thought process on the Poetry Foundation questionnaire. He said a lot of things that needs to be said. I disagree on a few points, but they are so minor that they hardly are worth noting (with the exception of my political leanings, of course). Nevertheless, if poetry is to survive the 21st century, poets and poetry publishers need to find a way to distribute poetry to an audience that loves to read it but has no interest in being involved in its production. They need to look for my wife.

The Missouri Review hosted an audio contest. The winners of the poetry competition were announced:

First place in subcategory and Editors’ Choice Award, $100: Todd Boss, “To Wind a Mechanical Toy”
First runner up: Todd Boss, “Yellow Rocket”
Second runner-up: Runner up: Susan B.A. Sommers-Willett, “The Golden Lesson”
Third runner-up: Eric Torgenson, “Taking Tickets”
Fourth runner-up: Josh McDonald, “Women in Strange Trousers”

Chekhov’s Mistress Lives It Up Big
Bud Parr is salivating. It’s AWP week and Andrew Sullivan threw him some link love, which led to a pack of ants strolling through his picnic.

I’ve got to say, I’m not all that big on conferences and group activities. It sounds as though Bud is much the same way:

I’ve been to a lot of conventions and most of them are sickening to one degree or another, but there was a certain harmony of purpose at AWP and despite one table of dour interns (from a publisher we know) everyone was pretty enthusiastic about what they were doing.

So from the sound of things, AWP must be a blast. Sorry I’m missing it.

Interesting Quote Of The Day
This is an interesting quote:

“A new, non-corporate internationalism is emerging in literature, an independent web of associations and alliances at whose centre, like a brooding spider, lurks 3:AM. This collection is essential reading.” - Tom McCarthy, author of Remainder

Ron Silliman’s Brilliance
Ron Silliman and I are on the same page. He received a questionnaire from the Poetry Foundation and publishes his answers on his blog. Tidbits:

There are presently at least 10,000 publishing English-language poets. There may in fact be twice that number – it really depends on what percentage of publishing poets you think have active weblogs dedicated to the subject (if it’s ten percent, then the number is 10,000, but if you think the percentage is lower – as I believe – then the actual census of publishing poets would be greater).

And the common wisdom is that we need to promote poetry in order to get more people to read it. I don’t think that’s the problem. I think we have a lot of people who read poetry, and sadly, too many of them think they can write it.

The consequence is that there are more active poets now than ever, but that the total addressable market for any given book of poems is likely to be much smaller.

This isn’t exactly very encouraging. I think the landscape is such that if you don’t have an MFA your chances of finding a publisher for your poetry is severely diminished. Add to that the increasing nichification of poetry and the number of potential publishers that might consider publishing your poetry is even less. Throw in the economics of publishing and the situation is even bleaker.

To speak in this social context of “the decline of poetry” strikes me as completely missing the mark. It is possible that fewer people are reading certain types of poetry and/or certain types of poets, but there has never been so much poetry being written in the United States. I suspect, but can’t prove, that there has never been so much poetry being read in the U.S. as well, only that it is in a far more decentralized and fragmented fashion than before. We do not have a single national poetry audience, but rather hundreds if not thousands of smaller audiences, some of which overlap with one another, but many of which do not.

Is it any wonder then that our poet laureate doesn’t feel any obligation to promote poetry? Why should he? We’re already reading it.

And the final gem:

I am not at all certain that any MFA program should admit a student who cannot name a minimum of 100 books of contemporary poetry – published in the past 25 years – and say a little about each. And I am not sure that I would graduate any student who did not then seriously read 200 more such books over the next period of time – some schools require as few as 25 – and again could say a little about each. This would lead to far fewer students coming out of these programs with only barebones knowledge of what is being done today, far fewer students having to reinvent the wheel, and a much richer sense of what is actually possible in contemporary poetry, from slams to the new formalism, from flarf to narrative, from the prose poem to visual poetics.

And this is the part that is embarrassing for me. I’m not sure that I could meet the 100 book requirement. And I’ve been writing poetry for 20 years. But to meet this requirement, keeping in mind that I’m not enrolled in any MFA program nor do I currently have plans to enroll in one, but if I did then that would pose a slight problem for me. Off the top of my head I could probably come up with 20 titles and be able to discuss them at length, but 100? I’ve forgotten that many.

It likely wouldn’t take me but a couple of months of study time to become familiar with that many books if I needed to, but that is precisely Silliman’s point, namely, that MFA students, and graduates in particular, should have a better sense of what is going on in the field of poetry in general and in their own niche specifically than today’s graduates do. Furthermore, many of them couldn’t tell you the difference between a synecdoche and a trope either and this is what I mean when I speak of Millennialism - poets should study the craft, contemporary poets as well as the classics, and form some kind of style around the elements of form and content while trying to keep continuity with those who have come before.

A few years ago I had the idea to write a book of poems centered around a specific small town. I would write poems about real people, businesses, history, and places within the town and ask local townspeople to sponsor it with monetary gifts, which would be returned by mentioning them in the poetry I’d write. It’s an idea I have yet to implement. Maybe someday. But I thought this was a pretty good idea too. Somewhat related, though not completely, it has merit and I think could work anywhere.

How To Write A Poem
Need to know how to write a poem? I’d have written this differently, but there is some good stuff in here. Much better, actually, than I expected. I do take issue with a few things, however. Here’s my list:

1. The use of the word “modern” for contemporary poetry. Modern poetry is usually a reference to the Modernist school, which includes T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and their contemporaries. Popular schools of poetry that followed the Modernist school are Beat, Avant-Garde, Postmodern, and several minor schools. Poetry being written today is usually referred to as “contemporary.”
2. “You may remember rhyming poetry from textbooks. That is an old style. Modern poetry does not usually rhyme at the end of lines.” This isn’t entirely true. New Formalism is a contemporary school of poetry that does rely on rhyme as the old styles did. However, there is also a postmodern, or contemporary, stamp on the forms that are used in New Formalism. Nevertheless, there are contemporary poets who never use rhyme. The Millennial School of poetry, of which I am the only proponent (at present), promotes the idea that all poetic techniques, old or new, are valid and should be explored.
3. “Emotions are what make poems, and if you lie about your emotions it can be easily sensed in the poem.” This is entirely false. I’ve “lied” about my emotions in poetry a lot. I lie all the time. I consider poetry, all literature in fact, a “truthful lie.” It’s OK to lie in poetry; you just have to write it such that it doesn’t seem like a lie.
4. No. 5 on the list, “Decide what poetry style suits your subject,” appears to contradict the part about rhyming above. Some styles and forms rely on rhyme and if they don’t rhyme then they fit that form.

That said, there is some great advice in this wiki article about writing a poem. Specifically, I praise:

1. Point No. 1: Read and listen to poetry. Before you write anything you should be familiar with what other poets have done. Don’t be afraid to borrow their techniques - not their words and sentences, but their techniques.
2. Absolutely learn about contemporary poets and their styles. Study them. But don’t forget the classic masters.
3. Make sure you choose the right words. Not just any words will do. Convey specific thoughts. Only.
4. Use concrete images. I love the “objective correlative.” The idea preceded T.S. Eliot, but Eliot popularized the term. It is necessary to connect with your readers through concrete images. Let those images evoke the emotion in your reader.
5. “Really powerful poetry not only uses concrete images; it also describes them vividly.” True. So true.
6. Use poetic devices. And I might add, to use them you must know them. Study poetic techniques. Know what’s available. When you feel comfortable with the various devices that successful poets use then you’ll be able to use them effectively too. It begins with knowing what they are.
7. Edit your poem. Way too many poets fail to do this. Don’t end it on the first draft. Please.
8. Get outside opinions. Be careful here. Be sure you ask the right people. Only show drafts of poems in progress to other poets, who will understand, or try to, what you are trying to accomplish with your poems.

Understand that no one can teach you how to write a poem. But you can learn to write poetry. Don’t be surprised if you fall on your face a few times. It’s like riding a bicycle. No one does it successfully on the first try. Just keep reading and studying poetry, and keep writing until you get it. And one final gift about writing poetry: My take on How To Write A Poem.

Poet Dana Gioia achieved fame and notoriety when he published his essay, “Can Poetry Matter?” in the 1991 issue of Atlantic Monthly. Since then, the essay has been circulated around the world a few times via e-mail. Every couple of years or so I’ll get another copy of it sent to me from someone who has discovered it for the first time or who may have known about it all along but thought I might not have. I read it every time. It’s an excellent essay.

From the first sentence on, Gioia captures my imagination: “American poetry now belongs to a subculture.” The truth of this sentence penetrates my conscience like a poison arrow as I realize I am a member of this little subculture. But it doesn’t seem so little any more.

I’ve been writing poetry since 1989. That was the year I read Satan Says by Sharon Olds and when I took my first poetry workshop with Sheryl St. Germain at the University of Texas at Dallas. I’ve been writing poetry ever since, having given up on my dream of ever being a novelist. It seems poetry fills my need to communicate.

But who am I communicating to? Other poets?

Poetry’s Self Obsession
Sometimes when I read I feel like I am speaking into a vacuum. At open mic poetry readings others sit patiently awaiting their own turn to read, but are they really listening to me read my poetry? I recently discovered that many do. There are two types of poets that attend poetry readings. The first type of poet is the poet who goes to read and couldn’t care less about the poetry everyone else is reading. They just want to be heard. The second type of poet is the one who shows up to hear what others have to say and to share their own. They realize that poetry is a give and take. Then, occasionally, a “listener” will wander in just to listen and not read at all.

Many “listeners,” I have learned, are friends or family of poets. They may or may not even be at the reading if they didn’t know someone who was a poet. Would you really consider them an audience? I wonder what Dana Gioia would think? His observation, recanted below, makes me think he’s say “No”:

But the poetry boom has been a distressingly confined phenomenon. Decades of public and private funding have created a large professional class for the production and reception of new poetry comprising legions of teachers, graduate students, editors, publishers, and administrators. Based mostly in universities, these groups have gradually become the primary audience for contemporary verse. Consequently, the energy of American poetry, which was once directed outward, is now increasingly focused inward.

Is poetry really that self obsessed? Sometimes it seems it is. I’ve met poets who themselves were obsessed with their own greatness, or their own uniqueness. Their sense of self-importance seemed to be a monument to nothing, an ode to their own love of the craft. While I certainly believe that craft is important, and passion is inescapable, I also believe that poetry must be something more than a social club or an association of like-minded enthusiasts. There must be an audience outside of the inner circle. Again, I quote Gioia:

Today most readings are celebrations less of poetry than of the author’s ego. No wonder the audience for such events usually consists entirely of poets, would-be poets, and friends of the author.

Poetry’s Futile Search For An Audience
The trouble with being a poet is that it is so hard to find the audience. With fiction, there are genres. Even if some of them are utterly banal, there is a built-in targeted audience. If you write detective mysteries, there are a group of people who love to read detective mysteries. If you enjoy writing historical romances, there will never be a want of an audience. Whether your particular story is good or not is a matter for the audience to decide. But at least you have an audience. If you write poetry, your audience is other poets.

The closest thing to a genre in poetry is being a member of a particular school or movement. If you are a language poet, for instance, you will certainly be familiar with Ron Silliman and Rae Armantrout. If you write formalist verse then you’ll likely know the poetry of Donald Justice, Richard Wilbur, and Howard Nemerov. But what if you just write poetry and have not settled on a definition of your style, or follow a particular school? Where do you fit in?

I believe poets should give this some thought. Who are you? What kind of poetry do you write? Don’t just answer that question by saying who your influencers are. Just because you admire Silliman doesn’t make you a language poet. Just because you enjoy reading the work of Donald Justice does not make you a new formalist. It likely means you are too narrowly focused to have any definition at all. A poet must always be learning, trying new forms, taking risks, testing himself in all directions. You can’t do that effectively as a poet without knowing some little bit about all types of poetry available. You may not like the avant-garde, but it helps to know what made the avant-garde poets so avant-garde and why you do not wish to move your craft in that direction.

Dana Gioia’s observation that academic poets working as teachers in higher education are not familiar with the poets of the past is an amazing confession. Why? Do they study only their contemporaries? According to Gioia, yes. And I suspect this is even more true today, 16 years after Gioia’s essay was published. That’s a terrible admission to make for someone who claims to be an expert in a particular subject. Imagine a house builder who had never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright, or a musician who was not familiar with Beethoven or Bach. Would you trust them?

I think this is what Dana Gioia is saying in his essay. Society doesn’t take poetry seriously because poets take themselves too seriously, yet simultaneously they don’t take their art seriously. Until poets treat poetry like it matters and quit churning out mediocre verse simply to impress their teachers and fellow poets and really write poetry that speaks to the world around them, until then, poetry will just be an exercise in futile ego stroking. It is not something I wish to be a part of.

Millennial Poetry School Defined
I believe definitions are important. They say a lot about what a person stands for, and what he doesn’t. I have noticed that many schools of poetry, or literary movements, came about as a rejection of the school that preceded them. Either that, or they came about by way of admiration of a previous school that gave impetus to a new direction. You can see it in the historical movements from Romanticism to Modernism to the Beats, Language Poets, Postmoderns, and back to the roots with New Formalism. Each succeeding school of poetry either rejects a certain defining tenet of the previous school or takes a particular attribute of the preceding school and turns it into a defining tenet of its own philosophy.

The problem that I see with this is that all poetic schools contain something admirable. All of them contain some aspect that is annoying. What is considered admirable and what is considered annoying may be completely different from poet to poet, but we would all have our own preferences with regard to literary criticisms, poetic philosophies, and prejudices. We’re human; that’s our way.

We have reached a juncture in our history when poetry must be saved by our own sense of self importance, what I consider a weakness. There is no reason to wall ourselves apart. Why should the language poets and the formalist poets sit at different tables? Why must we attend different events and shun each other at the wine bar? Can we not learn from each other?

The Millennial School of Poetry is based on this presumption, that poets from different schools and movements can learn from each other. It is a belief that the ancient poets, classic forms, and contemporary styles can all exist together simultaneously, sometimes even in the same poem. There is no reason why a single poet cannot experiment with the known forms and still write free verse. There is no reason why a free verse poet cannot branch out and write a sonnet. There is no reason why the writer of villanelles cannot modify the form and create a unique twist on the form itself, or to invent a wholly new poetic form. No reason other than prejudice.

It is time to cast aside the prejudices of the past and move forward with Dana Gioia’s insistence that poetry can matter. Taking his suggestions, we can commit ourselves to creating a new breed of poet and a new appreciation for poetry. But to do so we must understand what made the poets of the past successful. What makes one poem stand out while another falls on its face. These are questions for everyone, not just some aesthete holed up on the third floor of some 200-year-old institution. Until the poets come down from their ivory towers, the elephants will not shed their tusks.

I believe that poetry is facing a new horizon. Like the poetry slams that took root in the 1980s, I believe that poetry is about to see a new regenerator - something explosive - that will make it relevant to people again. Poetry does matter, now it’s time for poets to make it matter. And may 2008 be the year we all resolve ourselves to ensure that it does - by studying the craft and not merely by primping our plumes.

NaNoWriMo is all over the place now. If you know what that is then it shouldn’t be any surprise since it is November. But I learned of a new kind of NaMo today. It’s the NaBloPoMo.

I have nothing against these efforts. My first heroes were novelists - right after I got past the fireman stage. After reading Jaws at the age of 10 I fell in love with literature. I wanted to be a novelist from that point on. In college, I discovered poetry and I haven’t gone back since. But I still get a hankering to write prose from time to time. I just wish I had the time to devote to it.

I guess some people have the time because NaNoWriMo is very popular. I wish these folks lots of luck. Write a ton of words and get them published. That’s what it’s all about.

Someone was inspired by the success of NaNoWriMo and decided to start a National Blog Posting Month, to encourage bloggers to post to their blogs every day. That’s not a bad idea. Daily blog posting is a good thing. I believe everyone who blogs should post every day. I do. Without fail, I make it a point to post every single day and, believe me, it’s no easy task. Finding something new to post about every day is a challenge. It’s possible. I do it. And thousands of other bloggers do it too. I believe anyone can do it. But it takes focus.

If you are inclined to join these types of efforts then I encourage you to do it. Post to your blog every day. Write a novel this month. Then next month you can enjoy the holidays and start marketing your brilliance.