Drawing a Line in the Sand (NaPoWriMo)

Well, tomorrow begins National Poetry Writing Month, and I’ve decided at the last minute to take part.  As those of you who stop by from time to time no doubt have noticed, my posting frequency has taken a nosedive recently.  I’ve been overloaded. Overworked.  Overstressed.  Too many things all at once - one VERY good thing coming up, one very sad thing, two relatively neutral but high-intensity disruptions, two anxiety-inducing but ultimately out of my control stressors, and one big thing that’s both good and bad.  This is the first time I’ve ever had to juggle so many emotionally charged things at once, and I must admit that I don’t think I’m managing it all so very well.  And my writing has suffered.  It’s been hard to get started.  The words have been hard to find.  I don’t want to write about the BIG things, because they’re too raw still, or feel overly melodramatic when written down, or perhaps I’m just so exhausted by thinking about them all the time already that I don’t feel the urge to write about them too.  But on the other hand, my mind is so overfull with those things that I can’t concentrate on anything else, either.  What’s a girl to do?

 Well, I know the answer.  Just write anyway.  Do it, no matter what comes out.  Some of it will be swill.  Some of it won’t.  It doesn’t matter.  I just need to find the discipline somewhere in me to get it started, and I know that once I do, it will help me.  So, here goes.  Thought I’d better make a big freakin’ deal of announcing it or I’d almost certainly never get the oomph going to actually do it.  So…

For the month of April I will write one poem a day. 

I may not post every day - in fact, I almost certainly will not, because of one of the obliquely mentioned things above will take me out of town and away from the computer sometime this month.  But I will write every day.  I will.  I know I will, and now you do too.

That is all.  Carry on.