Why POTW?
I used to think of myself as a “slow writer” – a very slow writer. I waited for inspiration, and I was “on a roll” if I was managing to write a poem once a month. Most of the time, it was a lot more infrequent than that.
Then, after my first collection Tails came out, I pretty much gave up writing poetry completely. I didn’t feel inspired; instead, I think I felt intimidated and perhaps a bit disillusioned. I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t ever going to produce another book. Perhaps I wasn’t even going to produce another poem.
In November 2006, my husband (an engineer by training, with a career equally as chequered as mine) finally acknowledged his real calling: invention. He started an Invention of the Day blog, and he proceeded to post a new invention on it every single day for an entire year. [As I write, the blog is now at 1046 inventions, and is never more than a few days behind a 100% daily posting rate.]
I was pretty amazed (and chastened) by this. “If he can produce an invention every day,” I thought to myself, “surely I ought to be able to produce a poem once a week?” It seemed like an experiment worth doing. I duly set up my own blog, and committed to taking the time to write every day, even if I didn’t feel like it.
On 22 December 2007 I posted the first poem. Since then, to my utter and ongoing amazement, I have actually managed to post a poem every week – at the time of writing, 93 poems and counting. I’ve finished my second book, Perfect Blue, and I’m in progress on my third. I can’t begin to describe what a revelation this has been – to shift from seeing my creativity as this “inspiration-driven” but incredibly strangulated thing, to understanding that it’s an abundance that can be relied on as long as I make the effort to turn up.
I think that Poem of the Week has turned me into a productive writer for two reasons. First, the commitment is public: even if nobody reads the blog, it’s out there and visible, acting as a kind of conscience. The longer I keep it going, the more powerful that commitment becomes, preventing me from getting lazy, making excuses, or giving in to artistic nerves.
Second, the blog has let me escape the perfectionism trap, where the fear of not writing well enough stopped me from writing at all. I’ve committed to writing a poem every week. I’ve committed to posting it publicly. This means I have to allow myself to do it badly – and to let the world see me doing it badly – because (irritatingly but unsurprisingly) I simply can’t write a wonderful poem every week. Some of the poems I’ve posted on POTW have been atrocious embarrassments, but I’ve put them up – and left them up for the full 12 weeks – because of my commitment to the process.
I’ve written more bad poems during the brief lifespan of this blog than I did in the ten years beforehand – but I’ve also written a hell of a lot more good ones. I’ve learned that the most powerful way to free up your creativity is to let yourself do it badly – then learn the lessons and move on.
October 3, 2009
