My Last Post For The Ultimate Blog Challenge: A Poem About Writing

Today marks the end of my first experience with the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Writing something every day for a month and sharing it was difficult and I'm glad I did it. Some days/posts were better than others, and that's okay. Tomorrow starts NaNoWriMo, which means national novel writing month, and I think I'd never have the nerve to try that. NaBloPoMo also begins tomorrow, which is another month long blogging challenge. And then there is ManiWriMo, a challenge to write an ebook in the month of November, and I've signed on, although I think it's a sign that I've finally lost my mind.

In my last post I shared a poem by Don Coburn, and his poem inspired me to write this one.



Writers' Group

The new lady read her memoir and I thought
that was very brave to share something so personal
with this group of strangers who call themselves writers.

The guy who makes a living as a Christian writer
said nobody wants to hear another bad childhood story
unless you were really tortured or lived in the closet or something.

The romance writer said the story wasn't about
a bad childhood, it was about forgiveness and grace
and something about a stray black cat.

The English teacher said she really loves punctuation and
the quotation marks go after the comma and
by the way it should say their instead of they're.

The poet asked about symbolism and the cat
which reminded the retired pastor of something
that happened thirty years ago that he talked about

until the facilitator interrupted to ask if anybody else
brought something to share and papers slid back
into notebooks as heads shook no

except the loud lady who read her miracle story
and didn't realize it wasn't about a miracle at all
because the inflection of her voice could fool anyone.

The mystery writer said he would be out of town for
a while and the humor columnist wondered aloud why certain good
writers haven't been with our group for a very long time.


What about you? Are you brave enough to share, whatever the response might be?

The Ultimate Blog Challenge Day 9: Kicking My Butt

I’ve been participating in Christina Katz's 21 Moments Writing Challenge for a few months now. It’s simply an example of good writing, received via email each morning, as inspiration and a gentle reminder to write. 

Participants are to write at least 200 words per day, for 21 days of the month. You may use the email examples as prompts, or write whatever you wish. 

It isn’t homework. You don’t turn it in.

At the end of each month, you may submit one of your writing “moments” that you have edited and polished, and if Christina chooses it as an excellent example, you receive the next round of 21 Moments at no charge.

I see it as a little kick in the pants to remind me to put the words to paper.

After participating in 21 Moments for a while, I heard about the Ultimate Blog Challenge, and had to wonder why, if I can write something every day, that I can’t seem to do anything with the old blog. So I signed up. How hard could it be? 

By day three I was at a loss. This is not playing around with a few words every day that you might review and make something good from later, and nobody will ever know if you don’t. 

This is start it and finish it and edit it and post it for complete strangers, who are probably better writers and more successful and better than you in every possible way, to read and judge. Yeah, that.

No pressure.

Christina’s little kick in the pants did not prepare me for this UBC ass kicking. I’m still glad I did it, anyway. It’s got me back in the blogging habit, and has helped with the procrastination due to perfectionism problem.

Sometimes you just have to take a breath and hit the Publish button.

Thank goodness there are also Edit and Delete buttons.