Putting it About (that's my writing, not myself!)

After a lengthy recovery from stocktake yesterday (= I’ve had a very lazy morning!), I responded to Zoe’s reading of Arson and declared it ‘finished.’  I struggled with the printer (why oh why does it freeze the print queue and refuse to work without wrangling, just when I’m trying to put my work out there?!), but eventually printed out the poem, filled in the entry slip and sealed it in the envelope.  Now all I’ve got to do is post it...

It probably won’t surprise you that I prefer to send a paper, hard copy entry rather than copy-and-paste into an online entry field...but the second competition I entered today wouldn’t let me; the only entry was online and so I submitted to it.  Biting the bullet, I’ve entered my poem Resuscitation into the medical-themed competition, which I found out about from the latest issue of Writing Magazine.

Who knows whether either poem will be successful?  Fingers crossed...

I do know, though, that by reworking Arson to fit the competition criteria, I improved the poem.  Before, it was more succinct and staccato, and perhaps lacked clarity as to what exactly was being burned.  Now, I believe that the crux of the poem (that the ‘I’ had written words inspired by her lover and now burns them in anger) hits harder, and the theme is taken more into ‘writing’ than just ‘burning’.

So, here we are, 17 days into January and I can tick off 2/12ths of one of my Resolutions!  Just 10 more competitions to go...  Resolution-wise, I’m also pleased that I’ve blog-posted more regularly, and aim to continue doing so; and after dinner tonight, I’m looking at notes on my last sequence poem to begin working on it once again.  My week off from work is beckoning (just 2 more shifts to go...), and so is my creativity...yay!