NaPoWriMo 2023 Afterthoughts

I'm ending the National Poetry Poetry Writing Month the same way I started, by staring at a blank page and wondering what I'm going to write next. 

That's not entirely true. I started writing my final poem last night and finished after midnight. As I was about to start poem thirty, I had an idea for another poem I wanted to write.

That's how National Poetry Writing Month should end, with you wanting to go a little extra. It's like the way people get pumped up after running a mile. And unlike marathons, with NaPoWriMo, you don't have to rest the next day. You can just keep going if you want to.

As usual, I went into National Poetry Writing Month having either done first drafts or putting pins on all the poems I wanted to write before April started. 

I don't believe in going into April with outlines of poems you want to write. I'm sorry, but for me that would be cheating.

I believe in going in with as much as a blank slate as possible. Sure, most of the poetry will be failures, but you'll be proud of the ideas that actually take shape and become strong poems. Moreover, they will be poems you would have never thought about writing until you took the challenge. 

That being said, most of my poems from April are clunkers. I own it.

I was committed to the grind, but I only got real excited when I was working on the thirtieth poem. I was even smart enough to cut half or more of the stanzas at the last minute, which for me is even more exciting.

The older you get, the more things you have to do, the harder it is to draft, finish and present poems online the way I've been doing since this challenge started in 2005. Real life can get in the way of the experimentation and fun. It did for me a little.

While I'm proud that I didn't have to break the Emergency Haiku Glass, this might be the first year I didn't attempt any form poems. 

No Tretinas, no sonnets, no villanelle. Not even a sequence of hay(na)ku. That's disappointing. 

That said, I'm ultimately glad I did this. I've come close to quitting for years, but I never regret the process when it's finally done. 

I'm glad I got others to participate, even if they don't finish with thirty poems (I haven't always). 

Whatever your output is, I hope it was worth it for you.