Camp NaNoWriMo Midway Progress

My goal for July’s Camp NaNoWriMo was to write a total of 60 poems. Ideally, the poems would work together to tell a story about two unnamed characters amid a bit of apocalyptic gloom. While I have been writing every day, I’ve averaged only about one poem a day rather than the necessary two. Since I’ve never written a collection of poetry before, I wasn’t sure what I had signed myself up for, and I have a few thoughts about why I haven’t been as productive as I should have been.

A big concern I had going into this project was the need to have each poem stand on its own. I like narrative poetry, but there’s a difference between a story that stretches over a hundred pages in poetic from than one that’s broken up into one- or two-page poems. I was trying to do both, like trying to write a novel where each chapter also stands alone as a short story. While there are instances where this is done successfully, it was a lot to expect of myself for my first poetry book.

For the rest of the month, I’m not going to worry so much about the overall narrative of the book. Every poem I include in the final collection will be told from the same persona and written to the same audience. Hopefully that will be enough to hold the collection together. I’ll focus on one poem at a time rather than the whole book.

Another thing that caused me to hesitate in my writing was my doubt about poetic forms. Most of my poems are written in free verse, but I like to write a few that rhyme. I’ve even done a couple of sonnets, although not in iambic pentameter. In the spirit of having a cohesive book, I wondered if all the poems should be written in the same style. When I have doubts, I don’t write much.

Once again, the answer to this is to focus on each poem individually rather than on the book as a whole. If all the poems had the same form and same rhyme scheme, the book could become monotonous as well.

The most important thing to remember is that as a Camp NaNoWriMo project, this is just a first draft. I can change things. Even though I’ve been posting some of these poems on Instagram, there’s no reason why I can’t edit them before putting them in a book. By placing such high expectations on myself, especially for a project unlike anything I’ve ever done, I made myself too scared to fail that I didn’t write as much as I could have.

There are still two weeks left, including today. I have time to reach my goal!