Day 2

Hello all,

Today has been very long, and I have been feeling quite ill. Luckily, Tuesdays are a good lazy day for me to just catch up on rest and relaxation (I only have one one hour class, yippee!) Due to these circumstances I decided that, naturally, the wonderful and simple poetic form of Haiku would just have to do for today.

I decided to come up with my own prompt for today, and if any of you would want to try it I would love for you to leave it in the comments! Just write a poem involving a line from a song in any musical you like. For my particular one, I use The Wizard of Oz and give it a haunting twist:

We're off to see the wizard,
Though the land of Oz
Has long since been burning down.

I'd really like to see what others could come up with! So don't be shy.

Sarah

NaPoWriMo!

It is indeed that time of year again! The time when we who enjoy our writing and our rambling congregate to complete the daunting task of writing 30 poems in 30 days. While not always possible, it is a true test of creativity, resources, and thinking on your feet when it comes to poetry writing. Yeah, you guessed it, I will be doing this this year too as I have done every year. Long ago my friends and I formed some sort of Dead Poet Society based around NaPoWriMo and its sort of stuck ever since..

Anyway, this is usually made easier by the numbers of sites out there that will offer a daily prompt to help stimulate your creative juices if you simply can't think of anything to write about. Can be followed or not, it's poetry, who said there have to be rules? Well, for the start I decided to follow a lovely prompt from www.napowrimo.net. I'd also suggest checking out the blogs from other writers on there, seeing others work  as well as sharing your own. The prompt they had picked out today was to use the first line of a famous poem, and me, being original as I am, used a Shakespeare sonnet with a little twist, to direct it towards my lovely fiance, something which I'll probably be doing a lot of (hey, we just recently got engaged.)

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Or perhaps you’d rather not be seen that way,

Perhaps you are the winter moon

In the cold air to make me swoon,

Perhaps you are the starry night

A blissful end to my toiling plight,

Perhaps you may be this crisp spring air

Eyes so blue and skin so fair,

Perhaps you are a lover’s sigh

To fill me with warmth when the day is nigh,

Or perhaps you are none of these,

And to be mine is all you please.

Such is my love poem. You don't have to be corny like me, experiment! Seriously there is so much out there, so many poems waiting to be written. So find something you like and get writing!

Sarah

College and Juggling and Poems, Oh My!

Hello everyone!

I’m going to be upfront. Life has been stressful and busy lately. What with graduation coming up and school being that much harder, with all other activities and juggling at the same time personal negatives, it got a bit overwhelming for a while. Nevertheless, I am feeling chipper as ever again and looking forward to getting back on board with my life. It got chaotic and disorganized and I needed to pull myself back together. But here I am again.

College for me has been a big thing lately. Recently, over the weekend, I went to my school, Millersville University, for another open house solely for admitted students. I am looking forward to it. I’m sure most of you have been through this process, and many are going to go through. Experience is the best teacher, I suppose. I wouldn’t be able to do it alone, though. I have many thanks towards those who are helping me get prepared for this step. And a huge step it is!

How was university or graduating secondary school for all of you?

On another note, I got help from a teacher and she taught me to juggle! I know I wrote something like that on here not that long ago, and it was a pretty amazing and rewarding feeling to be able to actually do something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time. I still need consistent practice (I am still not that great, but it is a work in progress), but I am not worried. It was a very basic process. Start with one ball, and throw it from the dominant hand to the other hand. The most important part from early on was to develop a good, easy toss that arced right about eye level. My teacher stressed that the most. Once one ball was down, then naturally two came in the progression. The hint that she gave then was to develop a good rhythm with the balls: when one is at the peak of its arc, throw the other. Even speak out loud if you have to. That part took the most practice, but once you had the rhythm and the easy toss down, getting three balls in wasn’t hard at all. The best part was, none of this took all that much time. She taught me in one class period and by the end of the class I was throwing three balls through a couple cycles. But, as I said, practice is key, so I have to be consistent with that.

Also, something that has been going on this whole month: National Poetry Writing Month, also known as NaPoWriMo or 30/30 (pronounced thirty thirty). Basically what happens the entire month is you write one poem a day. It’s a pretty daunting task, but very worth it once you see all the awesome poems that you can produce by the end of the month. It’s a little late in the month for those of you who haven’t previously heard of this, but there is always next year, and I would highly encourage participation. For those who do, I would love to read your poems! I will post a couple of mine on here some other day, maybe on the last day I will post my favorite. In the mean time, link me to blogs you know of or you like, and I will share them on here and take a look. Here is the  NaPoWriMo website: http://www.napowrimo.net/.

It’s nice to be writing again, I’ve missed all of you.

How have you been?

Adieu,

Sarah.