A Writing Challenge

My wife challenged me to write two poems during the break that we had from our classes. Every year, there is a two or three week break between the end of the fall semester and the start of the spring semester. This time the break was longer than normal—five weeks or so. The last week was devoted to preparing for the spring semester; the remainder was spent celebrating the holidays and writing both for this blog and for myself. I thought for a little while that I had retired because of how much free time that I had.

Before classes ended in December, I had played with the idea of repainting part of the house. It’s what my father would have done with his time if he were in my situation. This house of mine certainly could use some fresh paint on the inside. My asthma has always been a deterrent. Any painting on the inside probably should be done in warmer weather when it is possible to open the windows.

On New Year’s Eve, we stopped at a local liquor store to pick up a bottle of wine, one with a low percentage of alcohol, say, 8% or 9%. While there, we ran into a friend who says she works at this particular store on weekends and during the holidays. I thought to myself that I should have tried getting a similar kind of part-time job during this break from school. Devoting that amount of time to a part-time job may have helped me focus more of my energy.

Writing poetry on a regular basis has always been a problem for me. I sometimes think that earning a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing would have helped me in developing a regular writing habit. Learning that skill would have been more helpful than taking more literature classes while earning yet another advanced degree.

Not writing regularly has limited my production when I should have been recording many more of the things that have occurred in my life. I need to train myself, still, to devote a few minutes every day to writing.

During this break from classes, I initially took an early draft of a poem that I had written years ago and developed it into a much stronger poem. For the other poem, I wrote something new. It was a poem that I had been thinking about but had not yet found the words for what I wanted to say. This new poem is less polished than the other one and may undergo many more changes. In any case, I fulfilled what my wife had challenged me to do. Some of my time also went to reworking two other poems, and I started another new poem while I was working on my classes.

I am not prepared to share these poems at this point, however. It is a good feeling to write more regularly. I suppose I need to be challenged more often.