Oh my GOD-- Week 10!

[Mayuki]

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First draft is due in Week 10. I'm gagging-- absolutely gagging. I've written about half a poem and a thousand journal entries to whinge about creative limitations, etc.

I'm sure the gravity of my situation will start to sink in after assessments, but for now, I'll just be content with laughing at my deplorable situation. [insert hollow laughter].

Procrastination is terrible. Urgh.

[Tulipa]

Dude, just churn out as much as you can.

The more you have to work with (ie edit thoroughly) then the better a situation you're in.

Even if it's crap, it's a good start.

[666_blessings]

Tulipa's right. Just churn out as much as you can. Doesn't matter if it's garbage because for every dozen or so pieces of garbage, there'll be something worth keeping and running with. If not, you'll at least have a few good lines to play around with and use as the basis for a poem. And in the worst case scenario that said lines don't inspire anything, you can always glue them together into a Frankenstein style monstrousity.

I suppose the message is to calm down, don't be too critical of your ideas and just write, write, write write and write some more.

Oh, and procrastination is a wonderful thing.

[shimmy&shine]

by this time of the year, I was asked to drop english ext 2 by my teacher precisely because i hadn't done anything constructive, useful or good, (eg bad poetry).

I wouldn't stress yet, save that for the week before when you are going crazy to perfect every letter and punctuation in your major work.

How i go through was working with a structure, a backbone for your suite or collection. hope this makes sense. like i wrote around 20 poems, and 9 of them were the different phases of the moon. so i started with these, and it got so much easier. maybe you could try this angle.

haha 666_blessings, procrastination IS a wonderful thing...

[tillytilly]

Whoa, that's pretty early to have to hand in a first draft, isn't it? I did my first Viva Voce a couple of weeks ago and only had to have 1000 words of draft done. And I know someone who's onlu recently handed in their proposal! I thought that was late too, considering mine was last year.

[666_blessings]

Hmmm... this whole forum seems to have gone a bit dead. How are the major works coming along, class of '07?

[dreamer77]

Well I just spent the last three hours attempting to write a sonnet. How do other poets make it look so effortless? I just ended up making up my own rhyming pattern to make it easier.

[Tulipa]

It's not easy, practise is the best tool.

What kind of sonnet are you working on?

[666_blessings]

It's always tough when you have to stick to a set form which is why the majority of major works are free verse (that and the fact that free verse is so much more *cough* postmodern)

[asquith]

i'm also having heaps of trouble with my majoy work (to anyone who isn't, could you kindly tell me how you do it?). i dont know how you make a strong concept and what makes one. i've already handed in my propsal but i didn't feel very connected to the idea i was doing then. i'm still trying to search for something i can run with though. do people figure out what they are to write about before doing it or do they just write(which is terribly hard to do because am a procrastinator too)!
any help would be great

[666_blessings]

I think with any other medium you do need to have a definite direction before you start writing but with poetry you can just grab any random idea and just run with it. If it turns out well you have a poem to edit. If not, you'll have a while bunch of lines to use as starting points for other poems. Hope that helps.