I love that Marsha has taken on Ron’s challenge, his original challenge of writing sonnets. The longer I’m in this biz, the more I see it’s about doing the work every day. My new book of poetry, HAND WORK, came out of a year of writing a poem every day. Not a sonnet however. And out of 365 poems, I managed to find 76 that I didn’t mind putting out into the world. Not too bad.
We don’t often talk about how much bad writing one has to do to get to the good stuff.
We also don’t talk about the quality of steadiness, how important that is.
When I’m cranking hard on a novel, I try to write three pages every day. This consistency helps me stay in the world of the book. I carry the story with me for the rest of the day, I sleep with it, and in the morning I’m ready to write a few more pages.
I can hardly wait to read one of Marsha’s sonnets. Or see a character from Ron’s challenge come to life in a story.
You can wait, dear, but I hope you're not holding your breath. I love doing this sonnet thing but it's all too clear that the benefit of doing it is not evident in the poems.