Sometimes, your books have ground to a halt and the inspiration fairy hasn't visited all day and you NEED to write. Well, here's a bit of creative writing practice if this is you right now.
Go on a poem safari.
A poem safari is a glorified walk. Take a pencil and notebook and go searching for beauty. Write poems about anything that strikes you. I recently went on one, and I was struck by the dahlias in our front beds. This led to a long poem of several stanzas, each describing a different flower in our yard. I'll only post one verse here, since the rest of it isn't very good:
"The hosta is mourning lady,
With violet-veiled face.
Her misery and sorrow only
Outweigh her beauty and grace."
Since a poem safari is a practice, there are rules:
- Rule one is, it doesn't have to be good. It's just a way to get writing.
- Rule two is, you have to set rules for yourself. My rules for myself were, there had to be a metaphor in each verse, and each stanza had to be a quatrain, following the rhyme scheme ABCB.
- Rule three is, only describe what you can see. I love our clematis vine, but it has no flowers, so I couldn't describe the blue china saucers on their artfully carved shelf.
- Rule four is, stop when you need to stop. I never described the infrared geraniums on our back porch, because it was dinnertime.