How to be a Productive Poet

By acklesjones

  • Submission

    You just sent out three to five of your best poems, and now you must wait. The time between submission and response varies between publications. This down time can be used to improve your writing.

  • Cultivate

    Take a day to relax, and then refresh your creative juices with this writing exercise: -Write four nouns
    -Write four verbs
    -Write four adjectives Use these 12 words to write a poem.

  • Expand

    Take the poem written on December 3rd and revise it. You could remove all punctuation to allude timelessness, or remove articles such as "the" or "a." You could add an extra stanza that makes a (correlated) leap in images or tone. Challenge yourself to take a risk.

  • Exercise Again

    You should always be brainstorming new ideas, but today you should purposefully organize them. Make a list of details from your day-to-day life that strike you as important, moving, or strange. Take five words or ideas from that list and write a poem.

  • 5 x 5 x 5

    Another writing prompt... Make five separate lists:
    -Five adjectives
    -Five instances of time
    -Five nouns
    -Five animals
    -Five colors Take one word from each list and write a five line poem.

  • Archive Yourself

    Make sure to always keep your poems together in some kind of file on a computer or in hard copies tucked away somewhere safe. Having all of your work in one place will help you stay organized and inspired.