Instructions on How to Write Poetry

1. Formulate thoughts in a complicated way

2. Spend hours writing how you feel

3. Find 10 lines you like

4. Discard 9 lines

5. Keep 3 words

6. Voila, you have a title

7. Think of an original idea

8. Contemplate the sea

9. Describe the movement of the waves

10. Expand this idea to 40 lines

11. Wait, now it’s time to realise there’s nothing original about that

12. Strikethrough everything you wrote

13. Think of an original idea

14. Come to a realisation, nothing is original anymore

15. Panic

16. Give it a rest for a week

17. Write about love you never found

18. Spend a couple more weeks following this process

19. Congratulations, you created an 8-line poem

20. Post it on Instagram

21. Refresh the page every 2 minutes to see how many likes you’ve gotten

22. Accept that no one likes your poetry

23. Get under the duvet

24. Cry your eyes out

25. Start over