More On My Writing On Vocal

Introduction

Last night I did something I had never done before. While often the stories and poems I start end up in the digital bin, I decided to write one more piece from the Vocal L*pogram Challenge, there were fourteen hours to do it in so it shouldn't have been a problem with my fertile imagination that often works like a match dropped into a box of fireworks, but sometimes the flame doesn't catch.

So What Happened?

I had written around five hundred words and then decided I needed another few hours, but the more I looked, the more I thought it was not worth finishing and publishing. I could have finished it then and submitted it as a piece of fiction but I decided it was just not good enough. That was about eleven o'clock last night.

I think the story was preying on my mind and I was pressuring myself to finish it and get it entered in the challenge before it closed.

When I binned it I felt a huge sense of relief, and I went to bed and slept soundly.

That story will never resurface, although it has prompted me to write this piece, and as writers, we should never pressure ourselves unnecessarily. Vocal Challenges should be viewed as prompts, and if they put you under any pressure, then maybe you should take a step back, as I did last night.

Life puts pressures on us without us adding to our pressures unnecessarily (I use that word a lot, or have in this piece).

But All Is Good

I do want to always write, and I do love writing in lots of genres. I feel I am a great poet but also feel I am being lazy when I am writing a poem, although I now have no problem publishing poems one after another. I seldom do freeform and tend to use villanelle, sonnet and pantoum as my preferred format and they allow me to produce good quality poems very quickly, although without good ideas to start them they would be a waste of time. I get the impression that most creators and Vocal prefer free-form poetry.

I recently went ten publications without a poem, bar the two music playlist/acrostic hybrids and then some inspiration came and I produced a villanelle and that made me feel really good.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading. I am sure everyone hits these situations at times.

Never be frightened to take a step back, bin stuff you have worked on, and fell better in yourself.

Your wellbeing is the most important thing, and everything is secondary to that.

Thank you once more