2013 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 2

November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2013

2013 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 2

For today’s prompt, write a “news of the day” poem. The poem should use some sort of recent news event as a springboard. It can be a news story from today (this morning), but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, you could even go “old school” and find news stories from archived sources–like the “news of the day” from 1936 (to pick a random year).

My 2nd PAD poem ‘World’s Apart’ is about the juxtaposition of a 60 million Dollar diamond ring in an auction in NYC  and a makeshift tent school UNICEF have provided for Syrian refugee children. Same day. Same world.

Based on photographs of today’s news from around the world covered by The Guardian Newspaper. These pictures were consecutive and couldn’t have been further apart.

Day 2 – Coming to you from NaNoLand!

Phew! That was a little tough. This morning I have mainly been resisting!

I wanted to write my word count early to free up some of the rest of the day. I started at 10 with a coffee and happily half an hour later had 800 more words. I resisted coming on the blog and posting as a ‘taking a break’.

The next 45 minutes I pushed out another 871 words and that seemed as difficult as peeling a sack full of potatoes. In hindsight resisting the 2 natural ‘break’ points may have been a bad idea. Sometimes your mind tells you what to do and you just have to listen.

 

The flipside is today I managed 1671 words and funnily enough the 2nd document (I save each chapter segment in a separate file) had just 667 words. I had a moment when I thought ‘surely I have written enough today?’ the count was just 1004…

I am more akin to night writes really I think. Still there is always the small possibility I may add more later today and if not

I HAVE MADE MY WORD COUNT!

Day 2     1671

TOTAL 3,546

Words Remaining 46,454

TOP TIP

Take a break if your body or mind is telling you to do so (sometimes listening to the voices is a good thing!) 😉  

2013 November PAD Chapbook Challenge

I have just discovered another November challenge – there are so many out there as alternatives to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) which I have already committed to. However, I do need to write as many poems as I can this month as I have several readings and like to do different sets as some of the audience are the same and I like them to have new material to listen to. I also have a workshop and a Stanza meeting I need to write new material for.

So with some thought I have decided to complete the 2013 November PAD Chapbook Challenge on

 this month too. Run by Robert Lee Brewer.

Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community

Here’s some information about the challenge – in case you fancy participating too.

Full details can be found here; http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/2013-november-pad-chapbook-challenge-guidelines

The November challenge. The guidelines in this post should help guide you through the month.

Here are the basics of the challenge:

• Beginning on November 1 (Atlanta, Georgia time), I will share a prompt and poem each day of November on this blog.
• Poets are then challenged to write a poem each day (no matter where you live on the planet) within 24 hours (or so) from when the prompt is posted. Don’t worry: If you fall behind or start late, you CAN play catch up.
• Poets do NOT have to register anywhere to participate. In fact, poets don’t even need to post to this blog to be considered participants.
• The Challenge will unofficially conclude around 24 hours after the final prompt is posted. That said…
• This Challenge is unique, because I expect poets to take all the material they’ve written in November and create a chapbook manuscript during the month of December. (Yes, you can revise material, and yes, the chapbook should be composed mostly of poems written for the challenge–I’m using the honor system.)

Day 1 prompt:

Welcome to Day 1 of the 2013 November PAD Chapbook Challenge! Let’s get some poeming done this month!

For today’s prompt, write an appearing poem. This could be a poem about something (or someone) appearing out of nowhere. Or it could be about appearances–appearing one way to some people; appearing another way to others. If you’re new to my prompts, let me share one thing: I’m totally fine with you stretching the prompt in any direction you need to write; in fact, I encourage it. Now get poeming!

 My 1st PAD poem ‘Transformation’ is about the lifecycle of the caterpillar and was inspired by a YouTube time lapse video I watched.