Today is Day 28 of The Carol and Emily Project and I should have 140 poems completed. I have 40, five of which I wrote this morning between the hours of 2 and 4 AM. It’s a good thing I don’t have an agent pushing me to produce and stay on schedule (yet). Actually, I do work best under pressure. (Email me if you’re into being a pushy agent.) I also tend to think I can do it all because I have done it all for most of my life. Putting your butt in the chair is the place to start, but that doesn’t guarantee creativity will be responsive when you call.
A little voice inside says I’ve bitten off more than I can chew and another little voice says shut the hell up and just write. So that’s what I’m doing. I did go back to sleep for a couple of hours, conquered some housework/laundry, had a virtual home-school session with a grandson via Zoom and then hit the notebook/computer again.
I’ll be sharing at least one new poem every day. I hope you’re interested enough to follow along and see what becomes of it all.
On January 17th I raided my husband’s office supply drawer and found a blank engineer’s computation book that I deemed perfect for starting this poetry/art project. It has numbered pages and graph lines and I got super excited. Emily wrote her poems on the back of used envelopes and random small pieces of paper, so that’s what I’ll be doing as well. This project is uber challenging, not only because of the sheer number of poems I’ve committed to writing, but also because hardly anyone writes letters anymore so my envelope choices are limited. Oh, and then there’s the fact that I’m not all that artistically inclined. But that’s the thing, I’m trying to stretch myself and my creativity, so you’re going to undoubtedly see some truly elementary attempts. Here’s the first poem I wrote using Emily’s first line “Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine” inspired by events on January 7th…
The Carol and Emily Project 