Several days ago I had a major freak-out/anxiety attack when I realized I was posting my poems on the Internet, something I avoid, not just because I’m afraid of plagiarism, but because some literary magazines consider your work published if it’s posted on a web site. A good friend who’s familiar with this contest and with lit. journals in general convinced me that this situation is OK. For one, I’m posting them in the comments section of a blog related to Writer’s Digest, which he assures me is a reputable lit. mag, and besides, I’m not posting them on my own site or anything like that. What a relief it was to hear, to know that at the end of the contest, I can still submit these works — probably after major revisions, of course!

It’s now Day 7 of the PAD Challenge and I’m 5 for 5, or 5 for 10. So I’ve at least met the low end of my goal and I’m halfway through the high end — a fifth of the way through the entire challenge if I can make it all the way. I got stuck on Day 3′s prompt, but I managed to post it yesterday. I’m stuck on both yesterday’s and today’s prompts, even though they provide two on Tuesdays, it being “Two for Tuesday.” You can do one or the other or both, but I believe only one counts towards the daily challenge.

Being stuck is frustrating since patience is not my strong suit; if anything, impulsiveness is, something I’m still trying to curb. I’m glad I was patient with the third day’s prompt because I came up with something pretty decent. The poems I’ve been writing aren’t too bad, considering you only have a day or few to do them. Well, technically you have a month if you want to post them all on the 30th. No thanks.

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So. I thought I had put poetry aside when I got my MFA. As soon as I finished defending my thesis, I was done, done, done with poetry. (Oh, except that one from my thesis that I completely revised and submitted last December.) That’s partially why I’ve been transitioning to prose.

Then I came across the Poetic Asides’ April Poem-A-Day Challenge 2009 on the Digi Demons blog.

And to my disbelief, I posted my first poem today. That I wrote last night. That’s part of the rules — the poems have to be written in April 2009, April being National Poetry Month and all. The nice thing about the Challenge is that you don’t have to write a poem to submit every single day for 30 days (unless you want the online badge), as opposed to NaPoWriMo, where I believe you’re required to write and submit a poem every day on the day the prompt is posted. I also like the Challenge because you can write a poem using the first day’s prompt and submit it on, say, the second day if you want. Like I did. Less pressure. More time to spend on Crackbook.

I have decided to take time off from my current work-in-progress essay to attempt writing one poem a day. My goal is to write between 5-10 poems. One thing I’ve learned from my therapist recently is that if you don’t meet a goal but you did work towards it, you can still give yourself credit. OK, and maybe this is an excuse to set that essay aside.