1. Find someone to pine over, and after two weeks, write a poem about unrequited love.

2. Beat your head against a wall, then write about how poetry comes from suffering.

3. Use the following words in a poem: chicken, Bundt cake, defibrillator, blastocyst, Skippy, rictus, Monongehela, gewgaw, Industrial Revolution, budgie, Weltschmerz.

4. Compose a poem using Magnetic Poetry^©. Do not, however, try to submit your refrigerator to a poetry journal.

5. Write a poem about writer’s block. Then write a poem about writing a poem about writer’s block.

6. If, as the old adage goes, you “write what you know”, and if you know nothing, then write about nothing. It could be a poem about nothing. You could be the Seinfeld of poetry!

7. Find an obscure poem by someone else on the internet, change a word or two if you like, and take credit for it as your poem. Be sure you have a good lawyer.

8. Keep a notepad by your bed. Then next time you awake with a great dream-inspired idea, jot it down. And spend the next couple of days trying to figure out what the heck you were talking about.

9. Win a Pulitzer Prize, or become Poet Laureate, so you can write whatever you want, because whatever you write, half your readers will applaud your genius, and the other half will complain about how your work has declined since you won the big prize.

10. Console yourself with the fact that there really is no such thing as “writer’s block”. Then get off your duff and WRITE!

02/16/2004

Posted on 02/16/2004
Copyright © 2024 Bruce W Niedt