I loved taking part in National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo). OK, so I didn’t manage the full 30 poems in 30 days, but I did post 26 out of the 30 ( I started two days late anyway).

I’m proud of what I achieved. I rocked up at the page pretty much every day for a month and wrote rhyming words about something front of mind that day.

Here’s what I learned from taking part in NaPoWriMo:

1. I committed to something publicly. Therefore I felt duty bound to honour that commitment. 
2. Poems are fantastic at capturing a tiny fragment of time. 
3. I wrote poems about completely random things, like my kitchen skylight and a scarecrowess I photographed at a farm.
4. I had no idea what I was going to write about until I sat down with my laptop.
5. I only like writing poems that rhyme. They make me feel held and contained.
6. The discipline of writing a poem kept my thoughts and feelings focused.
7. I didn’t do any censoring. I just let the poems flow. 
8. I wrote for fun and challenge, not for any other reason.
9. I never found excuses not to write the poems. The only days I missed were times I was busy with family stuff and nowhere near my laptop.
10. Today feels odd not writing in rhyme.
11. Sometimes I ran out of ideas but still wrote a poem anyway.
12. I love the discipline and shape of the poems I wrote. 
13. I noticed that my repetitive themes are about shadow and death. Existential issues evidently emerging.
14. I will continue to write poems as the mood takes me. I do anyway, but I have exercised a muscle that will need to be used and stretched regularly.
15. Hidden pieces of me are now being seen. The act of revealing is where the healing happens.
16. Other bloggers liked my poems. How generous the writing community is.
17. Some of my poems got favourited on Twitter. How humbling that was.
18. I felt resentment some days, but wrote anyway.
19. I feel I have grown as a person.
20. Procrastination didn’t even get a look in. If you want to get writing, get poem-ing.

Thank you, NaPoWriMo!