Today's post (my first on this blog!) includes an excerpt from my new book Write a Poem Step by Step. Book Giveaway details are below.
Write About Something You Care About
My first tip about choosing an idea applies to almost any kind of writing: Write about something you care about. How can you put your heart into a subject that doesn’t move you? If you try to write about something you don’t care about, you might have to force yourself to find something to say. You might struggle to write anything interesting at all. Your poem could suffer. It might even be boring. So write about something you feel strongly about.
That doesn’t necessarily mean something you like! Something that makes you feel an emotion, whether happy or sad, curious or angry, silly or serious, can make a good topic for a poem. Anything can be a subject if you are open to it: your shoes, the chair you’re sitting on, what you ate for breakfast—as long as you care about it.
Chloe’s poem shows how much piano music means to her and why.
The Piano
The piano reminds me of my grandma
When she played the beautiful sounds
The piano smells like an old library
When you step in and smell the old, dusty books
The piano makes me feel like I’m flying
Through white, fluffy clouds in the sky
The piano sounds like twinkling stars
The beautiful sounds are no louder than a soft MEOW from my cat
Chloe Strait, Grade 5
Put your whole heart into your poem. Go ahead and reveal your emotions. The effort will show in your writing.
Write a Poem Step by Step is available now from Lulu, amazon, Barnes&Noble, and local bookstores. See the links on the right to order.
Book Giveaway details: Post a comment here to enter for a chance to win an autographed copy of Write a Poem Step by Step and tell me how you would use the book. Be sure to include your email address so I can notify you if you win and ask for your mailing address. Comments do not appear immediately.
I'll choose a winner at random one week from today from all entries posted by midnight Thursday, November 15. Good luck!