What 100 Poems Taught Me

This past April I participated in National Poetry Writing Month where I wrote a poem everyday for thirty days. After summarizing that experience, I decided to continue the challenge and go for 100 poems in a 100 days.

Some friends of mine said this was a foolish and pointless goal and could not understood the merit of it. Maybe you’re thinking the same thing. Ultimately, we chase goals because they resonate and it’s sometimes better to simply feed these odd cravings instead of rationalizing the dream away.

So, instead of explaining why I did it, I’d like to talk about the lessons I gained and what I hope to incorporate into my career and daily work.

Your well is endless:

Our capacity for work and potential output is significantly greater than we think. Right when you think the well is dry you come up with something else. I had no idea of the sheer number of raw images and experiments I had in my head.

If you produce this quickly, with little time for reflection, your work will be of mixed quality. But it’s far easier to strengthen those raw ideas when you have them on paper as ‘prototypes’ of their future selves instead of waiting for something to be close to perfect in your tiny head. Only when things are physical can you refine and curate the best of your ideas.

For more about the need to constantly create in the face our fears, you can read my previous post on this topic.

You’re already ready:

Prior to the challenge, I had wanted to take poetry seriously for some time – and the word ‘seriously’ for me usually translates to reading a book or taking a class on the subject before actually doing something. In the past it’s been easy for me to create prerequisites to physical action, a clever way of justifying procrastination.

But by bypassing any kind of ‘curriculum’, I accomplished significantly more on my own than I could have under someone else’s guidance. I was inspired by other poets, visitors to this blog and my own mistakes – these were my mentors.

A Creative Anchor:

Not only does working this way mean you increase your output, put you also become more fluid in your medium. After a while the daily work become a part of your daily rhythm and you start to feel wrong without it. It becomes a kind of meditation, a morning jog, a holistic force that sets the tone for the day, that reminds you that today matters, so use it.

You must consume the world:

Seeing and experiencing the world through the filter of the medium you’re working in is very exciting. My morning walks in Amsterdam became like scavenger hunts, where I’d search for an image, a detail that could inspire that day’s work. The city and my thoughts became a precious thing that I was constantly trying to put into words.

I am now more convinced that as creators we must consume the world around us and respond to it, in the voice and medium of our choosing, on a daily basis.

But it doesn’t have to be all work. Play with your process when your stuff gets stale and you get tired. You can change up things by experimenting with different tools. For example, I tried writing out poems on paper cups, with tape recorders and apps (like OmmWriter).

But what about the work that actually matters?

Could a daily habit of producing something, rain or shine, improve our careers?

These past few weeks I’ve been wondering about how to apply this kind of challenge to my career as a filmmaker. Can I invent a 30-day challenge that is directly related to my work?

Possibly, but I get anxious just thinking about it.

As creative individuals we believe our jobs and ‘real work’ reflect who we are. The fear is that if you fail in these areas what does it say about our abilities and creativity?

Do we make it so hard to succeed because we make it so impossible to fail?

But what if we lower the bar? What if we not only embrace failure but expect it?

What would happen?

Honestly, the quality of my poems never mattered to me, it was always about quantity, about doing the work and going to sleep. But by obsessing on quantity, and censoring my ego and internal editor, I believe a side effect was that I produced some things of quality.

The challenge combined with blogging created a kind of sandbox where I could fuck around with no real intent or ‘master plan’ – yet I was extremely productive and surprised myself with the results. Odd.

Does our insistence for making ‘one of a kind’ work right out of the gate prevent us from eventually making one of a kind work one day?

Final outcomes we can be proud of are the result of constant experimentation and wrong turns as we find our way down a foreign road. And sometimes you have to lock your ego and editor in the trunk just to make some real progress as you make this odd journey.

I still need to give some more thought on how to specifically apply this kind of experimentation on my career. In the meantime if you decide to pursue a similar challenge this year, please leave me a note in the comments or email me – I’d really like to follow along on your journey, regardless of your personal or professional goal.

Also, I encourage you to journal these daily artifacts you create – via twitter, tumblr, wordpress, etc. – opening yourself to the feedback and inspiration of others; allowing some transparency to your bungles and successes. I promise you that kind of transparency is not as embarrassing as it seems. It’ll give you some accountability to finish your challenge and be a great reminder not to take yourself too seriously.

P.S. You can view some of my favorite poems from the challenge here.