Sean Bishop Recommends...

“At some point I realized that I’m incapable of writing poems unless someone forces me to do it. Revising is easier for me; it can happen even against my better judgment as soon as I open a document. But someone’s got to make me do that first act of writing—I have to feel accountable to real, meat-and-blood people other than myself to make it happen. So I write most of my first drafts as part of a poem-a-day challenge. Once in the winter and once in the summer, I send an e-mail to about a hundred poets I know—some old classmates, some former students, some colleagues, some people-I-got-drunk-with-once-and-am-pretty-sure-I-might-have-liked—and I convince about twenty of them to try to write a poem every day for a month. Then they must send that daily poem to every other participant, silently-yet-relentlessly pass judgment on everyone who misses a day, and adhere to the following set of absurdly rigid rules: 1. First drafts only! The entire poem needs to have been written that day. 2. No disclaimers! Just send the poem and don’t qualify or apologize for it. This isn’t about writing ‘good’ poems, it’s just about getting it done. 3. For the same reason, no commenting! Positive, negative, it doesn’t matter—you can’t say one damn word about anyone else’s poem, ever. 4. No pre-writing! You can’t say, ‘Here’s my poem for today and for tomorrow, too!’ And that’s how it goes. Half of us quit halfway through, but we all write more poems than we would have otherwise, and that’s all that matters.”
—Sean Bishop, author of The Night We’re Not Sleeping in (Sarabande Books, 2014)