The #365 Day Challenge has its precedent in photography. Do a Google search of “What is the 365 Day Challenge?” and answers about photography from photographers rise to the top. My own inspiration doesn’t come from Google; it’s from my former employer Geoff Livingston. He took on the photography challenge the other year and produced a number of photographs that are available for purchase.
Now it’s my turn. I’m co-opting the challenge and applying it to poetry. Every day, I’ll write a new poem. Some of them will be horrible. Some will have potential. Others will be wondrous because they build upon the horrible and the potential. To paraphrase Richard Hugo, the work put in one poem, no matter how good or awful it is, pays off in another.
I don’t intend to wait until 2016 to start the challenge; I’ve never been one for resolutions. I am a planner and a doer. I’ll be starting the #365 Day Challenge next week. I should be more precise. I’ll be starting the #365 Day Challenge next Monday, December 21. Maybe I’ll even resurrect the Tumblr and post the daily results there.
Why the specificity and the thought to publish the work on Tumblr? I believe specific dates and public display are ways to keep myself accountable. It’s easy to say I’ll start something next week, then push the start date to the end of the week. It’s a different matter altogether when I give a specific start date. I’ve made a promise that must be kept. Sharing the results ties into that; displaying them online is a way to show that I’m making good on the promise.
Want to join me in the #365 Day Challenge? You don’t have to write a poem every day. You could sketch or write or knit or whatever it is that you do. The only thing I ask is that you share what you’re going to do with someone. Make yourself accountable. That way we’ll both arrive at December 2016 with a body of work to show. Who’s in? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter (@erinmfeldman).