The 30/30 Challenge

I love to write when I feel like it, but have always been wary about making writing into an obligation. I want it to always be fun. I want to feel inspired. But over the past few years I have been flirting with the idea of a daily discipline. Would it really crush my inspiration to write even when I'm not in that writing mood? My first big challenge was NANOWRIMO. National Novel Writing Month which was in November. The goal then was to write a novel, roughly 50,000 words in a month. I got to 38,000 but never quite finished the whole novel. It was cool to make writing a bigger priority in my life and my friends and family were really great about helping me plan out my schedule.

Then life happened. I left a job, got a new job, started getting back into short fiction and poetry again. I set the novel aside to finish my second book of poetry and then promptly stopped writing for a while. Then I ran into a friend who has been doing the Artist Way. She spends a little time each day devoted to creating art. That inspired me to do a 30/30. 30 poems in 30 days. I started May 1st and used my facebook page as my accountability system. True to my word, I wrote and posted at least one poem a day.

This turned out to be brilliant. It wasn't nearly the obligation I thought it would be. I enjoyed writing a little something everyday and it kept me feeling connected to my voice. My friends and family got into my daily posts too and were very supportive with their comments. In the beginning I felt a bit awkward about posting new poems. Posting everyday didn't leave a lot of time for edits. But there was beauty to the rawness as well. What I got out of it, besides actually having 30 new poems, is that there is an endless source of creative abundance just waiting for me to tap into it. Allocating time daily actually left me feeling more inspired rather than less. I highly recommend it as a way to keep your craft sharp. While I chose to freestyle my challenge, if you google 30/30 there are several different websites that will provide you daily prompts to help get you going. I will leave you with a few of the poems that came out of my challege.

Day 1:

Scar Tissue

Scar tissue is the strongest tissue in the body,

the way it wraps around the breech

knits itself together like hands clasped

hard and clutching at the safety

of a thicker skin,

but gone is the give and stretch.

I am creating a statue of myself,

a monument to re-injury,

a pyramid of surviving the wound of you.

I am mummified in my healing

and daring you to break the skin again.

Maybe I don’t want your Neosporin this time.

Maybe I am exhausted from trying so hard to recover.

Or maybe I am simply ready to be broken,

to bend and arch and melt

to learn the lesson

that these things happen.

To be more careful next time

or at least not to scar so hard.

Day 5:

Myself unedited

is a bit frightening

I might be grammatically incorrect,

my content could be unclean

I might be a fragmented thought

jutting out into space,

incomplete.

Day 17:

Dear Random Man dancing on the corner of Orcas and Beacon Ave S.,

Hallelujah! I thought I was the only one to hear the music. No one else tapped a toe, snapped a finger. They waz all spines vertical and hips horizontal, bearing stoic crosses on the trudge towards coffee. But me, I woke up to disco balls flashing glitter against the blacks of my eyelids, and they didn’t dissipate in the bright tangerine of dawn. The beat grew stronger, a robust and complicated rhythm jiggling through my thighs, fluffing up my hair. I felt maracas in my kidneys, tambourines in the slap of my heels, trumpets in my pancreas, trombones down the line of my shin bones. I woke up with violins in my liver, not that mopey longing stringy things, I mean mariachi staccato leaps. My toes were wiggling piano keys. Thank God you can hear it too!

Feel the marimbas fluttering up through shoulders. Shake it. Pop and lock it. Shimmy like a Christmas jello mold. Let the vibe wail out like a joy siren. Are we the only two people who got the memo? We can’t be the only ones on earth to wake up to this miracle. Keep dancing Sir and I will too and maybe they’ll start to hear it. Maybe it’ll sneak up on them, their mouths curled up at the corners, getting all crinkly around the eyes, that tell tale sign that this beat is contagious.

Day 26:

My City
Evergreen and ever gray
my city is ghost mountains
and silver pebble lined bays
with choppy currents to lap
the ankles of its dinosaur crane guardians
my city is wild roses and twisted thorns,

green and green again,

the curves of her uprising,
ever rising up
man made mountains
nestled in god made mountains
concrete and earth
evergreen and ever gray.

Reagan Jackson is a writer, artist, YA fiction aficionado, afro-punk, international educator, and community organizer based in Seattle, WA. You can find her most Tuesdays at the Seattle Poetry Slam or maybe just being nerdy at her favorite bookstores.