No fooling: Write a poem a day in April!

My weekend is about to begin, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to make any more posts until Monday. My oldest son will be singing with his kindergarten class tomorrow, and I'll be helping my little brother move into his brand new house on Sunday. Good times for the Brewer clan!

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to prepare you for a wild and crazy April poetry challenge. As you probably know, April is National Poetry Month and to celebrate I decided to challenge myself to writing a poem each day--not worrying about quality as much (that's why revision was invented) as getting some first draft material to work with. And I want to encourage you to join me.

To help you out, I've been preparing a series of poetry prompts for each day of the month of April. In fact, I'm even thinking I'll do a "Two for Tuesday" poetry prompt each week as well.

Anyone who writes a poem a day and posts that poem in the comments of each prompt will get something of value from yours truly over the summer. In fact, I'm sure anyone who writes a poem on most of the days will get something from me.

If you're worried about rights, you'll retain your rights, though many publishers will probably consider those poems, at least those drafts of your poems, published--even with them being in the comments. But I plan on participating, and if you're foolhardy like me, you will, too.

Also, just to let you know, I'll probably remove any poems that are over-the-top offensive. That's not to try and censor anyone, but if a piece is excessively graphic just for the sake of being excessively graphic--then I'll probably have to pull the plug. (After all, there are some young ones who read this blog.) I'm hopeful none of my readers will go to that extreme.

If you have any questions, just send me an email with "Poetry Challenge" in the subject line at robert.brewer@fwpubs.com.

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Even if you don't participate by writing poems in the comments, though, I would love it if you participate at home. And if any of those poems eventually end up published, I'd love to hear about it.

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So the challenge is now out there and official. If you're interested, start looking for the first prompt on April 1 (and again, this is not some April Fool's Day prank, for real).

Have a great weekend!