Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Pruning


I need to prune the roses
Baring tender stems.
Crinkled buds protect from frost
Til washed by gentle rains.

I need to prune my chapters
Painful as it seems.
Spattered words undo the finish
By hanging in the sentence.

I hit delete to terminate
Useless tangled words.
Replaced “the it and there”
With descriptive names and places.

The practice of organizing words in the form of poetry is a good exercise for developing good writing skills. I wanted to write about my struggle with organizing and editing my writing. As I rewrote this poem several times I asked myself these questions:

What am I trying to say?
How do the words sound out loud?
Do I have unnecessary words?
Would another word better convey the meaning?
Do I want to keep making the poem better or finish?
Is it worth my time to write this?

I decided it was worth my time to practice exploring word choices. Then I needed to get it done and move on. Tomorrow is another day and another walk.

25 minutes walking







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