Whatever your issues, you have to find the time to write. Writers constantly wonder about this issue. We talk about it over coffee, over beer, over bourbon, over the swimming pool and under milky clouds.

You’ve got fight for writing.

When I graduated from graduate school, I thought time would come down out of the sky and present itself to me. I’d think I’d write at the end of the day, after Friday, after dinner, after, after, after.

It’s funny how after took a long time to arrive. I wish I’d realized I had to fight for it.

Now I sneak for it. I sneak out — not really but it’s fun to say so — in the wee hours. Did you know Starbuck’s opens at 6:30 a.m. on Sundays? I had no idea people were alive at 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday. They are. They even have the audacity to come into the coffee shop when I am there.

After my first early-morning jaunt on a Sunday, I was hooked. I had to have more. I can only imagine the feeling was like tasting an addictive drug. I had to get away the following weekend.

On the third weekend, my novel was shaping up well. I had more poems written. I felt alive. I looked forward to my pre-dawn excursions. The bitter cold did not stop me. Unfair traffic tickets did not stop me. I kept going. I asked my husband about heading out before work on weekdays.

Try it and see.

I wish MacDowell would have their parties in Washington, DC. They have them in NY, which makes sense given all the artists live there. Yet and yet.

—-

Congratulations to friend and 32 Poems contributor Erika Meitner. Her book, Ideal Cities, won the National Poetry Series and will be published by Harper Collins.

—-

I still go back and forth about whether I should use italics online. What do you think?

—-

Someone gave me good advice. Work on it (it=something I care about deeply) and everything else will fall into place. A few weeks after I was told that advice, an unusual email landed in my in box that is part of the everything-falling-into-place category.

—-

I’m 9,000 words into my novel draft.

A few of the stereotypical “poetry words” include: dark, darkness, moon, love, dawn, dusk, and words that mean various shades of red.

My own forbidden words include: light, sky and, yes, dark.

I’m curious why I want to write about light and the sky so often. At times, I allow those words to creep into drafts and edit them out.

Writing Prompt: If you’re here looking for a creative writing prompt, try this exercise. Write down 6 of your forbidden words. Write down 6 words you’ve never used in a poem before and that don’t often come up in your daily reading or conversation. Write a poem with the 6 “new” words and see where it takes you.

What are your forbidden words? Please share them with us in the comments below.

Just for you…5 Ways to Find Time to Write Poems

1. Use Bloglines to subscribe to your poetry blogs. Stop using those links in your blogroll! With Bloglines, you can see who has updated so you don’t waste time visiting blogs without new posts since the last time you visited. You are able to read blogs in your Bloglines viewer and easily page through blog posts.

2. Batch Tasks Together: I save up a bunch of 32 Poems subscriptions (did you know you can subscribe now and get one additional free issue in your subscription?) and complete them all together in one batch instead of doing a few here and a few there. The process becomes quicker and more automated if I do them all together. Even better will be when I have software to do this task for me.

3. Figure Out the Most Important Item You Must Do: Are you doing the most important task right now? If not, get it done. You’ll save yourself some energy from worrying about that task.

4. Do Easy Tasks Now: If you get an email with an easy request, complete it now. Then, you do not have to bother with adding it your task list, writing it down or saving the email in a special folder. Do the task and delete the email.

5. Use Lists. I started to place my tasks in Outlook even though I don’t use that for email. Using this task list saves me time, and I can easily rearrange tasks (which is hard to do with paper!).

Have fun saving time and having more time to write poems. Read this for more info on Time Management for Poets.

• Poet Soup: An Interview with Charles Simic
• A Vendor of Verse — Need Cash? Sell Poems on the Street
• Crucial Books for 3 Writers (I love these kinds of articles.)

I elected to attend a school in the DC area that did not provide funding to everyone. My friend went to that school a year of ahead of me, so I knew there was some animosity between the haves and the “nots.” Even though I did not receive funding to that school, I went ahead and attended for a few days.

What I noticed was that the classes seem disorganized and the classes were huge for grad school. My poetry workshop had 21 people in it.

I left after a few days and never felt bad about it. I won’t say the name of the school — it’ll be hard for you to guess — because they have new faculty and the program is completely different now.

I applied again the following year. In that year, I worked at a theatre and met a rather colorful and dramatic person. He told me about the University of Florida. If I’d not waited and applied a second time to MFA programs, I would not have learned about the one at Florida.

The University of Florida ended up being the perfect place for me. First, the geography is right up my alley. I like to be warm. I like how Florida smells. I like the tropics and green trees year round. I lived only a few hours from my grandmother and got to know her better. I like little interesting creatures such as lizards. Second, the classes were small. My entire year of poets contained only 4-5 people. The entire poetry workshop was only 10-12 people, which seemed much better than 21 to me. One other benefit is that Gainesville is an inexpensive place to live. That’s important when you have to live on very little money.

I moved into a tidy apartment complex with a swimming pool and spent my mornings writing. It was heaven. I taught, had funding and part of my tuition was paid. If I’d known I was allowed to have a part-time job at the time, I would have left with no debt. My second year, I worked part-time as a copywriter and ended up taking no loans. I was able to live on a small amount of money and end up “free” of the loans I took during my first year within a few years.

I met some of my favorite people at UF: Bill Beverly, John Poch, Dale Young, Geri Doran, Sidney Wade and William Logan. With a few of these people, I started 32 Poems.

For a lot of reasons, Florida offers a good program. I can’t say it’s good for you, yet I can say it’s worth researching if you want an MFA in creative writing.

I stumbled across this old post of mine and wondered (again) what poems we return to as poets.

For me:

Song by Brigit Kelly
Meditation at Lagunitas by Robert Hass
Freedom, Revolt, and Love by Frank Stanford
Goatsucker by Sylvia Plath

Of course, I return to more poems than just this small selection. These are the poems that came to mind tonight.

How about you? What poems do you find inspiring again and again?