In the last 18 hours I have written 44 poems. In fairness, I must point out that there is a difference between “poems” and “publishable poems”. Once I finish this post (which I mainly wrote at work as there were no sales overnight) I will make a cup of tea and settle down to read what I have written. This will be the acid test. That is not my acid wit I refer to, but an expression derived from the way we test for gold. Not that we actually do, because the owner is too tight to buy a test kit. having said that, I have always found them more trouble than they are worth. They either don’t give a clear result, or people come in wanting you to test things for them. As I’ve said before, if you go to a lawyer or an accountant it’s £50 for them to say “hello”. But have a coin shop and people expect the expertise for free. And if you don’t agree with them they ask if you can recommend someone who knows what they are doing.
We once had a man come into the shop, show us a lump of Roman brass and tell us it was one of only three known gold coins of a certain denomination of Richard II. I forget the exact details – it doesn’t matter anyway, because he was wrong. Despite the fact we showed him half a dozen virtually identical clapped out Roman coins he insisted he was right and ended up asking if we could give him the name of someone local who knew what they were doing.
Sorry, I’m diverging from my original post.
Julia’s bicycle picture gets another airing
I just went on the internet to find out who sells test kits and found out that most of them are now for testing drugs. Last time I bought one it was all about gold testing and I bought it from a paper catalogue. Times change. However, back to the blog.
(Later – after two cups of tea and a discussion on Julia’s day.)
Around ten of the poems were just about loosening up and another ten were mis-fires that tailed off in a damp squib and a mixed metaphor. I have just been through with a red pen and I can announce that with some rewrites and remedial work I estimate that about twenty poems can be made from the 44. This is slightly better than I was expecting. Some of it is just a bit of rewriting, some of it, I admit, will involve a bit more work, but it was well worth it as an exercise.
When you consider that some of my months this year have resulted in less work than this, I’m quietly pleased with it. I will probably abandon a few others as time goes on, as some are quite similar, and because I am often tempted away by new projects before the current one is properly finished.
Of course, you have to set this in a wider context. I’ve had about 150 published in five years, which is 30 a year. (I’ve actually lost count. I know it went over100 but since then I haven’t counted. It isn’t really that important and I’d rather be remembered for a few good poems rather than a thousand iffy ones. Unless I was writing for getting cards, in which case the thousand would pay better.) This looks good on paper, but remember that a lot of them are only three lines. Also bear in mind that some people publish every day or every week on their blogs, so I’m a positive lightweight in terms of productivity.
And at that point, it’s time to go. Those poems don’t write themselves.
Marmalade Hoverfly