Progress so far is that I’ve found 16 haibun/tanka prose that are close to completion and have worked on six of them to improve them. I’m going to work my way through the rest now, but will have to get a move on as I’m not going fast enough.

Nine days to go, and a lot still to be done.

The good news is that I only need six good ones, as editors only usually accept one at a time. It helps to have three good ones as you never quite know what is going to be flavour of the month. There are also some that have been out before and I need to make sure they don’t go back to the same places.

Slightly less good news – I still need to get 24 good tanka and haiku written and I’m nowhere near finding inspiration for that.

I’ve managed to reduce the production of the prose poems to a fairly industrial process – write the prose (which is generally fairly simple), add the poem (not quite so simple), edit, send out, edit again, and repeat . . .

It’s easy enough to stack the prose sections up, and even to edit and re-edit. When in need of a poem that won’t come it’s also possible to take one from somewhere else. I also move chunks of prose from one to another, a bit like working in a breaker’s yard. This is the perspiration stage of the stage. The inspiration bit it trickier and easily derailed by tea and biscuits, visitors or writing about medallions.

So many distractions, so little time.

Tonight’s task is to revise four more prose sections and write some acceptable tanka. I have no distractions now so I’m hoping to rattle along. We have to stay over in Nottingham for a few days so I need to increase my speed to allow for days away. My aim – write faster and write quicker. With practice, the quality will come.

Orange Parker Pen