Why I "Failed" at the Poetry Challenge and Why it Doesn't Matter

I started the April Poem a Day challenge and shared some of my work here, but as you noticed I quit after a few poems. This tends to happen to me a lot when I try this kind of challenge. I toodle along pretty well at first, then I find other things demanding my attention and I move on to those things. It happens with NaNoWriMo too. But in the long run, it doesn't really matter.

Why doesn't it matter? I mean, I set a goal and I didn't meet that goal. So I should berate myself and feel bad, right? Yeah, I'm thinking no. Because what did I accomplish? I wrote some poems. I probably wouldn't have written them at all if I hadn't started the challenge. So I have some bits of work that wouldn't have otherwise existed. That's not a bad thing at all.

Also, who's to say I won't finish the challenge eventually? I did last year, though I didn't write the last poem until some time in May or June if I remember correctly. I like the challenges and I'll probably go ahead and tackle the rest on my own timeframe. So, in my mind, rather than failing the challenge, I've produced some new work, challenged myself, and now I have some new pieces I can market later, with more likely to come.

In fact, the thing I'm most worried about regarding this challenge isn't that I didn't write all the poems in the time allotted, but that I can't seem to find the notebook I wrote them in. Now that's a catastrophe...

As If You Never Left Me--Sunday Snog

Another Sunday--another excerpt. And since As If You Never Left Me comes out TOMORROW from Crimson Romance, this Sunday's snog will give you another glimpse at Rey and Joely's story.

The snowballs flew crazily for several frenzied minutes. She screeched and he hollered, she laughed and he let out great howls of mirth. She barely missed his head; he came within inches of hitting her square in the face with a slushy projectile. Finally, emboldened by laughter and adrenaline, she slipped out from behind her fort, then darted across the snow to sneak behind his fort and dump her last three snowballs down the back of his shirt.

He howled in protest and grabbed her, pinning her arms behind her. “I don’t even have a decent coat and you do that to me?”

Immobilized against his strong chest, she could do nothing but look up into his laughing face. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re right, I’m not.”

“Then neither am I,” he said, and kissed her.

His lips were icy cold but the inside of his mouth was warm, his tongue hot as it stroked against her lips. She opened to him, pressing hard into his heat. Snow and cold forgotten, she sought only that warmth, that union. His mouth on hers, soft and mobile, his tongue pressing softly against hers. He pulled her close, his hands sliding down her back.

She clutched at his coat, so absorbed it was a few long seconds before she registered the cold, the wet. As she pulled back, he ducked forward, his mouth still seeking hers even as she ended the kiss.

“You’re soaked,” she said. “We should get you inside.”

He dipped his head one more time toward her, and when he missed, he smiled a little and said, “Yeah. My shoes are full of snow and my jeans are soaked.”

“You’re going to catch pneumonia.” Fighting the reluctance of her entire body, she took a step back. Her hand sought his, unwilling to break the connection totally. “Come on. I’ll make you some hot cocoa.”

Sunday Snog--As If You Never Left Me

Today's Sunday Snog is from As If You Never Left Me, coming April 29th from Crimson Romance:

She paused, looking at him, then found herself walking back to the bed. She bent over him and caught his mouth with hers.

She thought she’d forgotten. But as her lips touched his, she was flooded with the taste of his mouth, not only in reality but in her memory. Her closed lips remembered the touch of his tongue, remembered surrendering, opening to let his mouth take hers utterly, but in the real moment, the kiss remained carefully chaste.

This was not an easy thing to do.

After what seemed an eternity of hovering on the edge of complete surrender, she drew back. Looking down into his soft smile, her face went hot. With desire or embarrassment, she wasn’t sure. At least he didn’t look smug.

She straightened, clearing her throat. “I’ll see you later.”

This time, she forced herself to leave.

April PAD Challenge--Day 12

Yesterday I finished my taxes, and the theme for the PAD challenge was "broke," so for most of the day all I could come up with was this:

I just did my taxes and now I am broke
All of my money just went up in smoke.

But I couldn't figure out where to go from there. Which is too bad because that really could have been poignant and literary and eventually made me the Poet Laureate of Colorado.

Anyway, later in the day I came up with something else:

April PAD Challenge--Day 12
Prompt: "broke" or "broken"

Pieces of broken hearts lay
All around where he sleeps at night
And he doesn't understand
Why even now
At ninety-six
He can't get anyone to stay as long as breakfast.

PAD Challenge--Day 11

April PAD Challenge
Day 11
Prompt: "In case of______"

In case of apocalypse there will be
17 cans of Spaghetti-Os
14 boxes of Muesli
47 cans of beans
In case of apocalypse, break the glass.
Behind it is the can opener.
In case of apocalypse gather
All the guns
All the dogs
All the knives
And go to the second-floor bedroom
Where you will eat beans
And Muesli
And Spaghetti-Os
Until the fallout starts.

More Poeming--PAD Challenge Prompts 7-10

I got hung up on Day 7 of the Poetic Asides PAD Challenge and ended up backlogged once I finally came up with something for that one, so I'll just post a few at a time here instead of backposting to put them all on the right day, because that's kind of annoying, anyway. So here we go:

Day 7. Prompt--Sevenling (this is a particular poetry form, which is why I got hung up on this prompt)

A gold ring
A silver chain
A locket

The cash
and the cards
From his wallet

She tosses them in after his body.



Day 8. Prompt--Instructional

This is how it works:
If you turn the crank to the right
The heartbeat slows.
To the left, the constriction is lifted.
Turn to the right, farther and farther,
and the bands tighten.
The pressure is even, so
The heart does not exactly burst.
It is only compressed
Until
Finally
It becomes incapable of human emotion.


Day 9: Prompt--hunter and/or hunted (twofer Tuesday prompt)

The soft whiff of denial hits the air
And she knows she is on the wrong path
But she presses forward.
The branches tangle around her.
Thorns tear her skin.
She knows it's the wrong way.
She keeps going.
Going.
Into the darkness, through the swampy quicksand
Until finally
There he is
Entirely the wrong man.


Day 10: Prompt--suffering

How much longer can it hurt this much?
How much longer before the body rebels completely
And organs shut down
The blood stops flowing
The breath stops breathing?
How much longer?
Six more years
Then five
Then four.
Then they're counting down to three
Because then it will be
Their silver anniversary.

Humpday Hump

Sharing an excerpt from my upcoming release from Crimson Romance: As If You Never Left Me for Marteeka Karland's Humpday Hump blog hop.

***********

With the Jeep in low gear, she trundled over the uneven, snowy ground until they were shielded by a stand of evergreens.

“Back seat?” he said, mischief in his eyes.

“Damn straight,” she answered, adjusting the driver’s seat as she spoke, moving it forward as far as it would go.

Braving the cold, they got out and climbed into the back seat. Before Joely had quite closed the door, Rey had caught hold of her, dragging her across the back seat, half into his lap. He kissed her, devouring her mouth while his hands slid down her back, cupped her ass. His tongue pressed in, tangling with hers.

Joely laughed. "What?" Rey said, almost as if in protest.

She shook her head, unable really to explain. It just struck her funny, that they were about to make love in the backseat of a car, like teenagers afraid of getting caught by their parents.

He grinned at her, eyes twinkling, and she sensed that he understood. She smiled back. That was the way they had always been—in synch, practically reading each other's minds. It felt good to have that back.

She grappled with the snap on his jeans, with the zipper, finding it quite difficult to get them unfastened while he was sitting. But she managed to get them open, and to work the jeans down his hips and partway down his thighs. He was already firmly erect, and as she worked the jeans down, he worried a rather bent condom package out of his pocket and laid it on the seat next to him.

She smiled up at him, not sure why that particular gesture touched her so much. Maybe because it proved he'd planned ahead, or maybe because it proved he was thinking about protecting her. Either way, it made her warm. Made her love him.

She maneuvered into an uncomfortable sitting position on the floor between the driver's seat and the back seat. She'd positioned the driver's seat to its farthest forward position, so there was some room, but it wasn’t quite enough. Still, she could make do. She adjusted until she was relatively comfortable, sitting between Rey's open knees. He looked down at her, heavy-lidded, lips slightly parted, and put his hand on her head, combing his fingers into her hair. He knew what was coming. Not forcing it, but obviously anticipating it.

She smiled. Tenting her fingertips against his knees, she traced them up his thighs, then back down. His eyes closed and he let his head settle back against the headrest with a soft sigh of contentment.

She slipped her fingers again along his thighs, up to his belly, dropped a fingertip into his navel, lifted it back out again, carefully circumnavigating even the dark curls of his pubic hair. Then, with no preamble, she bent and took him into her mouth. He jumped, gasped, and she chuckled, licking him.

He filled her mouth as well as he did her body, and the taste of his skin brought back memories of other back seats, other blowjobs, quickly going down on him behind bushes at dusk on the college quad. She took him in, deep, all the way to the back of her throat, smiling at the way he fit perfectly against the back of her palate. She had missed that. They fit together like puzzle pieces. His hands fisted gently in her hair and he began to pulse his hips. It felt good. He tasted good. Faster, deeper, and she brought up a hand to curl her fingers around him as he thrust, working his skin, feeling the hardness beneath it. Then, abruptly, he stopped, and drew her head up.

"Inside," he said. "I want to come inside you."