As a scientific person, sometimes I find it hard to write creatively. I find myself always looking to guidelines, procedures, formats, writing conventions, formulas, or outlines. When I have to write it is usually an argumentative or persuasive essay or a scientific paper or lab report. I wanted to expand my horizons as a person to be more creative.
I challenged myself to write more creatively with the least amount of guidelines possible. I figured the easiest format for this would be poetry because poetry can be in a bunch of different formats with or without many rules. I think it also made me feel a little better because I knew I was not really breaking any rules.
I tried this for a couple of days trying different poem formats.
Day 1 – Haiku
Usually the earliest poems that we are taught are in haiku formats. Haiku poetry has 3 lines, the first and last consisting of 5 syllables and the middle having 7 syllables.
These are a LOT harder than they look. It took me so long to find words that even associated with each other. Trying to maintain a syllable count was so difficult too. I ended up finally making one, but then realized that maybe I struggled because I needed more inspiration.
Day 2 – Ode
I decided that maybe I needed more inspiration and more structure, so I thought of one of my favorite songs called Ode to Viceroy by Mac DeMarco. An ode is a very structural poem that consists of stanzas and has a praising tone towards an object or person. I thought writing an ode to the winter felt appropriate considering how cold and snowy the weather has been lately. As I was writing, I realized how much I did not like winter, and that really through me off, because it is supposed to have a praising tone. It turned into me complaining about the winter and how cold it was, and it was a miserable poetry fail on my part.
Day 3 – Free Style
I decided to scrap both of my first two feeble attempts and to have no rules and just write. I was just hoping something would come to me in somewhat of a cohesive thought. I really struggled with this one. I barely got past more than a sentence.
Moral of the story, I’m not good at poetry. Although, I would not have known if I didn’t try. My poetry itself was enough to make any one of my past English teachers disappointed. The fact is that I tried and put myself out there is something that I can be proud of, even if my work was not good. It is easy for us to feel discouraged when trying something new, but I’m living proof that by even just trying something new, it could end up giving you a new appreciation for something.