I am very proud that my first collection of poetry was published. I found that by entering poetry contests it provided me with the motivation that I needed to keep writing.
The process of assembling my collection of poetry started years ago when I saw an ad for a poetry contest. I was interested and wrote five poems for the contest. I didn't win anything! But I did enjoy the experience of writing the poems. So this continued. I continued to lose contests but write poems. It wasn't about winning pretty quickly. I enjoyed the challenges of the poetry contests which often required writing different types of poems such as Haiku and Tanka poems. Learning how to poems that required a specific syllable count or required a specific rhyme scheme was an exciting experience.
After three months of doing this I did win my first poetry contest. It was a 5-7-5 poetry contests where I had fun with the structure and line count. Later that year I began writing free verse poems because I liked the freedom this poem form gave me (and, yes, it was the topic of a poetry contest). I won that contest too!
After a year of this I had a manuscript of poems including my two winning poems. I wasn't sure what to do with them but I did have enough poems for a book. None of the poetry contests kept rights to my writing (I made sure of that prior to entering) so I compiled my poems into a book. That was involved because I also got images for each poem. I should point out that there are excellent sites for clipart that you can use for the poems you write as well as the cover of your book. Putting the book together was a process but an enjoyable one. For poetry contests, of course, you check spelling but it is equally as important for a book you are working on.
So this has been quite a journey! But I learned that poetry contests can help a writer. I went from entering my first poetry contest into publishing my first book in a little over a year. I'm still entering poetry contest and plan on publishing my second book next year.
The process of assembling my collection of poetry started years ago when I saw an ad for a poetry contest. I was interested and wrote five poems for the contest. I didn't win anything! But I did enjoy the experience of writing the poems. So this continued. I continued to lose contests but write poems. It wasn't about winning pretty quickly. I enjoyed the challenges of the poetry contests which often required writing different types of poems such as Haiku and Tanka poems. Learning how to poems that required a specific syllable count or required a specific rhyme scheme was an exciting experience.
After three months of doing this I did win my first poetry contest. It was a 5-7-5 poetry contests where I had fun with the structure and line count. Later that year I began writing free verse poems because I liked the freedom this poem form gave me (and, yes, it was the topic of a poetry contest). I won that contest too!
After a year of this I had a manuscript of poems including my two winning poems. I wasn't sure what to do with them but I did have enough poems for a book. None of the poetry contests kept rights to my writing (I made sure of that prior to entering) so I compiled my poems into a book. That was involved because I also got images for each poem. I should point out that there are excellent sites for clipart that you can use for the poems you write as well as the cover of your book. Putting the book together was a process but an enjoyable one. For poetry contests, of course, you check spelling but it is equally as important for a book you are working on.
So this has been quite a journey! But I learned that poetry contests can help a writer. I went from entering my first poetry contest into publishing my first book in a little over a year. I'm still entering poetry contest and plan on publishing my second book next year.