Inspired by the challenges (and I think successes) from my series of writing exercises based on the novel The Fiction Class (the series starts here; to view others in it, search “The Fiction Class Breen” on the google search function for the blog), I am going to try my hand at a new series of poetry and fiction writing exercises based on prompts provided by the Poets & Writers e-newsletter “The Time is Now”. This is a great find that I don’t even remember how I stumbled upon. It is delivered weekly and contains tips and tricks, writing prompts, and information on new resources and contests for authors of poetry and fiction. For more information, check out the P&W website here.

Today’s exercise is based on the October 27 poetry prompt. It says to take a poem I am having difficulty with and to double-space it, then insert an extra line in between each current line to expand it and work past the difficulty. Then you are to go back and revise to “distill” the poem to its “most powerful form.”

Well, I’m not really a poet so I don’t have any poem works-in-progress that are causing me angst or trouble. Plus I only write in highly structured poetry forms, so you can’t really add a line here and there. But this still sounded like a cool and interesting idea, so I decided I would take it, tweak it, and make it my own.
Continue reading Poetry Writing Exercise: Spare Lines