How to Turn 50: Show Up at the Desk
Ted Kooser said that if he had 12 poems at the end of the year, then he considered it a good year. That sounded to my ears like a fine way to reckon time as a writer. I mean, it seems like it worked out pretty well for Ted! For a few years this pace suited me. The pile of poems really do stack up even with limited time.
But in 2022 I decided to push myself past Kooser’s yearly goals. Standing in the shadow of Neahkahnie Mountain, I committed to the 50 x 50 Project. I would write 50 new poems before I turned 50 in 2024. This was more than double my previous goal. And it sort of contradicted the slow, small approach I’ve taken toward writing. Is faster really better when it comes to poems? Shouldn’t things percolate up to the surface in their own good time?
I divided the year into 6 week chunks—long enough that something substantial could emerge but not so far away that I could procrastinate! I completed the project in August of this year. Most of the poems from Every Broken Year were written during this fertile time. So what changed? How did more poems get written?
I think actually more poems got finished. For so long, just writing anything, no matter how preliminary or amorphous, was such a relief. A few poems would get finished but most stayed in a very fresh form. With this more ambitious goal, I needed to log three poems every six weeks. That kept me returning to the drafts pile, looking for things that might be close. I was also meeting regularly with the Poetry Circle—Fritz, Heather, and Martine. I have learned so much from these fine poets by getting to watch their own drafts emerge through the seasons.
One of the best things on my birthday list was setting up my new tracker. I’m only getting older, so that means even more poems! 52 x 52—52 poems before I turn 52 in 2026. Here’s my very low tech tracker. I added some washi tape and keep it on my homeschooling clipboard.
I’d love to know what you are tracking!
Oof! I don't know that I could even think about *half* my years for a goal... Maybe I could get to 12 like Kooser. ;-)
I'm only tracking books read. 46 books so far this year. My goal is 52 and I will almost certainly pass it.
I've been thinking about the future, though. In five years my youngest will be 16 and the next youngest will be 18. Instead of homeschooling four children I will probably only be schooling 1. So I can almost spy a time when I will be able to really focus on writing with something like concrete goals. Right now I'm just happy when I can snatch a chance to write anything. If a poem comes, I'm happy. If it's just dead words on paper, I have faith that those words are doing some work which will bear fruit in time. But I think my day will come.