Day Eleven

Happy Monday, all, and welcome back for the eleventh day of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Our featured participant today is Amita Paul, whose shanty in response to Day Ten’s prompt is as rollicking as the sea itself.

Today, our daily resource is Chill Subs. Since it was first created couple of years back as an easy way to find journals and magazines accepting submissions of poetry and other writing, the site has grown to include software for tracking your submissions, a blog with fun posts about writing, and much more. It’s free to join, and I know I’ve found it very helpful in seeking publication opportunities.

And finally, our (optional) prompt for the day. This prompt challenges you to play around with the idea of overheard language. First, take a look at Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “One Boy Told Me.” It’s delightfully quirky, and reads as a list, more or less, of things that she’s heard the boy of the title – her son, perhaps? – say. Now,  write a poem that takes as its starting point something overheard that made you laugh, or something someone told you once that struck you as funny. If you can’t think of anything, here’s a few one-liners I picked out of the ever-fascinating-slash-horrifying archives of Overheard in New York.

•             So I asked my priest, and he said “I think you should see other people.”

•             Don’t say “no” to drugs. Say “no, thank you.”

•             You smell like you want to be alone.

•             Oh hi! We were just speaking very poorly about you!

•             I feel so elated! Wait…no, I mean, “violated.”

Happy writing!