Haiku Society of America
.haiku column
The Haiku Society of America is pleased to host this ongoing column.
.Haiku: a place to share tools available to haiku writers and fellow haiku fans (like how to use Twitter, Facebook and Scribd for building community, self-publishing and marketing). The column will also feature interviews, blog spotlights and occasional multimedia presentations.
Gene Myers
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.haiku column 05
.haiku column number 5 • 2-12-2012
by Gene Myers
February: How National Haiku Writing Month can help you
This February is the second annual National Haiku Writing Month. How does one celebrate National Haiku Writing Month?
Simply write one haiku a day. Too much of a commitment? That's OK, says NaHaiWriMo founder and organizer Michael Dylan Welch.
"If you miss a couple of days of NaHaiWriMo, you can always do your best to catch up, whether you follow the daily prompts on Facebook or not. The prompts are a communal inspiration, I hope, but the main
point is to do your best to write haiku daily, to get into the haiku habit of seeing and observing closely, and then recording your experiences in haiku," Michael says.For my level of participation last year, I chose to number each new poem and post it on the NaHaiWriMo Facebook page <http://www.facebook.com/pages/NaHaiWriMo/108107262587697> daily.
This held me to a level of accountability, and gave me instant feedback on my creations in the form of “likes” and “comments.” The trick to avoid writer’s block is simple, keep writing! It’s only when you prostrate yourself to intangibles like a muse or inspiration that you lose control of your faculties and become prey to insecurities, like “What if I get stuck and can no longer write?”
That’s where NaHaiWriMo comes in.
"The Facebook site for NaHaiWriMo is a rallying place for many hundreds of participants (currently about 765), but many other people are doing NaHaiWriMo in various other ways, whether by posting daily haiku to their blogs, or just keeping them to themselves. The best place to start is to visit the NaHaiWriMo website at <http://sites.google.com/site/nahaiwrimo/home>," Michael says. "The site spells out how to participate, which is mostly to commit yourself to writing haiku daily—starting now for a month, even if the
'official' National Haiku Writing Month already started on Feb. 1."Michael points out that the 765 people who "liked" the Facebook page (at the time of writing this column) are a 255 percent increase over last year's NaHaiWriMo event.
For further support, use the Twitter tag #NaHaiWriMo when tweeting.
Is there something you would like to see in a column? Email me at <poetgene@gmail.com>.
• .haiku column number 5 • 2-12-2012 •
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