I love poet and novelist Savannah Brown.

My favourite poem of hers is “couldn’t care more”, especially because I’ve always thought, why is the saying “I couldn’t care less,” when most of the time I could care less, although at the same time I wouldn’t make the effort to care more about this thing I don’t care about, so why not just say, “I don’t care.”

Anyway. Here’s the poem.

This month, I’ve been participating in Savannah’s @letsescapril, an escape into poetry everyday in April.

Participants are given non-mandatory prompts and the goal is to write a poem or microfiction everyday. This is a great way to practice and to build a writing habit. I’m in the middle of writing a novel and it would take too much of my energy to dive into poetry right now. That’s why I’ve decided to use these prompts to help me explore my novel’s secondary characters.

To make the task less daunting, I cut out postcard size paper (from packaging paper #lesswaste). And everyday, I make myself write a postcard sized microfiction about one of four characters.

I don’t pressure myself to write something perfect. I let it flow and explore ideas that bubble up. It helps me find out more about the characters I give less “air-time” to and will, hopefully, make them feel more well-rounded and real to the reader. Writing about them also gives me new ideas for the story and gets me excited to get to my laptop and write.

Want to try it out? Here are this year’s prompts.

Finishing a project after the initial inspiration seeps away is hard. Don’t quit. Complete it even if you think it’s bad. You’ll be proud of your accomplishment and you’ll have learned something. Will the novel I’m currently writing be published? Probably not, it’s my first one, but who cares? I enjoy writing it and I’m discovering so much. The only way to learn how to do something is to do it. Want to write? Then, write and write some more.