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This is my playground for poetry written for children with ideas and inspiration for writing your own poems. Come on in. Sit for a spell, have a cup of words to swirl around and make your own cup of poetry. I'm so glad you are here. I hope you'll find the Kingdom of Poetry a fun place to be.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Funny Errors

Sometime today
    or maybe tomorrow,
I'm going to make
    a mistake.

 I'll add laughter
      when I start over--
you'll see the poem
    I make.

   I have several "On this Date" books in my library.  When I get stuck for a poem idea, I check my books to see if some important event happened on this day or if someone I know was born or died on this date.  I have books for daily inspiration, words for the day, be happy today books, etc.  One of my favorites is TODAY I WILL by Eileen and Jerry Spinelli.  Today's page includes, "Sometime today, or tomorrow, I'm going to screw up."  That line really spoke to me.  I don't think I've ever written a poem about screwing up--but I certainly have, many times.
   What mistakes have you made?  Can you start over and try again?  How can you help yourself to NOT make the same mistake twice?  Can you write about that today?
    As the Spinellis point out, never be afraid to start over again.  Do not let failure scare you, it is how we all learn.
   Have a great day writing. 

5 comments:

  1. I think I needed this right now, Joy, because I have 3 poems I'm trying, & while parts of some are good, the rest is not. Think first I'll take a break. Thanks for the permission...

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    1. Go, Linda. Sometimes we have to write the not so good poems to get to the good ones. Not all the poems are going to be brilliant at first try. And the more you work on them the better they get.

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  2. So maybe writing is a lot like cooking. Some of the best things come from little mistakes. Thanks for sharing your inspiration for the day.

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    1. Rosi, I absolutely adore this idea of the mistakes being like cooking. And you are right, some of my best wordings come about from typing errors or my reading something wrong, like the time I misread "Put the chicken in the over." and I misread it as "children."
      Thank you for this useful thought.

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  3. It's nice to feel free to laugh at ourselves, isn't it, Joy? I heard somewhere that we all make a mistake every hour or so -- could be something like adding a sum incorrectly, missing an exit, forgetting to set a timer, cutting a nail too short. With all those mistakes, we'd better be able to laugh at them!

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