Tweetspeak Poetry

  • Home
  • FREE prompts
  • Earth Song
  • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Books, Etc.
  • Patron Love

R Is for Rewriting: Creating The Joy of Poetry – Part 3

By Megan Willome 12 Comments

sunrise-mountains-creating-joy

I had that talk with my publisher (the one I wrote about last week) around the start of Lent 2015. As I sat in the Ash Wednesday service, surrounded by school children fidgeting in their dress uniforms, the thought came to me: Write as little as possible.

I decided to take the season to think about, imagine, and sit with the idea of writing about my mom and her cancer as a way to frame and tie together a spirited defense of poetry. When an idea or a memory came to me, I wrote it out. Then I’d close my notebook and move on.

Along the way I began making lists. One was of all the poems I’d gotten permissions for. I starred my favorites. Then I made a list of all the poems I’d written about my mom, and I starred the ones other people told me they liked. I looked at both lists for a while. Did any of those poems go together? Were there any common themes? (That’s when I discovered a connection with the color yellow.)

I started thinking about the word “joy, ” since it was supposed to be the theme of the book. What joys lurked in these memories of my mom? Could I organize each chapter around a specific joy? And what did joy have to do with a book that was shaping up to be about cancer, poetry, and death?

During that time I read only two books, and I did that on purpose. I wanted to focus on writing that accomplished what I aspired to. One was L.L. Barkat’s Rumors of Water. I’d already read it, but this time I read it for structure, taking notes on how it worked. I got the idea for how to title my chapters by noticing how she titled hers. If you’ve only read this book once, please read it again. It’s quite brilliant.

The other book was Helen McDonald’s H Is for Hawk, which is part grief memoir after losing her dad, part analysis of author T.H. White’s life and work, and part how to train a goshawk. It’s three seemingly disconnected strands that she weaves into a braid. In my book, I was using two — Mom and poetry. That’s only a twist.

When Easter came,  I started to rewrite. The task of gathering all my notes — spread across journals, on my computer, and on random scraps of paper — took a couple of days and made a mess on my picnic table that serves as a desk. I gathered everything into a yellow Manila folder, since I’d decided yellow was going to be A Thing.

While I was rewriting, I dedicated a sheet of notebook paper to each chapter. Each sheet started with the title — a quote from one of the poems in that chapter — then a colon, then a summary of that chapter’s theme. Next I wrote the word “joy” followed by any sentences in the chapter that featured the word. (I literally put “joy” into the search field to check.) Then I wrote the word “cancer, ” followed by whatever sentences about cancer or Mom were in the chapter. Then halfway down the page I wrote the word “poetry” and listed the poems I wanted to feature in that particular chapter, both mine and others’. On the back of each piece of paper I wrote a list of stories and vignettes featured in the chapter. For instance, for chapter 1, one of those items on the list says “Frederick, ” reminding me the mouse belongs there. I wrote everything in pencil. The chapter numbers were erased multiple times as I rearranged the pages by hand.

Why did I do it that way? It made sense to me.

I approached rewriting differently than I had the first round of writing. I wrote with pauses. Each time I sat down, I worked for 1 hour and 5 minutes. When my dinger went off, if I had time and inclination to write more, I would. The most I ever wrote at one stretch was 3 hours, 15 minutes. If I needed to get on with my work for the magazine or editing or life, I did. Usually I worked on the book early in the day, but not always. I followed this routine six days a week, except for Saturdays, which I took off.

The white space in between writing allowed time for my brain to play, to make connections, or simply to rest. I once read a quote that jazz is all about the pauses. Maybe writing is too.

I gave myself a deadline to finish the rewrite — Ascension Day. I chose the day for the obvious reason that my document would ascend as I uploaded it into cyberspace to my publisher’s preferred platform. Also because it was a week before my daughter would come home from school, and I wanted a few days to pause greatly before summer’s busyness started.

But before I ascended my manuscript, I needed to talk to my dad.

Photo by Pai Shih, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome, author of The Joy of Poetry.

Read On Being Asked: Creating The Joy of Poetry – Part 1

Read What to Do with the Elephants: Creating The Joy of Poetry – Part 2

__________

MW-Joy of Poetry Front cover 367 x 265

“Megan Willome’s The Joy of Poetry is not a long book, but it took me longer to read than I expected, because I kept stopping to savor poems and passages, to make note of books mentioned, and to compare Willome’s journey into poetry to my own. The book is many things. An unpretentious, funny, and poignant memoir. A defense of poetry, a response to literature that has touched her life, and a manual on how to write poetry. It’s also the story of a daughter who loses her mother to cancer. The author links these things into a narrative much like that of a novel. I loved this book. As soon as I finished, I began reading it again.”

—David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro

Buy The Joy of Poetry Now

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Megan Willome
Megan Willome
Megan Willome is a writer, editor, and author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems and Rainbow Crow: poems in and out of form. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark.
Megan Willome
Latest posts by Megan Willome (see all)
  • Perspective: The Two, The Only: Calvin and Hobbes - December 16, 2022
  • Children’s Book Club: A Very Haunted Christmas - December 9, 2022
  • By Heart: ‘The night is darkening round me’ by Emily Brontë - December 2, 2022

Filed Under: Blog, Books, The Joy of Poetry, Writing Life

Try Every Day Poems...

About Megan Willome

Megan Willome is a writer, editor, and author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems and Rainbow Crow: poems in and out of form. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark.

Comments

  1. Bethany R. says

    October 7, 2016 at 12:58 pm

    “Write as little as possible.”

    Thanks for this piece, it’s fascinating to hear how your process came together. I like the idea of writing for about an hour, and as memories or ideas come. You still had plenty of structure to organize your thoughts with, but you found a doable way to write on topics that could be quite complicated to sift through.

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      October 7, 2016 at 1:56 pm

      Thanks, Bethany!

      The idea to write as little as possible was anathema to me. It seemed like the opposite of what I was supposed to be doing. But like you said, it gave me some structure while freeing me up at the same time.

      Reply
  2. Matthew Kreider says

    October 7, 2016 at 8:41 pm

    To me, the daily “how” of poetry becoming a loved one in your life was so enchanting and so inviting. Today’s behind-the-scenes look at the making of your book is just another confirmation of how gratifying it is to watch process turn to joy. And to a really wonderful book.

    And I smiled when I clicked on your “jazz” link. I’m honoured to have a link with you, Megan.

    Because a link is what your book offered me. 🙂

    Reply
    • Matthew Kreider says

      October 7, 2016 at 8:47 pm

      (Full disclosure: I find it quite gratifying to know each word was written in pencil, too.) 🙂

      Reply
      • Megan Willome says

        October 9, 2016 at 1:48 pm

        Matthew, the case could be made that poetry is all about the links.

        Thanks for your kind words. And for being a fellow pencil enthusiast.

        Reply
  3. Laura Brown says

    October 10, 2016 at 12:49 pm

    I love the information about process here. And the significance of the liturgical calendar for you.

    I regret that I am not able to leave this comment in pencil.

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      October 10, 2016 at 3:09 pm

      I regret it, too, Laura.

      And who cares that it’s October 10, Columbus Day? It’s Monday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time.

      Reply
  4. Donna Falcone says

    October 11, 2016 at 3:43 pm

    These words grabbed me: The white space in between writing….
    Was it hard for you to create that white space for yourself?

    I’m not good at creating my own white space…. I become too frantic, and that is no good for anyone or any project.

    Thank you for sharing your process, Megan. It’s wonderful to read about how you created this book and the shift… how you navigated the shift. Beautiful.

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      October 11, 2016 at 5:35 pm

      Donna, yes, creating the white space was hard. It’s not in my nature. I’m a hard worker by nature. But because I was only committing to it for a specific length of time, it was easier. Then it worked so well that I’ve been more intentional about white space since. Some seasons it’s harder to maintain than others.

      Reply
  5. Diana Trautwein says

    October 15, 2016 at 7:28 pm

    Thank you for this series, Megan. For the priceless peeks into your own process — fascinating and helpful.

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      October 16, 2016 at 11:29 am

      Thank you, Diana!

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. What the Book Needs: Creating The Joy of Poetry - Part 4 - says:
    October 21, 2016 at 8:01 am

    […] day before I ascended my manuscript into my publisher’s hands, I performed a ritual I use every time I write something big: I drove to Starbucks to read it one […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our May Menu

Patron Love

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world poetic.

The Graphic Novel

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

How to Write Poetry

Your Comments

  • Glynn on Poets and Poems: Patricia Clark and “O Lucky Day”
  • Patricia Clark on Poets and Poems: Patricia Clark and “O Lucky Day”
  • Bethany on Collage: Unwrapping Gifts from the Quiet
  • L.L. Barkat on Collage: Unwrapping Gifts from the Quiet

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • A Blessing for Writers
  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions
  • • The Write to Poetry

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • 50 States Projects
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Edgar Allan Poe Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2025 Tweetspeak Poetry · FAQ, Disclosure & Privacy Policy