Challenges Options

[Sekhmet]

Good morning to anyone who reads this.

OK - Where are all the members when the gauntlet of a Challenge is thrown dawn?
I wander about the echoing halls of the weekly, monthly, slam, short prose, and drabble sections - and see only the same names, week after week.
It is now a cosy little corner, for just a few of us - but we need new blood to survive, and what better time than Halloween to go out and hunt for it?

Why not have an extra condition placed upon all members, (apart from the two responses to other writers' poems for each poem published) -
A response to at least one of the challenges every second month. That's sixty-odd days to think up some kind of response!

These Challenges stimulate the mind into branching off at a tangent; and are important tools in our poetic arsenal. I am amazed at what turns up, unbidden, when working on a challenge.

Surely, all the members are capable of meeting at least one of the challenges every couple of months? If not- they need assistance from the more experienced writers to achieve the required result.
When Newbies, (such as myself) squeaked;
' I know nothing about poetry criticism - I couldn't possibly crit anyone else's work.'
We were all briskly told to look at other members' crits, and do your best; you'll soon get the hang of it.

Why not give exactly the same advice to anyone who baulks at answering a Challenge? Just as in the various critical sections - the standard of work will vary,from writer to writer - but we are all learning, all the time. New Challengers will get bolder as time passes, and who knows what might be drawn forth?.

Leo

[Sekhmet]

Dear Wally - I am one hundred percent behind you! - I, too, held back from participating in the challenges for a long time, because I hated the idea of writing around a few set words - it reminded me of school, where we were given a similar list of words, and left, by a lazy teacher, to get on with it.
I would happily try my hand at writing around any of the ideas you have suggested. ( Cleo. could we please make one of them a challenge?)

In one of my previous existences, I taught young people to play the piano. They all wanted to compose - but without the discipline of regular practice, and, of course, an understanding of the basics - they could not achieve the fluency of mind, or the musicality and flexibility needed to compose well. How often I have heard the plaintive wail - 'I have no time to practice'

I still believe that participation in Challenges should be a condition of membership. I just can't accept that a poet of your great ability could not find time to answer one single challenge during a sixty day time-span.
I have a very sick eighty-four year old husband, a large, rural, cobwebby house, all the cooking, washing, gardening and cleaning to take care of as well as helping with several elderly people, and working part time in the library in our tiny French Village. Yet it is still possible to think during odd moments of what one might write.
Maybe it could become possible to win an, 'Exemption Shield' - for those who have answered a certain number,( say ten) Challenges?
Once the shield has been won - entry would be optional. ' Home hast gone - and ta'en thy wages.'
We are a community, almost a family are we not? Surely it doesn't matter whether we are inspired by thoughts and ideas that drift into our consciousnesses, or if we take a few words, and try our best to build a poem around them. Every man chooses his own tools.
I am, at the moment, working on a Sestina. It seems to be more an exercise of poetic ingenuity than inspired thought - yet it still could be considered to be a sort of poetry, even if it is not very good!
It is not the source of our inspiration that matters - it is the fact that we write.
Hugs, Leo