Let me just start this post by saying that I was not at all prepared going into the NaPoWriMo season, this year. For one, I did not know how much I could keep up with the challenge, considering I’ve been swamped with just about everything going on. I’m either working late into the night for my day job, or staying up till late to make sure I can complete my crochet commissions on time. Chasing one more deadline seemed like the last thing I’d want, but I took up the challenge anyway because it has been something I’ve been doing consistently for a few years now. I knew I’d hate to sit out on it, this year.
It feels like I have been put through the worst and the best times at work, in the last couple of years since I stopped writing regularly on the blog. It sucks, but that’s how life is sometimes. Then again, it was such a pleasant surprise to clock out of work and come up with something I genuinely loved to write and read. It’s as though all the inspiration I’ve kept buried within for whatever reason suddenly found an outlet. That is not to say that I only wrote the best poems this year; there were definitely a few that weren’t up to the mark. But hey, it’s the thought that counts. And the consistency. At least I kept up.
“At least I kept up.”
I’ve been telling myself that for the last ten days. Usually, it’s around the 20-day mark that I find myself running out of steam but it didn’t happen this time. I kept going, even if I had to post my poem at 11:30 at night. I’m not saying it’s something amazing since so many people are actually consistent with their art, while here I am, trying to make it seem like I changed the world by being consistent with my writing. It’s a small victory, but it’s victory. So I’ll take it.
Funny thing, though. Just as I was writing the paragraph above, asking myself if being consistent for just a month was a big deal, this tweet popped up on my Twitter timeline, and I can’t tell how badly I needed to read that:
Anyway, this year’s NaPoWriMo season was all about music and art, taking references from our favourite songs, from old paintings, old poems– essentially reminding people that real art can only be made by humans. Not whatever AI slop is out and about on the internet these days. It felt personal. It felt like an outlet for every time someone at work insisted on abusing AI for art instead of simply commissioning real artists to do the work they had in mind.
Going back to writing felt comforting and challenging at the same time, but I found myself writing things that I never thought I’d be capable of.
One such example is the poem ‘Kneading Dough’. The inspiration came to me at a really weird moment. I really was in the middle of kneading some dough when I came up with the poem. I don’t know what made me think of kneading dough as a metaphor for life itself, but I have to say it’s one of my most favourite poems I’ve written this year. I don’t know if people loved it as much as I did, but it just seemed too good to not be mentioned in my round-up.
The next poem that I really loved is ‘A Rhyme Does Not A Poem Make’. It was a thought that I’d been playing around with, that morning. But it somehow also seemed to fit right into the prompt we received via napowrimo.net, that day. Someone on the internet was going on about how you can tell that using an em-dash in a poem is an indicator that the poem has for sure been written by AI, and I took that personally. So did my friends who write regularly. So did people who follow actual poetry on their social media. Because there are so many ways to tell if a poem is not written by a human being, but an em-dash is not one of them. It was pretty much the fuel I needed to write the poem about how there is so much more to poetry than a stupid em-dash or a rhyme scheme.
Another one of my favourites from this year is ‘The Art Of Yearning’. There’s not much to write about my thought behind writing the poem, except that I wrote it because I felt like yearning is at the root of so much art in the world. It’s the beginning of beautiful things, and it is pretty one of the most gut-wrenching feelings anyone has to ever go through. But where would we be if we didn’t have a little bit of yearning in us?
‘Nature And The Poet’ is another poem that I thought was one of my better works. I’m a home-body. I don’t go out all that much. I am not a fan of hiking or trekking. But I do have a deep appreciation for nature, and I have noticed how much happier I am after spending a day in the middle of nowhere with nothing but lush green hills and rainy clouds around me. This poem was an ode to that.
Finally, I’d like to say that ‘Why I’m Not A Portrait’ was something I really loved writing, this year. It’s a thought that I’ve always had in my head, and the prompt we got that day was the perfect excuse to put it into writing.
All in all, I’ll say that was a great run. I still can’t believe the season is over though. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to leave this site to collect dust for the next year. No. I’ve decided to give writing regularly here a shot, once again. It won’t always be really long content, but I’ll try to do my best to keep up because I don’t want to go back to a time when I wasn’t writing. Maybe being consistent with NaPoWrimo this year has reignited my passion for writing again.
Hopefully I’ll find the energy to keep going. If not, well, it’s not the end of the world. We’ll see.
Yours truly,
The Shubhster. Xx
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The Shubhster Diaries 
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