Poetry Fishbowl Report for Tuesday, April 7
This month's fishbowl started briskly; most of the prompts arrived early in the day. I started working at 12:15 PM and stopped at 3:00 AM - the poems wouldn't let me go! - for a total of 12 hours and 45 minutes, accounting for lunch and supper breaks. I wrote a total of 14 poems, mostly long. There were no $5 poems this month, a handful of $10-15 ones, and 7 long enough (61+ lines) to require custom pricing. Most used a single prompt, but several combined multiple prompts; I got especially good mileage out of wyld_dandelyon's "crafters of magical items" prompt. A majority of the poems were rhymed, metered forms - particularly ballads - with only 4 being free verse. Only 8 people sent prompts, but many of them sent multiple prompts, and there was particularly high activity in which one person's prompt inspired another person to comment in a way that spawned more prompts. There were 32 comments including mine.
These patterns are not surprising given the topic of "sword & sorcery," since that genre runs to epics and metrics. I feel a little bad about having written so many huge poems which are probably out of price range for some of my readers. (Remember that you can team up to sponsor poems, if you're attached to one that's over your threshold.) Still, I'm really pleased with the general flow of the epics - you folks gave me great prompts! - and there's an equal number of medium-sized poems available. I may need to go back and look at the epics to see whether they might need revision: at least a couple times in there, my talent crashed into the wall of my body's limits. I was running out of steam during the last double-four verses of "Where Have All the Heroes Gone?/Different Gifts" before lunch; and I think I was asleep and working on autopilot for at least an hour before I went to bed, so that'd be part of "The Odd Trio" and all of "Pawsoldiers." Wheef...
[EDIT 4/22/09 adding poems]
These are the fishbowl poems that have already been published:
"The Carver's Guard"
"A Doe in Velvet"
"Gentlemen in Distress"
"Raising the Hero" "The Swordsmith's Secret"
"Where Have All the Heroes Gone?/Different Gifts"
"Whistling Girls and Crowing Hens"
This month's donors are: ellenmillion, minor_architect, mtrose2, and dulcinbradbury; [EDIT 4/22/09 adding donors] janetmiles, oldewolfe, jasra, haikujaguar, asakiyumi, elusivetiger, akaihyo, morenasangre, and arielstarshadow. [EDIT 4/22/09 update]Later there will be a donor perk post. I'm just under my $50 first goal, and part of that was a general donation, so there will be a poll too. Thanks to tremendous enthusiasm over "Where Have All the Heroes Gone?/Different Gifts," I'm now well over my $100 second goal; donor perk post and polls have been completed. Thank you all for your support and the lively prompts. You take me to places I wouldn't find all by myself.
These patterns are not surprising given the topic of "sword & sorcery," since that genre runs to epics and metrics. I feel a little bad about having written so many huge poems which are probably out of price range for some of my readers. (Remember that you can team up to sponsor poems, if you're attached to one that's over your threshold.) Still, I'm really pleased with the general flow of the epics - you folks gave me great prompts! - and there's an equal number of medium-sized poems available. I may need to go back and look at the epics to see whether they might need revision: at least a couple times in there, my talent crashed into the wall of my body's limits. I was running out of steam during the last double-four verses of "Where Have All the Heroes Gone?/Different Gifts" before lunch; and I think I was asleep and working on autopilot for at least an hour before I went to bed, so that'd be part of "The Odd Trio" and all of "Pawsoldiers." Wheef...
[EDIT 4/22/09 adding poems]
These are the fishbowl poems that have already been published:
"The Carver's Guard"
"A Doe in Velvet"
"Gentlemen in Distress"
"Raising the Hero" "The Swordsmith's Secret"
"Where Have All the Heroes Gone?/Different Gifts"
"Whistling Girls and Crowing Hens"
This month's donors are: ellenmillion, minor_architect, mtrose2, and dulcinbradbury; [EDIT 4/22/09 adding donors] janetmiles, oldewolfe, jasra, haikujaguar, asakiyumi, elusivetiger, akaihyo, morenasangre, and arielstarshadow. [EDIT 4/22/09 update]Later there will be a donor perk post. I'm just under my $50 first goal, and part of that was a general donation, so there will be a poll too. Thanks to tremendous enthusiasm over "Where Have All the Heroes Gone?/Different Gifts," I'm now well over my $100 second goal; donor perk post and polls have been completed. Thank you all for your support and the lively prompts. You take me to places I wouldn't find all by myself.