The daily posting thing

[I accidentally posted this as a blank post with just a title; I'm going to become gun-shy of posting at all.]

I am really caught on the horns of a dilemma about posting a new poem every day in wordcurrents. On the one horn, the discipline of having to meet that daily deadline is really good for my writing bones; on the other, I am flooded with early drafts (consecutive daily poem 482 today).

Last night, after the movie (I saw Lucky You, with Drew Barrymore and Eric Bana — enjoyed it.) I realized I had not yet written the day's poem. I sat down at the computer, wrote the poem "parking lot", in about three minutes, posted it, and started wondering once again if I should keep doing it. But now that I am writing this piece, I think I see the benefit my craft receives from the exercise. I have come to be able to write "on command" ("By your command", as the Cylons used to say, in the earlier Battlefield Galactica, is fairly appropriate; it feels kind of robotic: I just decide on a topic or image or experience, how I feel about it, and start.) Last night, on the way home, we stopped in the Tim Horton parking lot so that Gilles' brother, Denis, could get a takeout coffee. While we were there, and as Gilles and I spoke idly about the experience of sitting there, I formed the image of desolation that it was, and started processing the experience that later became the poem.

When I sat down to write, I had no idea what the poem would be, but I did not have much time, so I just started writing without thinking about it. The poem is simple, not very ambitious, but adequate.

So I guess I will keep doing it for the time being. This blog, being a diary, reminds me a what diary researcher said: the one thing all diaries have in common is that everybody dies, and they (the diaries) all come to an end. I wonder where this will end?