Farewell Small Stones

A month into the new year already! I decided to start the year by taking part in small stones- a simple act of observing something very closely each day. It could be in prose, could be poetry. I thought it might be a nice start to 2012, so every day in January I tweeted my stones. I chose tweeting to keep them short and to MAKE myself stick to it. I got a few things from it I think

1. Even on cold boring days there was something to see.

2. Discipline- Even when I'm not in the mood I had to write a little something every day.

3. Stepping Outside my Comfort Zone- For me, the act of writing and letting people see it fresh from my head to a tweet was unknown. I like to hold onto work and edit for a long time before anyone gets close. It wasn't possible with small stones, people got to see lines even before the work is finished.

4. The creation of beginnings of little bits of work I feel may lead to teeny flash fictions or poems when i go back and work on them to see which stone sinks or floats.

Not a bad start to the year. The act of small stoning allowed me to send out a couple of 100 word stories in January too. One call had only a week to submit- this would be UNTHINKABLE! How can I write something and edit it 30 times in a week? I'm supposed to let it sit for ages first! Yet, I did submit. I'm glad I did. (Exciting Caroline Smailes anthology of teeny stories based on songs, all for charity.) Once I did that, I let go of another new piece of work too (this is so outside my comfort zone.) So January brought me two accptances for work I wouldn't normally have sent anywhere for months. I have stones to thank.

Thank you to tweeters who bore with me. I appologise to non poetry folk who hate seeing poetrylike tweets. Me too sometimes. It can seem needy and isn't for everyone. It can seem like poems become adverts. I was torn between the spirit of small stones and this fear. I'm still not sure of the consensus of poetry editor and publisher opinion on work self published on-line, but it generally feels frowned upon. When it comes to self publishing on-line how much is enough? How much is too much?

I don't know the answers to these questions. I just know small stones was helpful. I tossed them not knowing where they'd land.