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Sunday, November 27, 2011

Returns on Effort

So I've been working on this poem for about 3 weeks. I thought it was done, and last night I had a "last" look at it, and ended up making six changes, two more or less substantial. And it's only a 15-line poem.

Then I turned my attention to a poem I jotted down the other day while waiting for my son to finish an activity. I expected it to need quite a lot of work, as it was only my second look at it. And it was done. It was whole, finished, integrated. The punch was there.

So there you go. There are no consistent returns on effort, are there? Not in writing anyway.

2 comments:

Shawnte said...

...but it also won't be surprising if you open up that "finished" poem two years from now and suddenly need to rework the entire first half of it.

Jessica Goodfellow said...

You do have a point there, Shawnte.