The goal of this event is to get people talking to one another and reading and commenting on National Poetry Month threads. With that in mind, it will also provide a challenge a week starting with the very short week of this week. You don't have to complete challenges in order to participate, however. Participation should be encouragement on your partner's thread, and chatting about poetry.
I have linked all of the threads so if you click on the username, it'll go to your buddy's thread.
If anyone still wants to sign up those who accepted alternates will be double paired.
Week One: Write a poem together.
There are a lot of ways you can complete this prompt. Hop on a WriterFeedPad at the same time, send a Message back and forth adding lines, write stanzas and put them together, or even have both partners write a poem and then mesh the two poems together. No matter how you want to do it, your first challenge is to write a poem together.
Get to know your new buddy because you've got 30 days together.
The next update for prompts will be near the 3rd or 4th. I'll try to get them out at the very beginning of the week.
These challenges are not limited by time, there just won't be another one until the next week shows up, so you could do them all the last week if you wanted to, or follow along with the timing of the releases. It's up to you and your buddy how you choose to participate in them, if you choose to participate in them.
The big thing is to subscribe to your buddy's thread and read along with their NaPo experience to encourage one another and comment.
If I missed you, or you want to sign up, feel free! People who sign up after this point will be paired with either Steggy, Pompadour, bluewaterlily, Nightcrawler, or myself, or anyone else who volunteers. If two people sign up before I get on to pair you, or before you're claimed by one of the alternate buddies, you could also be paired with someone else who got a late jump.
Week 2 is quickly upon us. With 4 days nearly done for NaPo, these prompts are flying fast, so here is another thing you can do with your buddy.
Week Two: Write a poem with the same theme.
With all these prompt ideas out there, it can be hard to pick what you want to do, so this week, get together with your buddy and decide on a poem you want to write about the same theme. This could be something like Sausages, YWS, Cats, or even emotional things like Love, Hate, Fear, into ideas that are abstract as Materialism, Existentialists, or Realism. The key is to write about the same thing!
As a quick reminder, you can do these prompts with your buddy at any time! It's just to get you guys talking. You should also be reading and commenting on your buddy's NaPo to give encouragement to keep going.
Just a couple more weeks left in NaPo! We're hitting the middle of the stride so keep some energy for the long straightaway at the end, but be sure to catch up if you're falling behind.
Week Three: Give your partner a list of suggestions.
It's the middle week! We're reaching the 15th at the end of this week and that's half way through all 30 days, so let's be the biggest help we can for our buddies in getting over that final hump. Give your buddy a list of prompts that they can use if they are starting to run out of ideas now that we're getting half way through.
This is the week that can break us, so keep pushing!
Hey everyone! Sorry for the slightly late post, but keep going! The more compliments and encouragement you can give your buddy, the better. We all need to hear what we're good at so we can keep those parts of our writing, and what better place than somewhere that you're reading a lot of work as it is?
Week Four: Borrow a line from one of your partner's poems
You've read a lot of your buddy's work by now, somewhere between 17 and 23 poems. Pick a poem from their NaPo that you really loved and select just a single line from that. Use that to kickstart a poem of your own. Make sure you give the original poem a link so that other people can go see how amazing your buddy is too. Share the love!
Week Five: Share an article you found useful on YWS with your partner
Going into the last week of NaPoWriMo, we're all pretty ready to fall over and curl up for a nice long winter's nap. Well, this winter, let's nap with a favorite article! YWS has some pretty stellar advice to offer all of our writers, so take a gander at them and share your favorites with your buddy. Not only will this give you something to write, not read, but maybe it'll help inspire you to explore a new type of poetry, or a new tool in poetry.
Thank you everyone for participating in this year's Buddy UP! See something you liked? See something you didn't like? Leave a comment. We're always trying to come up with how best to run great events like this so give us some feedback on what you think can change for next year.
Lots of times you have to pretend to join a parade in which you're not really interested in order to get where you're going. — Christopher Darlington Morley
