this was the challenge -- to each write a poem a day, using the limited vocabulary of our magnetic poetry™ set. we would write a poem, and record it immediately -- with the date -- in a notebook that we kept on the counter beside the fridge. simple enough...
fairly quickly, though, we found that we were tinkering with the "rules". for instance --
- we decided that if we were particularly inspired that we could write more than one poem on a particular day and record the extra poems in the back of the notebook. then, on a day when we couldn't find time to write, we could simply chose a poem from among the extras and copy it in for that day.
- we decided to expand our vocabulary by mixing in words from other vocabulary sets. (we owned two or three different magnetic poetry™ sets at that point, and eventually we started making up our own sets. see "the magnetic vocabulary") we didn't want to increase the total number of words that we had available, so we "discarded" a random selection of words from our current set and replaced them with an equal number of words selected at random from the new set so that at any one time we had approximately 300 words to choose from.
RICHARD THOMPSON
THE STORY VINE
THE STORY VINE