Hi everyone. This post is an elaboration of a reply I gave to a relatively new reader of my blog’s comment along the lines of that he likes poetry and wishes he could write it too. I thought you might be interested in reading my reply to him as I’ve subjected you to a sizable number of my poems since the first one I wrote recently.

I have no idea what I’m doing with poetry. I just started writing it in the last month or two. I could be the worst poet on the planet for all I know. I never took a class in it, so for example, I have no idea whether I should include punctuation, rhymes, where or how to rhyme, whether near-rhymes and contractions are ok, etc.

I just write from the heart and attempt to tell true stories in ways that hopefully don’t sound too awful. I figure that like everything else, some will like it and some won’t. That’s good enough for me as I endeavor to get better at it.

Over time, if I get increasing numbers of “likes” I might guess that more people actually like what I write. I noticed that for my first several poems my “like” counts appeared to me to be way down for my poetry versus for my other types of posts. I’d say that so far that ISN’T a good sign! ;-D! But I figure that I won’t be good at most things that I initially pick up and try, and if I let that–or feedback regarding same–stop me from trying to improve I’ll never know how good I might become in any number of areas. For example, I only started writing songs about 3 years ago.

Please check out the “Songs I’ve Written or Co-Written” category of this blog and you’ll be able to hear the songs I’ve created and co-created.

If I’d have let other people’s opinions tastes, and preferences be the deciding factor in continuing to write songs, I probably wouldn’t have written more than one.

At the same time, my approach doesn’t help me to understand when I’m actually improving or when I should begin to focus on other things. It is my hope that readers will be patient as I attempt to improve, but at some point will tell me–perhaps via email at russtowne@yahoo.com–that perhaps I might want to consider focusing on other things. It is a tough balance to know when a friend should kindly make that suggestion. But I trust my friends’ wisdom on such matters and know that they will be kind when they crush the bud of talent that I’m attempting to grow, err, I mean, tell me when what I’m doing stinks and isn’t getting any better.

In all seriousness, if my poetry, songs, stories, or other writing fall into the latter category and show no sign of improving, I hope that you, my dear online friends will let me know.

Russ