The Freedom of Creation.

After I released my debut poetry collection, I received a motivating amount of support and praise from friends and strangers. The love was beautiful, and it inspired me to start work on my second collection. I brainstormed poems and wrote pages of pieces that wound up in the recycling bin. I became so consumed with the idea of topping myself and meeting everyone's expectations - that the act of writing poetry felt more like work. The creative process stopped feeling genuine as I gathered poems in preparation for another book. I never took into account that the first collection was the product of years of writing. Poetry was a passion and a creative outlet - never a job. The pieces compiled for [If] Life's Rotten, Write to the Core were never written for the purpose of allowing the public to read. Publishing was an act of faith and grew out of the belief that I had something important to share. The entire process was fully organic - and it felt good.

Tonight, I decided to step outside of my creative comfort zone and paint. It was so therapeutic to create something without the burden of expectations. This is what I need poetry to feel like - pure freedom. This is my goal for 2011.

Here's a sneak peek of the piece. It's nothing amazing, I assure you. I used acrylics on a piece of wood that I found near the trashcan in my subdivision. I titled it 'Defying Expectations.'