Hi all, I once again missed posting about NaNoWriMo—the challenge to write 50,000 on a new novel during November. You can start now, although it can be hard to catch up. If you’ve already started, keeping going and congrats! It can be a lot of fun, especially if you join the community surrounding the event.

For poetry peeps though, let’s write some poems using erasure of our submission rejections. I’ve loved the poems I’ve seen on Twitter and other sites. I am unsure who came up with the idea, but I first came across those by Rachel Orta. Somehow the harsher the funnier these are.

After yet another rejection from Palette Poetry, this one particularly spoke to me:

So for the first prompt, take a rejection letter from a recent submission and erase all those kind encouragements, form-letter letdowns and harsh rebuffs into a soul-destroying or just funny response. Do remember to delete the publication’s and editor(s)’ names so that exercise doesn’t become an attack. I have so much material to choose from! Yay?!

As an alternative use this same process to create a poem from a breakup letter or text (once the pain has subsided and the relief has set in).

Bonus prompt: Create a list poem of phrases from rejection letters as Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz does in her “Notes on Rejection.” Listen to her read it here.

Have fun with the pain! Good luck!