By Matilda Young
The great Brazilian soccer player Pele said, “Everything is practice.”
As both a writer and soccer nerd, this quote is dear to me. Over the years, it has come to mean different things: how honing a skill requires us to put the hours in, how every moment is an opportunity to learn.
These days, it helps to take some of the pressure off. When I’m out here taking a stab at a poem or an essay or a story, I’m just kicking the ball around, seeing what feels right, finessing my footwork.
Over the past four years, I’ve done my own version of NaNoWriMo, attempting to write a poem a day during April. I started out by participating in Tupelo Press’ 30/30 Project in April 2019. In the years since, I’ve been doing it on my own.
Well, not really on my own. In fact, the best part of the practice has been doing it alongside other writers. Every year, I invite writers I know to join me in a series of messy Google Docs, one per week(ish). It’s an open invitation for folks to forward along to others—my view is the more the merrier!—which has meant I get to write alongside some tremendous writers I’ve never had the pleasure to meet except on the page.
Every day, I’ll put a prompt in the Google Doc that people can respond to (or not). People can put their drafts in the Doc (or not). People can write every day or write whenever it makes sense for them.
It is such a joy to read what folks are writing throughout the month and to see what they create (we have some folks who are also visual artists). Everyone’s style is so different, and no one tackles the prompt in the same way. I am blown away by everyone’s talent, by these wonderful glimpses I get into their writing lives.
And especially during the pandemic, getting to be in community with these writers has been a lifeline. That first April, in 2020, when we were all so cut off from the world and from each other, writing together gave me a glimmer of hope.
This poem a day practice also paradoxically takes the pressure off for me. I can’t let perfect be the enemy of good. The poem doesn’t have to be something that’s publishable or finished or more than a few scraps of lines; it just has to exist.
I haven’t figured out a way to carry this daily practice beyond April. I don’t know if I ever will. And that’s OK—I’m still practicing.
Everything is practice. For me, this is practice in the spiritual sense, too. Writing together every April reminds me why I love writing, why I love writers. And I think everyone who loves writing is a writer. Everyone who loves language is a writer. Everyone with a truth they need to put into words is a writer. And in some small way, in these Google Docs, I get to be part of a jam band of folks who are sharing their truth with the world.
I hope that maybe you and your friends, and fellow writers not yet friends, will give this a shot and make it your own. It doesn’t have to be April. The prompts don’t have to be longer than one word (cardinal, crunch, clasp). But it may be a practice that you will find meaningful.
If not, that’s OK, too! We’re just out here figuring out what feels right for us, finessing our footwork, kicking the ball around.
“In Gratitude For Google Docs – April 2021”
This morning, I tried a new trick – wet rubber
glove across the blanket bringing away layers
of cat fur from four months of napping,
heavy battering even with the blanket surface
rotated in sections like crops. And it worked!
Thank you to the home ec sages of the internet
for this lesson, and who helped us get through
this past year of seeing what works with what we have:
frugal recipe hacks for pantry clean outs, the fruit
fly traps in soda bottles, baking soda and vinegar
for everything, crumble recipes I scanned
and riffed from like Beaker the science muppet
going rogue. And thank you to the free history
podcasts R & I listened to while he puzzled
& I colored. Thank you to the Pratt Library
for the audio book of Red, White & Royal Blue.
Thank you to the young person whose
youtube tutorial on braiding inspired me
even as I decided I needed to buzz it all off.
Thank you to V. for introducing me to TikTok,
with its sea shanties and camembert reviews.
Yes, messy, yes all consuming, yes ads that
won’t click out, yes creepy, yes, the worst of us.
But also fan fic and old friend zoom, poetry
podcasts, that video of the Archbishop
of Canterbury whose cat who creeps on screen
during a reading to steal the milk from a white jug
on his morning table, tentative paw dipping
like a fisher of delight. Yes to this digital
collaboration, this challenge, this gathering
of writers who jam in google docs, who give
me so much joy. Though I may not see you,
meet you, know you, I’m glad you’re here.
Matilda Young is a writer with an MFA in Poetry from the University of Maryland. She has been published in several journals, including Anatolios Magazine and Entropy Magazine. She enjoys Edgar Allan Poe jokes, sharing viral birding videos and being obnoxious about the benefits of stovetop popcorn.
You can follow her on Instagram @matildayoung28.
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