Thursday, February 19, 2009

Keeping Secrets: The Portfolio Project


I've been secretly playing along with The Portfolio Project since the beginning of the year. This brainchild of the lovely and talented Jens, Jen Lee and Jen Lemen, is a game to accumulate new creative material. The idea is to set a goal and just create, fast and dirty, a lot of raw material, pages or paintings and photographs, or pots, whatever it is you create.

I committed to pages (at least three long-hand a day) and I've managed to keep it up so far. Even when The Kid was sick I managed to scrape out three over the course of the day, scribbling a paragraph at a time. These pages often contain the spark of an idea, or an image that later make their way into poems.

I've been keeping it a secret because I am a little superstitious about talking about writing when it's going well. I can talk about writing all day long when I'm not doing it, but when I am, it seems that a lot of examination of the process tends to derail the train.

Jen Lee is doing a little roundup of work from The Portfolio Project here.

2 comments:

  1. What a great idea! I've always been a little afraid of this kind of daily work. You're a brave woman.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Prof J. I think the daily work you're doing (of self improvement)is pretty darn courageous.

    ReplyDelete