Part 6: HannahRoWrites
how the poetry blog started
Note: This is a continuation, to read from the beginning, go back to
Part 1: The Beginninng and then read Part 2,3,4,5…..
We have now arrived back in March 2020. We all remember where we were then because it was when our collective lives all changed. I was living in Boston (Cambridge, MA, actually). Overnight, with the rest of the world, my life went from almost never spending any time at home to being at home ALL the time.
The first Friday of the lockdown, I remember sitting in bed around 7 p.m. with my laptop, feeling anxious and ovwhelmed and restless. Instead of turning on a movie, my anxious mind started writing a poem. And not a flowery, existential, whimsical one. One that was rooted in the present, in the grittiness and joy of my ordinary life.
Soon after, as I found myself writing poetry almost daily (poetry “blogging” I was calling it in my head) I decided I was going to make it my lockdown project. I was going to submit poems to every poetry journal I could find, pave my own way as a published writer. And so I started researching different publications, submitting poems regularly and tracking them all on a big ole' spreadsheet. It gave me a sense of purpose and made me feel excited. Heck, I didn’t need an MFA to tell my I could write poems, I would write them all on my own!
And write them, I could, but publishing them was a different story. I submitted poems to SO many journals and publications and heard back from almost none. The ones I did hear back from almost all sent a rejection save for a few small publications that (bless them!) published my work. It was thrilling! Except, I wasn’t sure what to do next or why I still had this feeling that I was trying to “prove” myself to some higher power.
And then, sometime during that summer, two things happened.
I started to notice that there were a lot of writers who had their own instagram accounts and posted whatever the heck they wanted to without needing approval.
I listened to a podcast episode from the podcast “Don’t Keep Your Day Job” with Cathy Heller. She interviewed Amy Tangerine, an artist, about her career and Amy said that when she started creating art, she would post one new piece every week (on Mondays, because what a blah day).
She made it her goal to do it every week whether she loved what she made or not, and she brought her audience along with her. (Note: if you want to listen to this episode, it’s S2 Episode 30 on Abundant Ever After with Cathy Heller—the podcast name has since changed).
I immediately felt inspired. I decided I would create a “poetry blog” on Instagram and post one new poem every Monday for a year. In August 2020, I changed the name of my “Pair of Us” page to “hannahrowrites” and I haven’t stopped posting on it since. I became addicted to writing— I literally could not wait to sit down at my laptop and write. Someone asked me recently what my writing process was and while I do write at a laptop, I am kind of “writing” all the time (thank you, notes section of my phone). I have written poems or parts of poems in the backseat of a parked car, in a bathroom stall, in the middle of a jog, in line at the airport, while holding my daughter as she napped, at restaurants and coffee shops and pretty much everywhere else.
It has been transformative for the way I process life. But what I wasn’t expecting was the amazing community that would develop (that’s you, reader!). I have seen the internet be a cruel place, but the community that has formed around my writing is the most empathetic, kind, affirming and lovely group of people. To this day I am not sure how I got so lucky.
One time a few years ago, my husband once asked me a question. If nothing ever “came” from this blog…if I just kept writing every week and cultivating the small community I had formed, would I still keep doing it? And my answer was 100% yes. I felt like I had found a home.
No, actually. I felt like I had gone out into the world and created one.
More in two weeks..Part 7 will be the final piece of this series and then I’ll move on to the next!