Be patient. You are still growing into your voice. Experiment with prose as well as poetry. Try writing haiku, sonnet, limerick. Are you good at rhyming? Figure that out. Show your writing to your friends, your parents, an aunt you don’t see very often. Write every day, even if it’s just a list of things you need to do. Read poets you admire. Read poets whose work you can’t stand. Take your favorite poem and try to rewrite it and make it better. Look up words if you don’t know what they mean. Always have a thesaurus open. Do you need music to write? If so, who do you listen to? If you don’t know, figure it out. Write your poems in capital letters. Write your poems in sweeping cursive, in lowercase, in chat speak. Write poems you know will never be seen by anyone and do not be afraid of that. Write poems for the people in your life and let them be read. Record yourself reading your poems. Try typing your poems. Try quiet poems, try loud poems. Try expressive poems, try small poems, big poems, long-haired poems. Moisturize your poems. Walk them around the block. Let them sleep in your throat. Take them for manicures or hair cuts or makeovers. If they don’t want to talk, they don’t want to talk. Leave them be. Sometimes your poems will not want to wake up. This is okay. Sing the poems who will not shut up back to sleep. Be gentle and considerate of their feelings. Poems are sensitive, but sometimes they just need to have their asses kicked. Sometimes they need a curfew. Or shots of tequila. It’s okay to let it go to voicemail when they call. Be a good mother to them. Keep them well-fed. Brush their hair. Remind them that they don’t have to be perfect. Remember that you don’t always know more than they do. Let them surprise you. Let them bring you gifts.
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