The Poetry Bicycle

I used to write poetry in large quantities. Some I liked; a lot hurt my sensibilities, like falling headfirst off a bicycle into some gravel. For some reason, though, I've fallen out of the poetry habit in the pursuit of projects such as this blog and others that seem more 'marketable.' That hasn't exactly proven to be a gold mine, or even a pyrite mine.

I think that my nature is not necessarily geared to writing fiction or writing articles for magazines. I will continue to work on that, because those seem the best options for finding paying work I'd want to do with the pen, but it is time to get back up on the poetry bicycle, scraped knees and all.

See how rusty I am at poetry? That bicycle metaphor is awful.

So I have a new project: writing poems about San Francisco, and on a schedule. I'll write a draft on one day; on the next day, I'll do a rewrite of that draft and start another poem. That gives me a manageable goal with an easy subject matter for getting back in to the practice of writing poems.

I figure the more structure there is to my writing practice, the better.

What sort of writing structures do you writers out there use? What sort of routines do you enjoy?