Home » Valentine's Day - submit in fall for results in February

I have been told that greeting card verse is the most profitable form of poetry. Merely suspecting that extended family members work for Hallmark, leaving greeting card verse lying around is practically like submitting the work is.

 

It is almost funny looking around in stores and seeing things that are similar to your work, maybe these are messages to keep on trying, eventually, you will hit the big time, someday, you will get just the right verse.

 

Here is a tip: start off using recycled materials. Nothing helps creativity more than knowing that the materials you are writing on are going to be going into the garbage, if you don't rescue them. There is little or no guilt feeling involved in using these materials, it saves money, and your best efforts are saved for the new or unused papers.

 

Sometimes, our creative efforts do not fit the guidelines. We all do marginal scribings, and when we use scrap paper, our negative efforts are easily torn up into itty-bitty scraps, after we cut out the hearts, the flowers, the puppys, the kitties, and the best words, with paper scissors. Find words like, "love", "like", "happy", "joy" in your writings, cut them out, and place them aside. Hopefully, we will feel even more inspired after doing this. This might even be a good time to pull out last year's or last decade's phone book, if we are really inspired to start tearing up paper. If that is the case, maybe we can do a great collage, or try paper-making.

 

Paper-making, ah, now there is a fantasy. The old fashioned Valentine's Day greeting cards, made from recycled rags and lumber mill ends, hammered down, and then made into fresh paper. This, from the sounds of it, was pretty much recycling already. So, nothing is really new.

 

Guess that it is time to dig into your shoebox or index box of saved ideas, or look into that intangible file cabinet for those repressed feelings of love, for some good ideas; now that we are completely drained of everything other than "positive mental attitude".

Not everyone has good feelings about Valentine's Day. Remembering that feelings can be nurtured and cultivated may be one way to force your creativity to be positive. The force is with you, you can write at least three words about Valentine's Day, as in, "I Love You".

 

Not everyone is expecting Valentine's Day to be the most wonderful or the most lonely time, ever. Some people dread Valentine's Day, some people feel emptiness about Valentine's Day, some people say "Bah-Humbug! Valentine's Day!", some people feel sensual not sentimental; not everyone fits into the cookie-cutter categories so neatly ascribed to people who celebrate Valentine's Day. Worry about the writer's guidelines, not about your grandmother's best friend looking through your mail, and immediately submitting everything to Kansas City, headquarters of Hallmark Greetings. Send your grandmother a neat doily with a heart-shaped collage glued to it.

I myself might open up the Valentine's Day card sent to me via email by Memorial Day, as of late, that is, if I even receive it. Some of us always have overflowing email bins now, either in our personal life or in our business life - if not both! E-mail bins can distract a person from the creative process. So, you may want to archive everything in your email or just check your first page until you have received results.

It is really odd, however, it is true, that writers "never write". When every effort needs to be a professional effort, responding to acquaintances can wait for your egreeting card to be published.

 

Besides, showing off your other talent of collage-making to your family and friends is a way of getting away from writing, reducing your trash, and gussying up your worst writing failures, so that they become successful.

 

You can use your magazines to make your special messages for your special people this year, and contact everyone. All you need are a few pieces of card stock (available at the office supply store for .10 - .20 per sheet), some well-read magazines, a pair of scissors, and a glue stick. You can even cut out the letters for the message or the words for the message.