How To-17: "How to Make Poetry Sound Professional"

How to Make Poetry Sound Professional

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Some people have a passion for poetry, but they never know how to make it sound like a real poet wrote it. Here are some steps on how to make your poetry sound as good as your mind wants it to be.

Steps

1. Find somewhere quiet and relax for awhile with paper, pencil and a book to write on. Start your poem with imagination. If you can't think of anything, write about whatever you're looking at at that moment, or what you would like to see in your future. Begin with "the", "in" or just simple words that begin talking about a specific subject, and rearrange it as you go.
   
2. When you've written a poem you're happy with, get it edited. A trusted teacher or professor, a good friend, or anyone you know who works in writing, editing or publishing can give you useful feedback.
   
3. Fix your poem accordingly, and get it re-edited as necessary until you feel it is sufficiently polished.
   
4. Get it out there! Submit your poem to a contest, a publisher, a newspaper, or try to get it read at any nearby poetry reading. It gives you bragging rights and you've gotten a taste of true professional writing.
   

Tips

• Don't get mad if it doesn't sound good at first, it takes a little practice to make poetry sound good to you. We are our own worst critics, right?
  
• Talking about the earth or nature is a great subject to choose when it comes to poetry.
  
• Don't get frustrated if it doesn't sound right the first time, keep trying.
  
• Not all poems rhyme, in fact most great poetry doesn't. Don't feel pressured to have a strong rhyme scheme or rhythm, poetry is about expressing yourself the way you want to.
  

Warnings

• Don't change the subject too fast. Make each thought flow smoothly into the next.
  
• Try not to talk on and on to your friends about your writing career if you've only had one or two things published.
  

Related wikiHows

• How to Write a Haiku Poem
  
• How to Scan a Poem
  
• How to Write Serious Gothic Poetry
  
• How to Write a Overcome Writer's Block in Poetry
  
• How to Write a Quatrain Poem
  

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