Writing Club hosted an anonymous poetry night on Tuesday, Oct. 17, with hopes to get people writing. Although this was a one-time event, the leaders of the Writing Club have discussed doing another poetry night, but with a prompt or theme.

According to Lonnah Royale, Vice President of the Writing Club, poetry has form and structure that you can completely ignore to create something new.

“It's such an expansive way of story-telling and self-expression, without having the commitment of creating huge essays and novels to make a statement,” Royale said.

Many members, both new and old, found a lot of enjoyment from the structure of this last meeting and the focus on poetry.

“I like poetry because I feel as if I can really be creative but it is not as large of a commitment as writing a book,” new club member, Lily Cartier said.

Other than just poetry, The Writing Club is currently testing the waters with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The challenge of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days starting November 1.

“Poetry night could have been used to prep for NaNo but it also could have been a break prepping NaNo for people,” Royale said.

Whether poetry night helped writers with their large works for NaNoWriMo or not, it was still an engaging night filled with poetry and novelty.

“I don’t really know if poetry night directly affected how I’m going to prepare for NaNoWriMo, but I did leave with a couple new ideas,” an avid member of the Writing Club, Rachel Mercer said. “I was also excited to get home and write.”

Yet, poetry night brought more to the table than just preparing for NaNoWriMo, it brought creativity and emotion.

“Poetry night was very fun! I was actually quite moved hearing my poem read out by someone else,” Mercer said. “It was really cool to see everyone’s reactions to my words, and though it was anonymous, I felt seen.”

The Writing Club is bending some rules with NaNoWriMo. “We know, not every writer wants to make novels and we know every novelist can't do novels while doing school,” Royale said. “Basically, we are using November to make a serious goal to complete some vicinity of writing.”

One student at the poetry night gained some ideas to make a poetry collection rather than a novel for their NaNoWriMo plans while another student’s poem was based off of a character from their novel for NaNoWriMo.

“We thought NaNoWriMo would have been a cool way to kick off the club and get people excited and show that we are here and ready for whatever writing endeavors students want to tackle,” Royale said.

The Writing Club is a place for all kinds of writers: poets, novelists, songwriters and even playwrights.

“We want anyone and everyone with stories to tell or prose to share,” Royale said, “Everyone has something to say. We all have stories to write and tell. Writing Club is where we are doing that on campus.”

The Writing Club has collaborative meetings every Monday where they work on specific things such as character building and plots while sharing their works and brainstorming with one another. They also have different events where they practice writing and build friendships, such as anonymous poetry night.

“We usually have a small turn out of students, but as we go into the semester it's been fun getting to recognize faces and grow friendships with the couple that do consistently come to our activities,” Royale said.

UMD Writing Club and Preparing for NaNoWriMo