I’m excited and very very nervous!

About two years ago, I was invited to join a website called Channillo. As a writer, you can upload a series (that you must get approval for) and then people can subscribe and read them. Once a series earns $50, the writer is allowed to cash out, or donate it to charity through the Channillo platform. As a reader, a membership is about $5 a month and allows you to join as many different series as you’d like, with your subscription money going to the authors.

I have two previous series on the site but neither have done very well (after two years neither has reached the $50 mark yet). They were also both very limited in their scope and ended quickly. BUT I have been approved for another series! Which will be called “Paint Chip Poetry”.

Now the concept is simple, and I have done it here on this blog before for about a month way back in the fall of 2017. You take a paint chip paper, and using the colour names, you have to write a poem. Usually they are very simple and for me, the same number of lines as I have colours, but sometimes I get really inspired and create more. I don’t alter the names at all except to maybe add punctuation between words. Otherwise, they stay as they were given. Okies so on some of them I did alter the names but like instead of it saying “Green pond colour” I just wrote “green pond” or if it said “Orions Grey” I changed it to “Orion’s Grey”. This just makes sense and I don’t think it alters the rules of my game at all. But also, my game, my rules! haha!

In order to get ready for this, I had to take a lot of time and do some hard core organizing. I didn’t want to have the paper swatches in my house taking up space, so I went to a Canadian hardware store’s website and found their paint section. I selected the Behr type of paint and sat for two days making my swatches. I grouped them by 4 colours (they showed 8 squares across so this was perfect), and had to save a screen grab of each set of 4, and then open it in a paint program and type the name on each of the squares. It took a lot of work. Like at least 8 hours. BUT by the end I had almost 400 swatches to choose from! Then I added the names of the files to a random number generator, Wheel of Names, which then deletes the randomly selected swatch so it doesn’t get chosen again.

Each installment will include a spin of the wheel and finding the file for an upload. It took a while to get organized but I am glad that I have it all set up so now all I have to do is write.

Now I am telling you all this because my new series will begin tomorrow. I am actually quite nervous about it considering my last two series didn’t exactly take off. And also, I’m not really big into writing poetry but I feel inspired and confident in this. I have been wanting to get permission to do this series for about a year and a half now and I am so glad that I finally submitted a proposal for it and now it is happening!

What does that mean for you?! Welllll…..You can find my writings here under Paint Chip Poetry. I will be posting a new poem every Wednesday, starting tomorrow! I will also be posting the paint swatches each Wednesday on the blog (without the poems) and inviting you to play along.

Happy writing and reading everyone!