When I was throwing together my memoir and figuring out the layout, I came up with the idea of putting poems in between each chapter.

I used the interior from my book #Teenblogger: To Follow or Not To Follow as the template because I’d already made in between segments for the blogging tips, and it was easier to use something I had already formatted.

So in the places in between each chapter, I pasted in my poems.

There are ten in total, and I certainly didn’t have all ten written before this book came about.

During the creation of my memoir, I checked a book called The Magic Words by Joseph Fasano out from my local library.

A book of writing prompts that Joseph, a writer and poet, came up with for local school children in the New Jersey area. After posting the poems they wrote to his socials, the prompts took off and a book was created.

After giving it a quick read through one Thursday night after a long day, I didn’t look at it again for another two weeks, and after reading a couple of prompts, out poured three poems. Over consecutive nights, out poured more and I had sixteen poems in total by the time I finished.

Seven poems were written specifically for chapters of the book, and three more were added. Not Free and My Reflection, and What is Okay? a poem that I wrote for RUOK day here in Aus in early 2024, and posted to socials on September 12, 2024.

If you’re wondering, why did I write and add poems to my memoir.

The simple answer is this…because I can.

It’s as simple as that. When you’re a self-published author, you can do anything you want with your books. Traditional publishing has word and page count limits, you’re told what you can and can’t do. Not me, not for us. I can do whatever I want in my books.

Because I can!