Brainstorming

• 1). Write down some of the important life choices you have made in the past. For instance, you may have been faced with the decision of going to college or immediately pursuing a career after high school. Or maybe you confronted the difficult choice of whether to maintain or break off an unsatisfying personal relationship. Choosing between a promotion at your current job or an opportunity with a different organization is yet another difficult life choice.
  
  
• 2). Choose one of the life choices from your list as the basis of your poem. Remember what factors entered into your decision-making process and what ultimately drove you to choose one option over another.
  
  
• 3). Write a descriptive list of your thoughts and feelings as you faced this choice. Encapsulate these feelings in creative metaphors. For example, you could describe leaving an intimate partner as not reading a book all the way through. Another typical metaphor involves imagining life as a road with many branching paths.
  
  
• 4). Plan how you want to structure the poem. You could write in a narrative fashion, following a series of events from start to finish. Or you could craft a more abstract poem that centers on thoughts and emotions more than concrete reality.
  
  

Writing

• 1). Write the poem according to your plan, stopping as little as possible. Don't worry about achieving perfection. The initial attempt is only a draft and will be further refined.
  
  
• 2). Scan your completed draft. Look for cliched language, typos and passages that don't achieve your intended effect. Mark through these errors, and write possible improvements in the margin.
  
  
• 3). Compose a new draft with all necessary changes. Show this version to one or two trusted friends for feedback.
  
  
• 4). Reread and revise the poem until you are satisfied with the result.