How to write Valentine’s Poem 7 steps

Step 1 Choose your Valentine. This technique can be used on anybody: long-term partners, someone you've been dating for a few weeks, or someone you've got a secret crush on. The main thing is to make it rhyme and to include plenty of compliments.

Step 2 Change the old to new. The old cliché of 'roses are red, violets are blue' is too retro and not so original. Nevertheless, it's a great basis for starting your own poem with; you just need to give it a modern twist. You can pick any flower and any colour you like.

Step 3 Find the rhyme. You can make anything rhyme; it's not as hard as it sounds. Just think of a sentence you might want to write to your loved one such as: 'You always make me smile'. Then just go through the alphabet trying out what could rhyme with smile, for example: dial, file, I'll, mile, Nile, pile and so forth, until you find something that could begin to make sense in the third sentence. After working that out, build your next line around finishing with that word.

Step 4 Keep to the same theme. The theme should flow smoothly and not push from one metaphor to another without a smooth transition. To avoid a disjointed approach, look for ways to keep concepts together over at least two lines at a time.

Step 5 Decide your own length. There's no word limit, and once you get in the swing of things you might want to write pages and pages or you can just stick with four lines. Note: Shorter versions are advised if you're in a new relationship or you're being a secret admirer.

Step 6 Be Genuine, not poetically perfect. You don't have to be clever, as long as the poem sounds like you wrote it, then that's great. Keep it real.

Step 7 I seem to have lost the rhyme... Don't get hung up on rhyming. Not everything has to strictly rhyme. You're not doing English literature, you're just writing a love poem. And with that, enjoy writing it!