First I must give credit to this article which my lovely housemate passed on to me:
which was definitely the straw on my proverbial camel's back. Reading it made me realize that I was being silly by stopping myself from using an additional outlet which is totally available for my using. It helped me push over the final flimsy hemming and hawings.
I liked the article a lot and think it would be especially helpful to writers who feel illegitimate. Essentially the message of "you are not your work" was amazingly succinct powerfully logical, and totally digestible.
My only point of possible divergence would the point about "never-ending edit". I actually do think every piece of writing has endless editing possibilities (not to say that any of them are perfect or even better!). Editing should never be done toward the purpose of perfection but towards appropriate and effective in a particular context (the old diatribe of "keep the audience in mind" is one piece of that). No single edit of a piece of writing can cover ALL the bases. But if you set your sites on a few bases important to your message/cause you have much better chances of effectively covering them.
Second order of business:
I made a giant mess of chapbooks(50) back in September (between applying to 4-5 jobs per day). Pictured (apologies about the quality of the photo better versions to come) above is one example. Some of the covers are different (which I love). It is comprised of 27 poems taken from the April-August sections of my blog. Based on the general feel and progression I chose for the poems I called the chapbook Romantic Breathing. I spent about 6 hours selecting the poems, layout and progression. Each individual book takes about 20 minutes to do the cover art and put together. I'm selling them for $5. I have been trying to carry a few with me everywhere just in case the opportunity arises to show and maybe sell my work to folk. It has been a wonderful experience and I hope to come out with another in February or March. If I continue writing poems at this rate perhaps a chapbook will become a biannual affair (which is almost too exciting to imagine!!!!!)
Two weeks ago I was invited to perform pieces from this book (and some others) as the featured poet at an Everett open mic I have been attending since high school (that's 6 years, whoa). That was really exciting and encouraging. My whole family came and I wasn't nervous at all. The best part was watching my father really enjoy the stuff I was reading. I realized at several points during my performance that I am an incredibly gestural as a poet. Sometimes I would end up rocking as I was reading the words or grabbing little bits of the air as if to shake them into the sensations of a particular personification. It was a joy. I hope to find more performance venues
And lastly (as I recognize that this post is getting overlong) I am so happy/anxious/proud to be the main organizer of a writing group. I moved to Seattle in September and have since been getting more and more involved in my writing. One way this has manifested is through my attempts at getting the writing group started. The first preliminary meeting is this Sunday! I have so many ideas! I don't want to group to be any one thing or have any one writing goal beyond getting writers together. Rather I hope that the meetings and event themselves can be the things which hold goals (like a particular meeting for line edits or an one for idea talk or one for writing games, to share prompts and to trade books etc...). This is a subject I intend to document in the following weeks.
For my next post: books I've been reading
No comments:
Post a Comment