A Writer's Notebook, Day Three-Hundred-And-Sixty-One

When I think about my "career" as a writer, I often feel rather down, if I am honest.  While I am proud of my work, I know that I don't have a great deal of publication credit, and I am unknown, with no major opportunities knocking on my door at the moment.  I would like, of course, to have my novel published, would like to get my poetry out there, and I do feel a bit saddened, even a bit ashamed, about the fact that I don't yet have a book out or even very many other credits.

This is not something that I don't acknowledge my own responsibility for.  While I am now very active in my writing, I spent many years not working very much at all, and I haven't ever made a major press to get my work published.  I have sent my novel out to various agents, but I didn't keep at it with real dedication and regularity, and I haven't yet pushed to get my poems published.

Now, I am working at changing all of that.  I've got multiple submissions out right now that I am waiting on, and I am getting ready to send out a bunch more.  I know that I need to push to get my work published, and I am not denying my own responsibility for the state of things right now.  But, I also know that it will take time for me to get to a place where I am seeing real results from these efforts.  I am excited about that, and I am able to wait for things to happen, but that does not change the emotions I feel, at times, around this issue.

Those feelings can be very disruptive of my writing.  At times I might hear a thought saying something like "why keep doing this when you have nothing to show for it at this point?"  Now, I could argue with that voice, but I don't find that particularly productive.  At the same time, I do think it is often worth my reflecting on where I am right now, having nothing to do with publishing, and purely as an assessment of the work I have been doing.

Speaking in terms of volume, obviously I am in a very good place, writing the equivalent of a full length poetry manuscript each month.  Even if I am to assume that only a small percentage of those poems are all that good, I have enough poems that this would still yield a decent amount of writing I can be proud of.  The more important aspect of this, though, is that it demonstrates my ability to keep at it, to continue creating poems each day at this pace.  That is, itself, to me, something that has import and is worth acknowledging as an achievement.  

As well, there is something even more significant that my current work habits show which I think is key, and that is my daily involvement with writing, and specifically with poetry.  This may seem a small thing, but for me, it is not.  In many ways, it is not something that I can necessarily express, other than to say that it makes me feel more complete to be in that state of connection to this kind of work. It is a part of me, and I spent a long time running from that, often denying that was true even to myself.  Now that I am back in this place, though, I can feel the difference, even if it is not something that I can explain entirely at the moment.

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