A Writer's Notebook, Day Eight-Hundred-And-Twelve

 I woke up this morning and got myself to work writing, as I had been hoping to do.  Though I did not write any fiction, I did get in two separate sessions for writing, and yielded four poems from the effort.  It always feels odd to be speaking in these terms, but the number of poems is so meaningless in a larger sense.  I mean, a single poem is not a unit of the work, in terms of what it really takes to create a piece of value, but it still stands as a unit in my current paradigm.  I don't know if that is a problem or not, really, as long as I don't start thinking of each piece as finished or complete, and recognize that what I write in a day is only a start.  

It may seem to many who read this blog that I don't seem particularly focused on revision or editing, and much of the time that is true.  I spend a lot of my energy creating new work, but it is often true, as well, that a new poem is really a revision, or perhaps a reiteration of older efforts.  As well, I learned a great deal about my process this past year, especially in creating my most recent chapbook manuscript.  One aspect of that work that really made sense to me was in terms of approaching revision from a specific perspective, and not just as an effort to improve the poem in absentia.  In crafting work to fit into a larger manuscript, I found myself able to see the individual poems in fresh ways, and through the relationships that existed within the work, I found myself rediscovering each piece on an essential level.  That ability to see the work afresh also generated insights for me about how to approach the process of revision, as it provided a criteria and context as well as opening my vision to what the poems were each doing.  As such, I think of revision, at least right now, as a process that is extremely connected to curation, and I am thinking it best to approach revision through that lens.  This does not mean just waiting until it is time to put together a manuscript, of course, but rather is about grouping poems that feel connected.  Even if they are not viewed together by a reader, the awareness that develops from seeing the poems in those contexts can help me clarify what is or is not working in any single case.  At least, that is the theory.  Right now, I am very much focusing on the writing itself, but I think that the approach I am going to take towards publishing this year may push me to focus more on these other aspects of the work.

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