A Writer's Notebook, Day Two-Hundred-And-Ninety

I have had an incredible day, one that feels like a turning point in many ways.  My friend and poetic collaborator Freesia McKee came to visit to help me work on some of the backlog of poems that I have on my computer.  In total, I have about 390 poems on my computer, most of which are fairly recent, and I have been attempting to sort the one's that seem closest to completion.  Today, we not only identified a large number of those poems, but actually worked on the minor tweaks that many of the pieces needed.  We only got through a hundred or so poems from my PC, but managed to do the fine tuning on a large number as well.  By the end of the day I had moved around 70 more poems into the "completed" folder.

In addition to this, we also organized a set of these poems into a chapbook, as well as identifying a number of markets for my work, preparing packets, and even sending out a few submissions.  I feel incredibly enthused, though I am exhausted from the effort.  Seriously, I now have enough poems that I feel are finished to create a full length book, though I would still like to add some more before I begin considering the idea of actually creating one.  I feel really lucky to have the help of Freesia, who is an incredibly talented poet in her own right, and who has been an incredibly supportive presence.  I know I wouldn't have gotten to this point so easily, let alone so quickly, without her help.

So, now I am really ready to send out my poems for publication.  This is a bit of a daunting step, but I feel prepared, especially because I know I have support from those around me, and because I trust that the work is good, even if I don't always get the responses I would like.  Rejection is never fun, and publishing involves opening oneself up to that.  But, I have a lot of support, and I trust those who have looked at my work thus far to be honest about it.  I may not get the results I want right away, but I know that I will get there, and I trust that their are those who will want this work for their journals, even if they are not places that I think of at first.  It is a matter getting the work out there, of building an audience, and of continuing to create more and better work. 

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