A Writer's Notebook, Day Three-Hundred-And-Thirty-Two

It has been a very productive day for my work.  My friend and collaborator, Freesia McKee came to visit and to help me get more of my work into shape.  We got through a fair amount of work, including revision of various poems, organizing stuff for my upcoming reading, and preparing another potential chapbook manuscript. In addition, we also spent a fair amount of time doing other work and just chatting about poetry and related subjects.

One part of this which was most helpful for me, in some ways, was going through some of my new work.  As much as I do believe in that work, the feelings I've had about not feeling the same kind of inspiration and not writing certain kinds of poems so much right now do impact my sense of the works value.  Thus, having a person like Freesia, somebody who is an experienced reader of poetry, who's opinion I respect, is important.  I can never provide myself a truly unbiased opinion of the work, even when it is of a more familiar nature.

That Freesia seemed to find much of the work to be quite good and potentially ready to send out was extremely reassuring to me.  While I have felt that the work was still good in many regards, I hadn't shown much of it to anyone yet, and so I wasn't really certain yet.  I mean, it is one thing to trust that the work is good, to believe in yourself and what you are creating, but when another person provides a positive opinion, it has an impact. In the end, I think that it makes me feel a lot better, knowing that another person I respect shares that opinion.  I am hoping, really, that this will help me to relax a bit and enjoy the work I am doing without worrying that I should be writing different poems instead.

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