There’s a stack of papers next to me. I just printed them off my dad’s computer, and brought them home to my little office to be sorted. They are poems, and they will soon be a book.
I wrote about my decision to pen another chapbook a little while ago, and I am now in the sorting and final editing stage. Poems are good to go, in my opinion, and now I just have to check for the rouge commas and such. I also have to decide how to order them, which is an art of its own.
The thing about chapbooks is that they are small and focused. In A Lovely Wreckage, I started out with Sick Since Sixteen, a poem about my illness that signifies the age in which my journey started. I closed it with a poem called A Good Day, which was, conveniently, about the good days I get to experience made all the better by the bad ones. It was a hopeful note to end the collection on. In between, I sorted the poems so that they were evenly dispersed-in that I made sure that not too many mental health or physical health poems were grouped together, and I also tried to make it have a rhythm and flow. Now, today, I shall be doing this for my third little baby.
My second chapbook, a mini-chap, is called Me and Jesus on a Tuesday Afternoon and will be out sometime in 2021. That one is essentially just one long poem, so I didn’t get to do the sorting phase for that. I realize now that is something I enjoy, putting my poems in the order I want the reader to experience them.
Over the summer I did a mockup on PowerPoint of my illustrated kids’ book (I’m sure there’s better software to do this on, I’m just a noob.) I am unable to work on it at the moment, but am hoping to get it off the ground sometime in the new year. However, while assembling this little presentation I realized how much I enjoy seeing creations come together. I always have…but I’ve never really applied that to my writing. When I worked in theater, I was always amazed at the magic that happened on opening night, but I have neglected it amongst my words. So today, that is what I am focused on.
I’ve had a couple of people (total strangers, mind you,) comment that they enjoyed the flow of A Lovely Wreckage, and I hope I can capture that in (Un)Requited.
Yep, that there’s the name.
I wrote the final poem yesterday. I have known which will be first, Monster, first published at Pink Plastic House, A Tiny Journal in May 2020. And last night, I penned the last, Scrapbooks. Now it is time to figure out the in-between.
Then, comes the publisher hunt. I don’t know what to do there…do I send it to my previous publisher first? What if I’d like to try someone new, or a place I think is more suited to the subject matter? What’s the plan of action here?
Stay turned for the answers to these and more questions, on an upcoming episode of Brigid’s blog.
Happy Monday.
Ham 'N Eggs 