So I've been shopping this full-length MS around for some time now. Honestly, not that long, in the grand perspective. But since late December, I've been writing so much more, in a newer, more risk-taking style, that this MS is starting to feel foreign to me. Like, it should be well and published by now, because the material is already starting to feel old.
Until now I've kept the MS apart from the new work that I've been writing. The new pile I've just been calling The Sheaf. However, a lot of my publications since The Sheaf started have been Sheaf poems and not MS poems. Soooo, combining that with the fact that I'm starting to see the MS as too tame, not exigent, enough, if that makes sense... I'm attempting some integration from the Sheaf into the MS.
Even the title, Rounding Down, doesn't seem to fit any more. It was (perhaps) better than the previous title, but it doesn't speak about the whole MS.
With the chapbook (Borrowed Bodies) I went through about three different titles until I settled on The One. That title did not come from a poem title or even an image within the book. It just fell into place one morning, in the shower.
Best thinking. In shower. Seriously.
Even after I had the title I wanted, the ordering did not come at once, nor what poems to include. I fussed with it until all of a sudden it fell into place organically. I was like oh yeah. That's how it's supposed to go. After that, I was a finalist at the next place I submitted to. After that, the book was taken by Pudding House.
This new MS has about 40 poems in it, with four sections. I have no idea if all of a sudden coming upon a form that seems organic for it is a realistic goal.
I get impatient. Really. I'm in my mid-late thirties. No first book out yet. Every poet whom I like, if I can track down their birth date, I figure out when that first full-length book came out.
It's always when they were younger than I am. Usually right around 30.
Except, except, except. I have a lot of exceptions. I'm not going to list them here. This isn't a sob party. So many things have derailed me from pursuing this project that I get to do now. And the reason I get to do it now is purely a gift, from someone I love dearly. But it was a gift. I feel guilty that I needed a gift.
When I graduated from college I thought I would be in grad school by 25. That didn't happen. I totally fell apart. Then I got in a few years later. I could feel time creeping.
When I graduated from grad school, I thought I'd be done with the adjunct gig and on to teaching creative writing full-time, in, I dunno, three years.
That for sure didn't happen. I changed. The world changed.
Since I went into recovery (13-14 years ago now) I've learned to love a plan. To cling to it. It is ridiculously hard unlearning that.
I compare myself and always come out wanting. I'm not saying it's rational. I know it's not. But it feels... it feels. I feel it.
Everything I do is a solitary act. Does that make sense? Sometimes the loneliness fills me so completely that I don't have words for it. Sometimes, and I know this is fucked up AND I'm putting it on the internet ... but I wish I was in recovery for alcohol or drugs. AFAIK, there is no meeting for what I'm in for. Done with. But sometimes I could really use a meeting. Not because I feel that I am in imminent danger of breaking my recovery, but because I want to feel less lonely in my process.
There, I said it. But that is what this blog is about for me. Radical openness. Presenting the good with the flaws and allowing it all to co-exist in one big me-mess. Me-mess. Me-ness. Something like that.
Maybe I'll look back on this post once the MS was published and think, yes, on that particular Sunday everything really started to come together. Or I'll think, shit, I was really in for a long slog after that. What will it be?
Mike is afraid I will always level up, after each accomplishment. Never enjoying, always wanting the next thing. I worry about it too. I don't know how to be content I guess. Or, I'm learning. But I have always been a striver, obsessed with the way forward. It's gotten me to where I am --i.e. through some pretty difficult situations.
Signing off now. Safari and/or Blogger just crashed and I thought I lost this entire fucking post.
I can relate to so much in this! About age... i'm 30 and have yet to finish my degree and sometimes i feel so bad about it because for almost 7 years now i've been meaning to go back to school but i feel like i only need the degree to give me some credit as a writer. That i won't be taken seriously without it. And because i've been writing and writing and i feel like i should have completed something for publication by now and when i read about others who've published so young i feel like a waste. Or a waster, i guess i should say.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking a lot about how this is lonely work. For me when i get deep into it i become so isolated. I don't have a lot to say and i have a hard time listening. Conversation becomes trying because i'm either writing or deep in thought about it. I think of the scene in Bright Star where Brown tells the Brawnes that even if they seem to be sitting doing nothing, they are not, they are working. Or the scene in The Hours where Woolfe's sister and kids visit and she's sitting in a chair, lost in thought and sort of mumbling while her visitors watch. Her sister says she's lucky because she gets to lead two lives.
“Viscosity and velocity are opposites, yet they can look the same. Viscosity causes the stillness of
disinclination, velocity causes the stillness of fascination. An observer can't tell if a person is silent and
still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.” ~Susanna Kaysen
Oooh I like that Susanna Kaysen quote. Also, hearing other perspectives, it makes me feel less alone and apt to pathologize... like I'M BAD AND WRONG sort of thing. So thanks for commenting.
ReplyDeleteA tip about writing / skewl / feeling self-conscious. I never mention in my bio that I've got my MFA and I seem to be doing okay as far as publication goes... so if you are hesitating to send your stuff **because you don't have the degree**, I say fuck it. Send send send :)
PS: Not that I think people who say where they went to school in their bio are doing something wrong... shit. One works for so long on a degree, why not mention it? But I just don't for some reason. Just a choice and good either way.
ReplyDelete:o) Thanks. I'm not going to let the fact that i don't have a degree stop me from trying. And i know what you mean about including school in the bio...
ReplyDelete