In the past couple of weeks, I've sent the
girl show manuscript off to a couple of small presses whose books I really like, but am also considering sending out a trimmed down version that is leaner and meaner to a couple of my favorite chapbook publishers and let the chips fall where they may. The length was skirting the low end of the full-length requirement anyway, even when GRP was going to publish it, so I just cut a couple pieces and consolidated. It's weird being forced to engage the work again after so long (I tried to avoid looking at or reading the poems in public it the past two years, figuring I'd be sick of the poems by the time it came out. Now looking at them, it's almost like a stranger wrote them. The work since has been so different both in impulse and style, and yet oddly, I feel more protective and mother-hen like over the newer work than I ever did over anything else I've written in the last 15 years or so. I've also been looking at the new manuscript and wondering if it doesn't need some trimming. I seem to do better with shorter projects than long lately and find myself fluffing instead of working more organically.
in the bird museum was longish, but only because it's made up of smaller pieces.
I have started sending individual poems out again, though making time to do it and mustering the energy seem to be the hardest challenges. It's hard switching back and forth between editor/publisher and writer modes these days, let alone the more visual oriented & design projects I work on for the shop. I really don't I have to make myself write these days when it's so much easier to slack and read design blogs or watch bad 80's videos on YouTube. Then there is the siren song of the Etsy forums where many an hour has been wasted. As busy as I am, I always feel there is more that could be doing and more efficiently at that. Meanwhile, I have been sleeping far too much, a cure for the winter blues that seems to be working along with ridiculous amounts of chocolate I only seem to crave in the winter. I think it's a seratonin thing. The days are noticeably lengthier which always brings a tremendous sigh of relief.
