The mad rush on toward AWP has started and already I am well stocked on books up through 2010. The rest will happen in the next week, as well as getting out a slew of new titles in time for the conference, as well as some new prints, new bookmarks & paper goods, and whatever else I have time to do (there are some cute little art locket projects I'd like to get in motion that keep getting pushed back.) The promo postcards for the open studio are designed and ordered and I'm lining up the authors who will be doing the book signings. Meanwhile I am also making my plan of attack when it comes to events, scoping out the panels and offsite things I want to attend. (and the public transportation strategies of getting around on the north side Thursday from my reading in Ukrainian Village, up to Wicker Park for the BLP reading, then over to Lincoln Park for another.) I think Friday I might just limit myself to downtown events.
Whatever happens, I am determined to enjoy it rather than over-exhausting myself like three years ago, where I wound up staying up 24 hours Wednesday making books, was comatose at the book fair, and spent the rest of the next two days going home and catching up on sleep. Only on Saturday, did I finally actually get to any readings, and then that was only because I was actually reading. This time, I intend to take all week off of work and have everything finished for Saturday on Wednesday and then just enjoy myself Thurs thru Saturday, go to panels, prepare for my own, hang out with friends, drink way too much, the usual AWP hi-jinks.
While I am working on books, I am also working on more zine-projects and more artwork. I finished up the series that I showed you on the book cover below ( I also used one of them for the AWP card.) I am probably going to do something bookish, maybe an accordian book, with these and have already ordered some matboards for the originals. The mermaidish collages are also scanned and on flickr and awaiting further inspiration (there will be more). Also, I have started working on the little botanica automata project and have the mini-prints (see pic above) finished and am working still on the little booklet of text that accompanies them.
In other writing projects, I am almost done with the peices for the narrative thing. The last few are slow coming and sometimes I feel like I'm fighting a certain paralysis with finishing poems lately (I think I know why, but I'll address that in my next entry, which I also started this week, but haven't finished.) I think it goes beyond just not having enough time, since oviously I have time to blog and finish other things just fine. I want beautiful, sinister done though, before I turn my attention to other things on the back burner (the house poems, the list poem project, the mermaid peices that go with the artwork) So done, ideally by middle of this month, it will be.
