Whenever I start thinking in terms of manuscripts, there is always this anxiety. It's one thing if I'm writing a more project oriented book like girl show, it's another when I seem to have these small disparate series, or worse, this chunk of everything but the kitchen sink. It's hard to find that thread, the thread that makes all these poems or series into a coherent whole that makes sense as a longer book, especially when they are all sprawling and unruly. Here, you have the brief history... poems. Here you have the havoc poems. Here are some random pieces that may or may not fit in. Here you have the house poems, half finished (which may or may not be a chapbook project on their own) and here are those goofy James Franco poems (and who knows if those even warrant inclusion in a book, and yet, the topics they actually cover seems to be important stuff even if they are a little silly.) And maybe those writing concerns fit nice in with the whole "woman as creative being vs. women as muse" theme of brief history..., and then, yes, a lot of havoc pieces deal with pop cultury sorts of things that resonate somewhat with the JF poems.
And suddenly, here is this PERFECT title I have scribbled in my notebook, that I was thinking might be this whole other thing about the media and body image and then *clap of thunder, bolt of lighting* suddenly I had it, a slippery little thread, a concept that unites all of these things and possibly something else I've been tossing around. Right now it's about 50 pages, but will probably be at least another 30 or so by the time I'm done.
Of course, tomorrow I might wonder why I ever thought this was a good idea, but I'm feeling rather thunderstruck at the moment. I may just be avoiding finishing the narrative project by distracting myself with something else, which is its own little beastie that needs vanquishing.
