Due to bout of recovery and some NYE's date plans held off till tomorrow night, I find myself nestled in on the couch with chinese delivery and Netflix and some time to think about the past year's creative developments.
Writing-wise, admittedly it was a slow year in terms of actually sending work out. I had good luck with most of what I did, with only a couple of outright rejections, but I always think I should be sending out more if I actually want to be appearing regularly in journals (and not dissappearing from the publishing world almost entirely.) I don't really have the ambitions I used to have about getting work in to X or Y-Journal (and alot of those journals have inevitably become dissappointing and uncrush-worthy sometimes) There are still lots of favorites and new interests though and I should be sending them work. Early on in the year, I was buoyed by the news that SALVAGE had been picked up by Black Lawrence, so there has been much in the way of blurb gathering, copy-editing, and cover design talks the latter half of this year getting ready for it's May debut.
Despite some work on a new series, DIRTY BLONDE, back in the spring, I spent alot of the summer and early fall NOT writing anything at all, which finally, like a bad fever, broke in November, where I managed to finish the STRANGE MACHINE pieces and the final section of the apocalypse manuscript., which if my final tweaking pans out during the weekend, I may just have ready to send out soon. There were still some poems in journals--most by request--Split Lip Review, Hound, Whiskey Island. A couple anthologies, The American Academy of Poets Poem-A Day anthology and Sundress' mermaid volume. A good smattering of interviews and reviews of existing books, including my interview on dgp in the American Book Review.
I did make a lot of headway in terms of artwork, more paintings, more collages, trying to get things into shows and into other venues. I've been trying out new techniques and incorporating them with collage. The only list longer than my future writing projects is my future art projects list. I'm hoping now that poems are done to get the STRANGE MACHINE zine finished up later this month. I also have a HUGE new set of acrylics I am itching to play with as soon as I get back from my New Orleans trip in a couple weeks. One of the more prospicious things I've been working on this year is some digital work with the Catalogue zine series, which is mostly just a little project I occasionally work on for fun, but which will be offering up some good images for prints and stationery this year in the shop.
As with any year, the goal for the coming year is to not let creative work get subsumed under the tide of other things--library work, the press, general life stuff. To create with purpose and goals, but not to let them be the master of me. To continue to do what makes me happy, not what I feel like I should or shouldn't be doing according to po-biz or others. To stay the course...
