Over the weekend, I was able to put the finishing touches on the lyric essay project that is THE HUNGER PALACE, or I guess it's more of an essay in fragments, 13 of them, some longer, some shortish. I started sending some bits out to places that were interested more in essay or prose-type pieces and we'll see how they fare. I don't know what other form it will take in the future--a chap? a zine of some sort? maybe just a segment of something longer (That manuscript is already in my thoughts, even though I am still waiting on news of the last full-length's fate. I may even already have a title, even though I only have maybe 20 pieces for it so far., but then sometimes I have titles (and sometimes epigraphs) for projects I haven't even started..lol..)
Initially, I was wary of sending the more personal pieces out in the world, but I'm feeling different about it as it was taking shape. It's still personal enough to feel like I don't want people I know to see it, but not personal enough that I want to hide it from everyone else. Such is the way with most of my more autobiographical work. I felt very similar with MAJOR CHARACTERS IN MINOR FILMS, which is much more close to the bone than, say SALVAGE or the upcoming apocalypse book. Definitely a world different than GIRL SHOW (which wasn't about me at all),
As for the project itself, , it's as close to truth as I can get with only a little bit of making less interesting things more interesting. That whole "artistic truth" vs. "actual truth." But it's the emotion of it that seems close, and at times, I worried because of the subject matter, it was TOO emotional, too sentimental (and if anything, we are told, as writers, to avoid that at all costs.) And people write so much about death. Death is done to death. So how do you make that NOT sentimental.
In the end, it helped that the project wasn't just about death, but also about women and body image (there were bit segments of this in the works even before last November, but somehow what happened braided very nicely together with those fragments.) The latter half may still need some polishing before I start submitting those, but at least it feels like it's done.
I'll be moving on to more zodiac poems and more of the epistolary project for NAPOWRIMO, and maybe a few other things that are itching in my brain if I'm going to be trying to write daily. And I've determined that I am a much happier camper in general when I AM writing more regularly (becuase if anything else seems like its trodding all over me time-wise--the library, the press, life in general, there is at least that , the writing, getting done. And really, that's at least something....
