I've been finding I am most productive when in a crunch --whether its my own stuff, other people's books, and writing assignments--to devote entire day stretches rather than my usual switching back and forth (I suppose part of it is gear shifting, but also maybe that I am not as firm on the deadlines I set myself if I know I can possibly do something tomorrow instead of today.) This is how I have been approaching various tasks of editing my own poems to get them ready to start submitting and handling the laborious proofing process of COLLAPSOLOGIES over the past four weeks Which, of course, I hope to finish next week by combing through the second half of the galley which arrived the other day. I've found when I split it up I am very likely to procrastinate or shaft them in favor of money-related things.
Today, it was a blissful creative work day entirely, which began with coffee and muffins and formatting some postcards and placing a cover order for the press and for those--my five favorites from the sea monsters series. As expected, the smoke has drifted out, but the humidity has replaced it, which means I don't stray very far from the fans. Then the first couple sections of the book, making the changes in the file as I went, nudging margins and addressing any tenacious typos that have managed to survive this long (there were quite a few in the reformatted tabloid poems where I changed line breaks and sometimes was missing spaces and punctuation. )
Since I finished finalizing the GRANATA poems last week, I thought I would send them out and see if they would land anyone's eye. But I find that spotting cool new little journals is hard since abandoning Twitter. I finally just started working my way through new-to-me journals in the P&W list, though I know I'm probably still missing out on the rare uncatalogued gems or mags too new to be listed there. I did manage to batch them up in 5s and send them like little ducks out into the world. Though, as a whole, that mss. will need a lot of rearranging when I get to it--the kind where you print it out and spread on the floor to make sense of it, but that is a project for fall perhaps.. I also made up some poetry postcards for instagram next week with the leftover pieces I didn't submit so those are ready to just post whenever.
I was able to create a new little general trailer for the upcoming book and made one of the fun little aesthetics reels for AVM. Altogether quite a productive day. I had planned to work on some new collages, but the heat has made me sleepy and lethargic this time of day, so I may retire to the bedroom to watch something instead. I've placed a hold on new poems daily til after the 4th, possibly longer, largely becuase I am not sure where they are going just yet or what they need.
Tomorrow and Monday are press days, with a cookout planned for Tuesday, when judging by the forecast, I will likely be melting in a backyard on the south side and hoping to glimpse some fireworks however far off they may be.
