Yesterday I was up unusually early at 9am and decided to embark on a new writing project, having pulled the carnival series to something like a comfortable close the latter half of this week. It was a rare few extra hours before I had to turn my attention to a lengthy Thanksgiving decor article, so I seized it. an, in a rare frenzy, wrote about 9 fragments I was happy with for some bits to accompany the fauxtographs below I am newly obsessed with (we will forget there are other writing and art projects in the queue, some for a couple years, but this new shiny is working, so lets do this. )
It also was a reminder of how difficult putting the first few words down on the page are for a new project. It's a moment in which it feels like all the weight of the world rests on the pin of that first sentence, which is totally not true at all, but FEELS like it is. This is probably true for all kinds of writing, though I give myself a little more leeway and just dive in on other things. That initial sentence can always be cut or replaced or rewritten once you know where you're going. But so often it feels like taking that first step out the door for a long journey. You are excited, but also a little dreading it.
I've talked before about endings, about when a project feels like its complete and whole. I was aiming for something around 40 in that last series, but with some of the poems/prose fragments I've cut along the way, it wound up more like 30, but it did feel like the last couple pieces put a lid on it. I've been working on it over the course of the summer, so I suppose August is as good a time to wrap it up as necessary. There will still need to be some edits when I return to it, probably later in the fall, but probably not any major trimming by then.
Starting out, there is always the excitement of not really knowing the destination, even if you think you do. But even then, that is part of the fear. The worry that he horses will tire or the engine will run out of gas, and maybe you'll abandon the project by the side of the road. A road that is, in fact, dotted with a number of half-conceived manuscripts and zine projects that go back more than a decade. I think only once have I been successful in picking something up once it idled for too long. And that project (unusual creatures) had many elements, the written text, but also collages and an installation piece at the library, all of which occurred over a decade before the written segments were wrapped up. I really only finished it because I needed those poems for a longer project manuscript that was coming to a close where they were too perfect NOT to include.
