(Aside: blah, blah blah, long time, busy busy, blah blah blah.)
I just clicked "Send" on a submission for the first time in (according to my iGoogle clock) 148 days. Partly, I admit, to celebrate completing a poem for the first time in about 50 days. It's a good feeling. And I don't think it's unrelated to finally pulling the trigger on the chapbook.
Yes, boys and girls, I have left the dithering at the dock and committed the chapbook to print. A short debate with Scott Summers over the value of self-publishing recently gave me a chance to confirm to myself that self-publishing is OK with me for this project. I've articulated the reasons before. And yes, I do still think there's a publisher out there who would be interested in the collection, but I also believe that the probability of aligning the manuscript with that publisher at the confluence of their resources (time, money, and submission period) is low, and I want, for a number of reasons, not to roll the dice to discover that alignment any longer.
It's true that you can get backed up artistically, I think. That it gets hard to bite off something new while you're chewing over and over on something you'd like to be done with. I'm not exactly done with the old, here, as I'll be taking it on the road and hopefully moving a few in the months to come, but moving the project out of composition and into presentation makes it a different animal. One that takes energy, yes, but which also creates it in a real way. I don't think I'm alone in thinking this.
So let's see. If I'm right, I'll be bringing that energy to a venue near you soon.
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