Poe's Shoulders

For Christmas this year, my Mom slipped a copy of Poe's Tales and Poems into a package for me. As I was flipping through the pocket-sized volume, I was reminded of how important Poe was to the development of my interests as a writer. Aside from an occasional Halloween rereading of "The Raven", I haven't really touched Poe in a long time, and I'd completely forgotten some of the ways his work touched me along the way:

• One of my earliest second-hand book finds was a history of bells containing, naturally, "The Bells" alongside the photos of old bells, the histories of churches and the handbell sheet music. How could a teenager with a thing for memorable language not be captured by "Keeping time, time, time/In a sort of Runic Rhyme/To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells/From the bells, bells, bells, bells/bells, bells, bells." I think this poem in particular is at the heart of the prioritization of sound that drives my style to this day.
• In sophomore English we would read short stories aloud by taking two-paragraph turns and going around the room until every student had read and we finished the story. One day "The Cask of Amontillado" came up, and I completely forgot to not be the primary geek in the room and got lost in the story and the characters and filled my classroom performance with all the forensic flair I could muster. Not for the class, not for Miss S. (well, maybe a little), but because giving voice to Poe's story was unbelievable fun.

Mom certainly didn't intend this introspection with her gift (or so I assume), but it turned out to be the best kind of present - a reminder of something I can easily pass along to my kids as their interest in language and storytelling grows (they're already a couple laps ahead of where I was, anyway), one that will inform my teaching moments when coach young writers.

Thanks, Mom.

In which the author admits he has let the excuse of being busy mask the brutal truth that he is a collosal grump

So, yes, I've been busy. Busier than usual, yes, but not in a terribly bad way. Things that I've been wanting to do coming to be simultaneously with the start of the school year and a rather nontrivial bolus of work from the primary occupation.

However.

Let the record acknowledge my admission that I've been actively refusing the muse (to infuse CDY's line with some assonance). Partially, this has been gradual acceptance of the state of my manuscripts (excellent feedback on the "complete" one making me realize my original vision was a bit too personal, acknowledgement that I'm not - yet - enough of a subject matter expert to properly complete the other). Also, I've been spending my free reading time in speculative
fiction and humor; not wasted time, but not the non-fiction and poetry that have always been essential to my productivity. The threat of Mets 2007 Redux hasn't helped much, either; I freely admit to a half-dozen fanboy mood swings this month.

But.

Last night I took my kids to meet the authors of the Spiderwick Chronicles, a series that recently settled into our house and acquired at least one immediate avid fan. Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black gave talk, took questions, gave away original illustrations drawn while the kids watched, then sat down and signed books for over an hour. We were well to the back of the line, yet when we got to the table, Tony and Holly were as engaging with us as they'd been all evening (2 hours old at this point). When my oldest asked a question that implied an interest in become an author, they reached down and found another gear, conveying more advice and encouragement than I could have hoped for.

I've been forgetting the fun of creating. Forgetting the joy of actually hearing an echo in the canyon.

Now, I don't know that I'd have been able to find suitable time to do much creating over the past month, but I'm suddenly looking forward to the Dodge in a way I didn't anticipate. I feel like I'm accelerating toward renewing my productivity. It's like things that I've been needing, essentials for getting refocused on my writing, are all coming to be simultaneously with some long-planned and necessary downtime from the primary occupation.

Hmm.

Pushing the Rock

Well, I wasn't a finalist for the Slapering Hol annual chapbook competition. Good experience - both in the paring down of the book to its shortest incarnation yet, and in working with an accomodating contest staff. This is rejection #5 in a little over 2 years, but the guidance I received from Teresa Leo a few weeks ago at the annual Celebration of NJ Journals was not to worry until year 8 - it took her 10 to get The Halo Rule accepted.

Lately I've been wondering if the manuscript I'm shopping around isn't better suited to be a second book. It's not that I'm losing confidence in the poems (though the last couple have contest preps have helped me be a little more brutal about what's "good enough"), but that it's not an unconventional enough theme to be memorable in the harsh and immediate process of a contest screen. My new project is more "quirky", more attention-grabbing in that it's a different kind of presentation on a historical subject many people recognize but few actually understand, and it seems to me therefore more likely to survive the first cut - the one that ends on the first page.

Do first books tend to be more unusual than next books? And what, then, is the point of second book contests? A couple more things to mull while reworking for the September deadlines.

PS: Diane Lockward recently made a series of postings listing journals that read over the summer, for those of you not taking a vacation from the grind.