Tonight I launched my new book of short stories, ‘New Horizons’ into the largely unsuspecting literary world and, at the same time, won first prize in a poetry contest at AllPoetry for my poem ‘Fusion’, based on Emily Bronte’s classic novel, ‘Wuthering Heights’.
Multitasking at its finest, perhaps!
‘New Horizons’ has also received some rather lovely reviews today.
It is rather nice to feel so affirmed as a writer. I think I’ll keep going.
‘Leaf’ is my first published collection of poems in which I explore my own humanity, experiences, and observations about life in a way that will challenge the reader to see things from a new perspective.
‘Leaf’ is listed on Goodreads, and available as a paperback or an e-book on Xlibris, Amazon, iBooks and kobo.
One thing I’ve learned about being a writer is how hard it is to get people to take notice of your work…
One thing I’ve learned about being a writer is how hard it is to get people to take notice of your work. It’s even harder to get them to get them to buy a copy. There are a lot of “that’s nice!” responses out there.
At no point did I go into this with glazed eyes and a plan to “get rich quick” – as I explained to one of my students who asked if I would make a heap of money and stop teaching them, “…nobody gets rich writing poetry!”
I would be really happy to sell a few more copies of my book, though. There are always expenses, and I’d like to think that I’ll make back what getting published has cost me. It would be great to break even on the box o’books I ordered on the assumption that my friends and relatives would all support me, because that is exactly what I would do for them. Some have, and I am super grateful for each of them… and some haven’t. I guess I should have seen that coming. I’m still working on trying to not take it personally.
So, I’m busy engaging in shameless self-promotion. I’m posting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads and anything else I can think of to advertise. If you have accounts on any of those places, please friend/follow me (just click on the handy links I’ve created) and share my posts with your friends.
You can also follow me as an author on Amazon and Goodreads. (Again, handy links!)
Another thing you could do to help me out is to rate/review ‘Leaf’ on Amazon, iBooks or Goodreads, as that really helps to raise both awareness and book sales. (Yep… links!)
I’m also in the final phases of designing and producing a website, which may or may not help me sell books, but it looks impressive! I’ll be sure to let you know when it goes live.
I do have a couple of book-signing events at upcoming fairs and festivals, which will hopefully give me opportunities to bless people with hard copies of my book in exchange for cash.
It’s hard work, but it is satisfying. Nobody can ever say I sat back and waited for something to come to me. And in the meantime, I’ll just keep writing.
Today I received the most beautiful photos…
Today I received the most beautiful photos from a friend whose young niece was reading my book to her.
Adorable – AND smart! She knows good poetry when she sees it!
That’s raising her right. A+ parenting!
My Year 10 English class studied John McCrae’s WWI poem “In Flanders Fields” yesterday. In our discussion, we contrasted it with some of the more brutal poetry about the war that we’ve been studying, such as Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est”.
When I asked them what we could learn from the contrasts in the poetry.
one student answered, “Canadians are awesome and generally more polite about things than the English!”
Sorry, English people. He’s getting an A+.
I tend to experience a macabre sense of the perverse when I watch those people who audition for The Voice or American/Australian Idol thinking they’re so much more talented than they really are.
And sometimes, when I post my writing on my blog, I fear that I might be one of those people in the world of poetry. It’s obvious that I like what I have written, or I wouldn’t post it. But does it leave my friends cringing and thinking, “Oh man. She’s at it again!”?
Most of the people I know are nicer than me, and would most likely never admit that to me. So how can I find out if my work is good enough to be published properly – on paper, in ink, rather than just on my own blog, or if that is a completely vain and unrealistic dream?
The only way is to ask someone who knows.
So, tonight I bit the bullet and submitted one of my poems for publication in a quarterly poetry journal.
I’m both excited and terrified.
I hope they like it.
I hope I picked the right one.
Oh Lord, I hope I’m not making an idiot of myself.
But if I don’t try, I’ll never know. Nothing was ever achieved by chickening out.
I’ve had a really productive and creative month, especially in my writing. This is a good thing in one way, but I’ve often observed that I am at my most creative when I feel oppressed or angry about something. This has, in fact, caused me to wonder what sort of mood I’d have to be in, and for how long, if I were to actually try to write a whole book.
Perhaps luckily for my family and friends,, that’s not what I’ve been inspired to write. More than ever before, I’ve become really serious about writing poetry. There have been times when the ideas and words just poured out of me and landed on the page rather effectively. There have also been plenty of times when the writing and crafting of meaning was far more labour intensive because I wanted to make sure it was exactly right.
Last week, as I was driving home from somewhere – I can’t quite remember which day it was – the thought struck me that I should try my hand at a more conventional classical ballad style of poetry, like so many of the longer poems that I know and love. I’ve spent my life loving the work of poets such as Tennyson and Wordsworth, and while I am not pretending for a moment that I am anywhere near as good as them, the rich narrative style of their poems is something I thought I’d like to try to emulate.
Inspiration struck as I saw a picture in my mind’s eye and decided to develop it as an allegorical ballad with a fairy tale feeling and style about it. Parts of the poem have flowed quite naturally, and others have been painstakingly written and rewritten. At one point, I nearly threw the whole thing away and gave up on the whole thing as a ridiculously bad idea. I had hit the cold, hard barrier of writer’s block, and for several days this unfinished piece taunted me. Who was I kidding, anyway? I might be good with words, but I would never be that good.
In typical fashion, this famine of ideas turned out to be the ironic part of my life having a good old laugh at my own expense. At the end of a week where I had three very long days at work, survived a stressful meeting, and was playing cordial host to a four-day-long tension headache, my brain woke me at 2am on Saturday with some lines that I had to either write down that instant or lose them forever.
I wrote those lines rather clumsily into my phone, hoping that autocorrect and my headachey,sleep deprived eye-finger coordination didn’t play merry hell with what I thought I was writing. You can imagine my surprise the following day when those lines actually turned out to be just what I had wanted.
The poem isn’t finished yet. I am not sure how long it will take before I am happy enough to publish it. When I do, though, it won’t matter if nobody else likes it or understands it, or if it is not hailed as a work of literary genius. I’m pretty sure that won’t happen. What matters is what the poem means to me.
For now, it’s a labour of love. Hopefully I will be ready to share it with the world soon.
Last week I was talking with Sean about my poetry. He challenged me to write something that wasn’t dark and negative. I had to admit that while my prose writing is quite varied, there was definitely a mean streak in my poetry.
I promised that at some point, I’d give writing some more positive poetry a shot.
That got me to thinking about why I write the way I do.
Lately, my poetry has been the place where I’ve been able to say what I think and feel when it would be inappropriate to say those things aloud to the people who need to hear them. Keeping one’s friends and one’s job is generally considered to be a good thing. Writers have long considered their work a place of refuge and sanctuary from the world around them, and a safe venue in which to voice their thoughts and responses to the difficulties that life throws at them.
This week was a tough one on a number of levels, and it’s not unusual for me to get very creative when I’m feeling oppressed. On Thursday night, another friend told me that she was concerned that my writing might get me into trouble if the wrong people were to read it.
“How?” I asked her. “Nobody is identified, not even me. No place or situation is specified. It could be about anyone, or anything.” Besides, I thought to myself, those would be the right people.
To be honest, if someone reads one of my darker poems and thinks it’s about them, which it most likely is not, they probably need to take a long, hard look at themselves to see if there’s an issue they need to address. As they saying goes, “If the shoe fits, lace that sucker up and wear it.”
My writing is about my experiences and my feelings, or those of the people close to me, but it’s not specific to us. Sometimes, it’s pure fiction. My intention is to share glimpses of human experience, emotions, and responses to the challenges of survival in a difficult world. I’m really not always angry; those are just the poems that are the most cathartic to write. It’s the least expensive therapy known to mankind.
This week, I’ve managed two poems in a row that are not angry. In my writing “career” so far, that’s quite an accomplishment. Sean’s challenge has reminded me that I can still tap into powerful feelings and experiences without sounding like I want to hurt someone. That’s probably a very good thing.
If you’d like to read my writing, you’re more than welcome.
It’s not about you.
Honest.
WordyNerdBird 