I’ve been a bit silent here. I won’t apologize because I’ve been hard at work. There are publisher deadlines for manuscripts that were coming due, and I needed to buckle down.
I often have wondered that if I had gotten into more debt for an MFA that I would have been better prepared for this process. But I’m not sure the additional debt load would have been worth it. I do love the idea of having a support group of writers to guide you and encourage you, but I guess I can build my own, which can be harder than in college.
Combing through 20+ years of poems to visualize a full-length manuscript is a daunting task. I had been hacking away at it for a little more than a year. In the last six months, I had been tinkering with order of poems and inserting and taking out poems.
What I learned from this process:
You have to turn off your “editor” voice at some point
You have to trust the poems to work together
You need to rely on the encouragement of others when you feel inadequate; those who have seen your work and believe in you should not be discounted
Finding the right title is so HARD - sometimes, beta readers have the best title ideas
Waiting is excruiating
What projects have you taken on that you felt were daunting and how did you push yourself finish it?
best of luck. i'm sure you'll knock it out of the park.
You got this!!