Saturday, April 17, 2010

On A Full Brain and a Furious Pen

Last night I reformatted and edited my MFA thesis and sent it out a peer reviewed journal (with a list of possible others if it doesnt get picked up there). I have 5 poetry projects in-progress (some farther along than others, and 6 if you count a book already contracted but not completed), and another two I want to start but have just been germinating in my brain without any ink (or pixels) spent on them yet. I also have a CNF essay collection in progress with two essays completed and sent out to various lit mags, and another twelve or fifteen ideas of additional essays. I have an idea for a collection of critical essays on a particular section of literature that I am interested in writing about.


I am co-editing two anthologies with Carol Smallwood on writing for women, Women and Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets and Women Writing on Today's American Family, and currently sending out the book proposal to publishers for those. I also have ideas for 2 more anthologies that I haven't even started crafting proposals or calls for contributors for, and I have been considering writing a collection of critical essays on an area of literature I'm very taken with.


And all of this outside my actual job, which I like very much and is at least as time consuming as my writing projects. But I am still grinning like an idiot about it all, even with the whirring brain, the random hits of ideas or lines that I have to grab a pen and mark on a random receipt before it flies away from me.


And so, because of all of this bouncing inside my skull, whenever I am not at work, sleeping or packing, I am writing (or thinking about writing). I was just thinking that it must be incredible to be able to do this as a full time job. I love librarianship, but if I hit the Lotto tomorrow...

1 comment:

Blasé said...

Projects need our focus!