So, before I can start my journal, which I feel a need to do, with so many things that have happened in the last week, I will share my good news, with the world, with my blog (which no one reads, I believe, but an audience is not why I’m doing this).
So: finally, after more than two years of trying, perhaps longer the first inquiries I made with Nightwood and Silas, John and Signature have accepted my new book of poems. Thank goodness. It has been a really long slog. Now, I do believe as well in the idea that a book is not published until it is ready to be published, and it did need work – but it’s been a drawn out process, and I was feeling a little like I’d given up some hope.
Not that I was going to give up, I am so tenacious. But after getting rejected again in December, after putting the book through its most comprehensive edit so far, and that, after shopping around and more edits, and convincing a few people to read it… Well, I was feeling desperate. Wondering whether I really had it in me to put more work into it. Whether I had new poems which could replace the weaker ones. Whether I could identify the weaker ones myself (I’m not sure) and then add enough substance, or beautiful language to these poems that they would be publishable.
It was a hard week and weekend with my back injury, and this morning, I was feeling sorry for myself. Off my game. Not focused or satisfied or… I don’t know. Malaise. Negativity. And when the news came. Yes! I told Bridget right away and I really started to cry, not that you could tell, but I did.
Now I can tell people when they ask what I’m writing that I have a book coming out later this year. I have something to work on. I have breathing space. (Also, this 11 months ahead feels like a luxury. I know it’s coming out, I’m not in a rush, I can polish it until it will be really really beautiful). I have momentum again, in a sudden blink of the eye, a burst of light and pixels, good news from a friend.