While difficult, I have found that a real deadline reinforced by people I know helps me to at least submit something. I will not say it is not my best work, but of the three poems I submitted today, none have really been through the workshop. Actually, I take that back. The first and second poems saw workshop. The first received a total, blank-page rewrite while the second saw significant trimming.
At the same time, I won’t say these three poems represent the best possible product I could produce. Knowing this fact does not make life any easier. However (and there is always a however), these three are the best poems I currently have that best reflect the ways in which I have grown over the past semester.
There is something about pressure that does two things to me:
1 – I respond with hard work
2 – I eventually collapse beneath it
As to the first, I end up producing what I need to produce, for example, a considered two-page critique in the two hours before class. For the second, things begin to drop away. First, of course, is sleep. Check. Second is extracurricular writing. Half-Check. What do you think I am doing now?
In order of importance, things drop away. Family always takes primary place in this taxonomy. Even while I was a Marine, family held greater importance than orders. They may not always know this, as I keep myself close, but a word and I drop everything.
At any rate.
AWP is coming. Leaving Wednesday morning for the drive to DC. They are expecting snow, sleet and ice, so it should be fun anyways. The goal is to find one or two places to submit poems to, and then to actually do it. I’d like to say I’ll keep my readers updated on this, but
1 – I don’t have any readers
and
2 – I would rather they keep on my ass about it.
All the best to you other writers out there,
Eric