I've Been Working On Things

FROM THE DESK OF E. KRISTIN ANDERSON:

Projects. We all have them. And it seems like everyone is talking about theirs, and I've been keeping quiet about mine. Recently, at a farewell lunch for a writer friend, I asked another writer friend of mine what she was working on. And after she told me about her projects, she asked me about mine. Me, being the awkward silence hater that I am, spat out, "Oh, God, I don't even know!"

For a second, I realized it was true. I'm not writing a new manuscript right now, I'm not ankle-deep in a revision, and I'm not sure what I want to write next.

That's kind of an awkward place to be for a writer. Especially when, like me, you've got work on submission, so you're kind of wondering how that's going to go before undertaking anything huge. But writers should always be writing. And I know that. I know that and I AM that. Inherently, I can't not be working on something. Which, after I realized that I'd told my friend the truth, made me realize I was also kind of lying. And I added, "Well, I've got all this poetry stuff going on, so I figure, if that's where my success is right now, that's where I'm going to focus this summer."

Which brings me to what, it appears, I'm working on: found poetry.

A few months back, during a bout of mania-fuelled insomnia, I made the ill-advised decision to check out Groupon. You know what's worse than online shopping when you're prone to these manic episodes? Online shopping apps. Anyway, I'm usually pretty good about this stuff, but, coming off of the high that was Oulipost, I decided I needed more fuel for my found poetry fire. And there were all these Groupons for magazine subscriptions. Between Groupon and a deal I found on Amazon, I subscribed to like five different magazines. Magazines I don't read, and probably wouldn't even buy at the supermarket, no matter who was on the cover. Magazines like Glamour, Allure, and Harper's Bazaar.


Anyway, I've decided that to make what ended up being like $35 (hey, deals!) and way too many dead trees count, I'm going to be working my butt of to mine poems out of these magazines. To maybe even write enough to submit as a full-length collection.

And when I'm not creating erasure poems with these magazines, which have just started showing up in my mailbox (I'm positive that my mailman is judging me. I'm okay with it.), I've got photocopies of pages from books I've been reading. I've been obsessively leaving post-it tabs in some of my recent reads: TEASE by Amanda Maciel, THE ART OF SECRETS by James Klise, EXPIRATION DAY by William Campbell Powell, and SHE IS NOT INVISIBLE by Marcus Sedgwick. I briefly got out of the habit while reading books on my Kindle, but I fully plan on seeing what I can find in the book I just read for the deviantART CRLiterature Book Club: THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams.

I scan and print out tabbed pages, scribble on them, write poems with the found language, and sometimes post them online. It's a lot of fun, and I've been sending out batches of found poems to magazines. Reactions have been varied. I remember when I was at AWP, with Found Poetry Review on my badge, since I was speaking on their panel. I spoke with editors who were very much YES FOUND POETRY IS SO COOL. And I spoke with editors who didn't know much about it. And editors who didn't quite know what to do with it. I spoke with one editor who flat out told me that centos were -- I forget the word he used now, but it was strongly negative. I had a nice talk with that editor, but I'm torn on whether to submit found work to his magazine. (You know what? I'm too contrarian not to. Off it goes tomorrow!)


Novels, though? I feel like whenever I go more than a month without working on a novel draft (and I always go this long between drafts -- you've gotta take a break!) I completely forget how to novel. This, of course, can't be true, since I keep writing novels. But it's tough to set a goal for yourself and fail. I wrote back in March that I'd be attempting Camp NaNoWriMo in April. I did not write a single word. That was okay, of course, because Oulipost kicked my butt. And I know I wouldn't have been successful with either Oulipost OR the NaNo novel if I'd done both. My problem now, though, is that I'm kind of afraid to do Camp NaNo in July. Even though I think I kind of need to. Stretch my novelling muscles. And then, perhaps, revise, revise, revise.

Or I could wait until actual NaNo in November. Or, like the past few years, I could do both! I like challenges.


In the mean time, I'm poem girl. I've got two chapbook manuscripts that are being sent out into the ether (one is selected results from the Oulipost project), and I'm making use of both my regular reading and that ill-advised magazine shopping spree in order to write new material.

As long as I'm writing. That's the point. Writers write.

So what are you working on?