The stereotype goes that writers and poets are depressive, overemotional introverts who lock themselves in windowless rooms, drink coffee, and scribble endlessly in notebooks or bang away at typewriters in a (usually fruitless) effort to accomplish some mysterious union with the universe. If this sounds a bit like your quarantine, you, too, might be a poet. 2020 was one atrocious year for humanity, but for my writing, it was productive due to the challenges the world hurled at all of us. Being able to filter some of my pent up anxiety during the pandemic led to some of my biggest successes this year, the most successful year I have experienced as a writer. I wanted to share a few things I learned during my year in writing before also sharing all of my published works for the year. Many of these seem like platitudes, platitudes that I have spouted and believed in but never experienced in the real and measurable ways I have this year. Here are my thoughts.
1. Self-Care is hard.
I am grateful to live in a world that is coming to terms with mental health. Out of this movement has come the term self-care. For some, it means a spa day, a sweet treat on an especially hard day, or time with friends and family. For me, self-care is hard. Much of my problem with self-care is that I usually have to dig a little deeper to know how I am feeling or if I need to practice self-care than most people. The most effective method I have discovered to get to the underneath of it all is through my writing. Purposeful introspection and making meaning out of the world around me happens better on paper. In a year that saw a drastic change in most of our jobs in March, my own definitely included, I needed to take the time to figure out how I was handling the pandemic, how I was making meaning of the ever-growing numbers, how I was dealing with the baffled scientific community and the blatant ignorance that I often witnessed on the news. Writing was my haven. This year, about half my published poems were in response to quarantine and the pandemic.
But here is the catch, most of these poems were extremely forced. What I mean is that I didn't want to write them when I wrote them. Underneath the calm surface, waves were swelling when I poured those words out. I nearly always wanted to curl into a ball or at least tune out the world with TV, video games, or sleep. My self-care is almost always like this: forced. When I feel unmotivated and void of energy, I have learned to react by doing, whether that be writing, going for a run, reading a challenging book, getting chores out of the way, or having a healthy snack instead of binging on a never-ending supply of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (because I really like Reese's). The picture of my "self-care" might seem contradictory to some, so I will say, you do you, but take care of yourselves. At the end of doing, I always get relief and serenity.
2. Writing is universal. It connects us with our humanity (no, really).
The phrase "writing is universal" is not anything new to me. I teach English Literature for chrissakes. I earnestly preach to my students how literature is crucial in the quest for our humanity. In 2020, the connection to humanity my writing gifted me transformed from the intangible figurative connection to a very literal one.
In June, after having survived a treacherous two months of unplanned online teaching, one of my friends at work reached out through Facebook about forming a poetry writing group to meet online weekly to give feedback on each others' writing. I signed up, already recognizing that I needed some accountability in keeping the wheels turning. The first time we met, I think we were all just grateful to be seeing other people that shared our passion for writing. Keep in mind that most of us quarantined as much as we could, so for many of us, it was the first people we were seeing besides our family or our students (four of us are teachers). I gained so much more than just accountability. I gained friends that I never would have met or connected with through writing. I feel like we have made meaningful connections, and we seem to understand each other's personalities through our writing. In fact, we seem to rub off on each other. We often utter the phrase: "This was a very (insert group member's name here) thing to do."
We've reached the shoutout section: thanks Guyon for starting the group and taking care of collecting the poems each week. Thanks Jackie, Monica, Michaela, and Miranda for being there each Thursday, and thanks to all the others that made appearances. I am looking forward to continuing my writing journey with this fine bunch of people.
3. Write more. Revise more. Submit more. Everything more.
Lofty goals are key to being successful at anything. I set a big one at the beginning of 2020: submit 200 poems before the end of the year. This morning, I reached that goal. Satisfying.
There were times I didn't think I would make it. Times when I didn't want to. Times when I forgot the goal completely, but I always came back around.
It all begins with the writing. Popping a record on the turntable and taking out my green notebook (which I filled before getting another green notebook) was a ritual I practiced usually several times a week and always weekly. Writing is a strange rollercoaster. Sometimes I felt like I was in a freefall, the pen couldn't scrawl fast enough. Other times I could almost hear the uphill clacking to get just a few words on the page. All the curves and loops were worth it.
In conjunction with the writing group and the slew of rejection notices, revising before submitting and resubmitting took more time than the actual writing of the poems. Often, I have proselytized that the revision is the hard work of writing, but I don't know that it was always true when writing prose in the past. Fighting for each word, line break, and punctuation mark is a battle well-waged. And sometimes won.
Lastly, this will come as no surprise to fellow writers, submitting is no fun. There is the arduous and mostly fruitless process of selecting and formatting poems for each submission. There is the vulnerability of setting yourself up for rejection, which usually ends in said rejection. There is the endless waiting and waiting and waiting. Seeing my own writing in print and in online publications is worth it all. To know that even a few people read and maybe even enjoyed what I had to say gives me joy.
Writing stats incoming! 2019 was a rough year for me as a writer. I submitted 111 works for publication. (This includes each poem submitted. If a poem was rejected and submitted elsewhere, this added to the tally.) During 2019, I had ONE poem submitted. I know I grew as a writer in 2019 though, and this year, I began to see the fruits. This year, I submitted 200 times. Ten poems were published in 2020. Additionally, three of my poems submitted during 2020 were selected for publication in 2021 (stay tuned!).
For 2021, I am setting the goal of getting a chapbook or even a full collection published. I have already begun to pursue this goal. I know I don't have total control of meeting yet another lofty goal, but I know that the experience I gain from the effort will be immeasurable.
Without further ado, and in case you missed it, here are my published works for 2020:
February 28: "The Walk to School" in Celestal Review
April 4: "Before/After" in The BeZine
April 15: "Shelter In/Out" in Backchannels
April 17: "Writer's Block in the Apocalypse" in Alien Buddha Press 2.0
May 15: "A Goodbye" in Pondersavant
June 30: Click the image below for five poems that appear in The 2020 Annual from Elizabeth River Press:
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