First, I enjoyed the poetry workshop a huge amount, and I’ve learned a lot, and, possibly even more important, I was motivated to work very hard on poems with a definite audience in mind: the process of trying to translate what I like to write about into something that other people will like too, the process of curating my tastes and passions, is interesting and useful one—writing for an audience might make me more conventional in some ways, but I think in most ways it makes me more interesting, not less. Perhaps this is because my standards when I’m writing tend to slip significantly lower than “would I like to read this” and the anxiety of knowing other people will makes me raise the bar.
Next, I’ve started an ambitious summer plan. I have way too many projects, it sometimes seems: I translate, I write fiction, I write poetry, I paint, and I try to do academic work. So I decided to narrow the projects down to seven and spend two hours a day rotating through them, one for each night of the week. On days off, I have to spend two extra hours on a project of my choice. I get bonus points for spending extra time on any given project. So far, it’s worked much better than I thought it would—I thought it would be hard to tolerate switching between projects daily, but it actually creates a very pleasant rhythm. Apparently, I work best with structure and variety.
The projects are:
- Writing an Evernostian story (Sunday)
- Polishing and trying to publish work that already exists (Monday)
- Reading, writing, and analyzing art’s urges toward and away from truth. (Tuesday)
- Writing a game using Ren’Py, my art, music I wrote in LMMS , and Evernostian text. (Wednesday)
- Reading and writing poetry (Thursday)
- Translating from the Russian (Friday)
- Making art (Saturday
In addition, I have an Instagram account: @dreamswithopeneyes! I’m using it to post art (and encourage myself to keep making art), and you should check it out.
Finally, I’m about to submit a 25,000 word djinni romance to some publishers. It’s loosely associated with the paranormal romance in verse I submitted to agents a couple years ago, which I’m still unsure about (perhaps it wants to go away; perhaps it wants to be a prose novella, for adults! or perhaps—who knows), and I still have a number of other ideas in that universe.
I hope to get back to regular posts, though Sunday may no longer be the day of choice—I haven’t decided.
Of Elsewhere 