I love to write. I have said it before, so I will spare you the details. If I explain how I feel about writing one more time, people may accuse me of being some kind of automated message on a customer service phone line. You know the ones where you are on hold for 60+ minutes. (Feel free to check out any of my other blog posts on writing in case you have been spared and this is new information.) I don’t like to limit myself to a single form of writing. I like writing editorials, journaling, writing memoirs, personal essays, fiction (both novels and short stories), and even screenwriting and television writing (I do consider them to be different because of the serial elements involved with television writing). You’ll notice I didn’t list poetry. I do write poetry, but I don’t like to.
For the past three years, whenever I write poetry it is because of one of the following reasons.
Today was ‘I want to bang my head against my desk’ (any hard surface will do), gorge on chocolate, flip the bird to the world and otherwise retire. It was THAT kind of day. After fourteen months of aguishly working away at my manuscript, someone who saw a small fraction of it gave me pause. She told me it was not where I thought it was and I was not ready to make any cuts. It was funny, since cutting (aside from missing elements and polishing, etc.) has been one of the things I have focused most on. It needs to be 200,000 words shorter than what it originally was – of course I am focused on cutting!
