You Can Go Home Again
I'm back in Boston, baby! Spending time at Starbucks—my home away from home.
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The PAD Challenge is mercifully coming to a close. I now have 21 drafts, including the Misery Island long poem, which I have not posted (and probably won't). Wish I could have written 30, but I'm OK with the amount I produced. In truth, it was crazy for me to attempt a writing challenge now, but maybe a healty dose of crazy was what I needed.
Three poems I liked, in no particular order.
One poem that will never see the light of day again.
So the big question for me involves the revision process. More important, do I incorporate the new stuff into my current manuscript, or start a new one? I need to set a new timetable for this. It's easy if you're trying to incorporate one new poem into a collection, but I have at least 14, including a long poem, that would certainly give the book an arc. Either way, I'll take December to do as much revision as possible, and see what manuscript #2 looks like at the end of 2009.
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Here's a question to you, dear reader. What is your strategy for putting together a collection? I lived with the poems in Underlife for a while before theybecame a manuscript. What approach should I take with a second book? Thoughts?
Comments
Anyway with that said, I've never put a collection together, so I wouldn't know how to begin to advise you on what you should do...how about grouping them using common themes? Or poetry forms if you did a group of poetry that are structured (like sonnets in one group, free verse in another, etc.)
Good luck with it, I know you will figure it out.
O zi buna!
I'm looking over my manuscript today to see what it needs. Grouping by category may be the way to go.