More Thoughts About More Poetry

I've been doing a lot of writing! I mean, you might expect that because, well... author, books, you know. There are a lot of things that go into that, though, that are not days of just letting the words pour out. I've been happy with how much of that has been happening. 

Spring is working it's way in. That's what the non-human animals in the house tell me. Us humans are having a hard time believing it because the temperature keeps dropping back down every time we start thinking maybe we should start doing Spring Stuff soon. The Spring Stuff will take away some of my writing time, which will then turn into Summer Stuff. It's not that I'll have to stop writing for most of the year, but I will have to accept that it's going to slow down again.

In addition to the fairy tale retelling novel that I'm working on, I'm getting more comfortable with poetry. As I've said before, there's a part of me that wishes I had never walked away from it. Realizing how comfortable I am with expressing myself through poetry doesn't automatically make me comfortable with sharing it, though. Especially not when "poetry doesn't sell" is such an accepted idea. It can make me feel sometimes like I'm wasting my time with it.

My words

sound better when

I write them in these forms

and present my random thoughts as

poems.

One of the things that's really helping me with this is finding other poets on social media. Prompts, collaboration, discussion! There are plenty of hashtags for poetry on Bluesky, but the one I've been paying attention to most is the daily prompt #MPPrompt.

I've also been focusing on poetry over on Wrizzit. There's a lot of discussion about whether or not Wrizzit is "the new Substack", or a combination of that and some features from other platforms. It's Wrizzit. It's new, and a lot of what it will become is still developing. But, yeah, okay... If it helps people decide whether or not they want to try it, you can say the features make it similar to Substack in some ways, but it's focused on authors and writing. It reminds me more of when I belonged to a local writers' guild and we had meetings for sharing and discussing what we were working on, rather than a place to promote work while talking about everything else going on in our lives and the world.

If you'd like to read one of the stories from my Forest Tales for free, Letter to the Alpha Mother Priestess is up over on Wrizzit. You don't need to sign up just to read it. That's the only short story I plan on sharing over there. As I said, that's where I'm focusing on my poetry. 

Honestly, it's easy to be overwhelmed by everything lately. I feel confident that's an intentional part of the plan for the people who are doing things that overwhelm everybody. We can't just ignore it, but staying so immersed that we end up drowning in it isn't the way to go. Having places to share, rant, vent, and address things is good. So is having places where we can walk away from it for a while. And focusing on writing isn't necessarily completely walking away. Things that are going on in the world influence writing, and many authors choose to make statements about these things through their writing.

That's certainly a way that getting back into poetry is helping me. There are times when I'm just too overwhelmed to put what I'm thinking and feeling into clear sentences. Poetry doesn't require that I always do that. It also gives me room to speak in metaphors, analogies, and references to other things when I need to. Just because "poetry doesn't sell" doesn't mean it shouldn't be written.

Even so, I know I said I'm not planning on doing another poetry collection, but I also know myself well enough to know it might happen. I really don't have plans for it at this time, but I also wasn't expecting I would be writing so much of it! Little Things was my plan for getting it out of my system. I didn't know it would open doors. There may be a time when I look through everything I've been writing and decide I've got enough for another collection. 

On one hand, it's aggravating not to see sales happening. It's even more aggravating when you understand sales aren't happening because a lot of people are fighting hard just to keep paying their bills and putting food on the table. There are a lot of reasons that's frustrating, and one thing it can do is make you feel like you have to force yourself write what sells, even though you know that's not the problem.

On the other hand, there's a voice that says, "If that's not the problem, then you might as well not worry about what people want. Write what you want to write." 

What I've accepted, for now, is that trying to force myself to make decisions on writing based on what's likely to sell just wouldn't be good. I'd be forcing myself to write stories that are in genres I don't even usually read. It would be terrible for me and for potential readers. Hell, I'd probably want to give them their money back!

So I'm staying with what I'm working on, which is where my passion for writing is. And, yeah, that includes poems.