A Long Shot

Sometimes, I use an old manual typewriter

Unfortunately, for me, I never asked myself what I intended to do with these hundreds of poems I’ve written in my life – and am now overwhelmed in the editing of some. Until I started this blog, in 2013, I just assumed I’d keep my poems printed out in a notebook ‘to be read by others after I’m dead’. That assumption is not how things have turned out.

First of all, I’ve learned that I can use my guts AND my blog to help me determine poems I might want to work on further. And I’ve learned that, on a creative level, I trust those reading my blog…some stuff is ok – on a personal level, but I want to write about beyond what is personal. Something personal and universal.

And secondly, I’ve learned about different ways writers are publishing these days. Before 2013, e-Books seemed futuristic and foreign to me. Self-publishing was something poets did in ‘vanity publications’ – same thing but more complicated because one still had to find such publishing places and send your work off and then pay them to publish it…so that’s pretty eye-opening and mind-altering to me because…

I actually want to be a short story writer. I actually want to get a book of short stories together and have it published in paper copy. I don’t want to self-publish. And that’s my present dilemma.

I’m in the process of editing 50 of the hundreds of poems I’ve written. Maybe I’ll do something with those poems. They are still so far from finished. There are editing issues – using the same word more that once, in poems as short as I write, is really annoying to me, and other larger issues to help my poetry flow from personal to universal.

I know I’m a poet. I’m also a wife and a daughter and a sister and an aunt and a friend.

So I’m gonna write a short story, dammit, and send it into some magazine. Maybe I’ll publish bits of it here, on my blog, to get a feel.

So there!

Ellespeth  ♥

photo via pixabay