Monday, January 06, 2014

Into the Second Phase

Life has slowed down a bit here. Actually, it's more like a standstill. There's the huge dump of snow that we got yesterday, but there's also a lack of work. I actually haven't had a single job 2014, though not for lack of trying. That's what I get for raising my standards. If I don't work for chump change, I apparently don't get to work.



For now, I'm still smiling. But by the end of the week, I may be in pre-launch for panic mode. Even though I'm snowed in, I'm probably staying afloat emotionally simply because I have big dreams. The dreams themselves won't get me anywhere, but if I find the right next step to take, the world's mine. Right??

But I'm not down and out completely yet. I still have my current writing project. I tried to drum up some mystery around it with last week's Instagram post, but I'm ready to reveal what it all means. These seemingly random numbers correspond to haiku. Lots of haiku. In fact, last's year's goal was to write one haiku each day for the year. I managed to write about 345 before my time was up. Out of all those, I narrowed it down to 100 to put into a manuscript.



These 100 (I deleted one so it may only be 99 now) are going to be published as a collection. I plan to self publish through Kindle Direct Publishing because I have never heard of a single publisher that buys haiku-only manuscripts. But if you exist, come talk to me. ;-) KDP also gives me a lot of publishing flexibility without any cost. Soon, it will be available through Amazon as an ebook. And remember, 'soon' is a relative term.

At this point, all of the poems are edited. I just need to complete the formatting, draw (or have someone else draw) a few of them to break up the monotony and then figure out what I want to do with the cover art. I'm a little nervous because I've tried to publish a poetry collection before, and cover art/artwork is where I got stuck last time. We'll see what I can do.

2 comments:

K R Smith said...

The haiku project sounds great! And it will give you something to show others when discussing future books or submissions.

If you would like, I would be willing to do a few sketches for consideration in your book (free of charge, of course!) I do have one old sketch on my blog ( http://www.theworldofkrsmith.com/2013/03/old-tree-sketch.html ) that you can check. If you might be interested, pass a long the ideas you have with the style, size, and format requirements, and I'll see if I have anything or can do something that might work. If it turns out that you don't think they're right for the book, there will be no hard feelings! I can always stick them on my blog.

In any event, good luck with the book. I'll be more than happy to provide a blog post and tweets to publicize it.

Terri said...

Sounds good! I'm definitely interested. I'll get organized and send along the ideas/style/size etc. in the next day or two.