The date when I first started this project has slipped my mind, but to be safe I'll tell you that it was more than a year ago. I was deep into my love/hate relationship with what everyone likes to call the Instagram Poets--those who got their start posting short pieces on Instagram, then suddenly received book deals or had their independently published collections republished through a more traditional publisher (mostly Andrews-McMeel). While some of it really is amazing, I was also appalled by some of the work that was getting attention because it was made up of nothing more than vapid observations and platitudes. So of course I said to myself, "I can do better than that."
That's when the idea for Instructions for the Lost and Found was born. I was going to be a non-traditional collection with a clear theme. It wasn't going to have separate poems with pretty little titles. It was going to be a single entity, though it would read just as well as separate pieces, if someone chose to see it that way. I started with great energy, but a third of the way through, I kept reading the pieces I had finished. I read them over and over again. Much of it just didn't seem genuine. It didn't seem like a piece that would spark that reaction from others. Then again, I didn't know exactly what my type of audience was. As much as I was being influenced by Instagram poets, I wasn't writing it for that platform. My pieces were simply too long to be confined to a small image.
As usual, I didn't know where to go next. So I abandoned it with as much flourish as I started it. That didn't mean I totally gave up. I reformatted a single piece from the original format I had intended and sent it out as an individual poem. A few rejections later and I decided that sending it out might not read well--not because I didn't have confidence in my work, but because I refused to come up with a title that was any better than "Instructions for the Lost and Found #2." If you were an editor, wouldn't your first question be: "Where's #1?" Mine would be.
Long story short--this is back on the table. I'm ready to get down and finish the rest of the project. I know sparking the flame again might not be as easy, but I have to try. Even if the next part looks different from the first part, I'll find away to make these differences in perspective and time work together. At least I won't be bored the rest of the year.
