Lost and Found Again

I talk a lot about getting excited about new projects. I also talk a lot about those projects getting shelved for one reason or another. While I am on track to start (and finish!) NaNoWrimo 2020, I've also be evaluating a few of those projects that I have left behind. One in particular is speaking to me again. 

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. 

The Daunting Blank Page

I don't know how many times I will say this, but I feel like it's time to say it again: nonfiction is not my favorite. I love to read it, sure, but writing it is a whole other game. I have some ideas, now I just need to put in a lot of effort into achieving the standard I need to reach. That's not easy. I'm trying to look towards inspiring articles and reading articles that in my mind are absolutely perfect, but I think that only makes me see the path as a lot longer than it should be.

Still, I carry on. I'm working on two nonfiction articles at the moment, one of which will partially be up soon because I'm going to try out Medium's series feature, which will allow me to add to an article, sort of like threads on Twitter. I think. I'll have to try out the feature to see what I'm really getting into.

Since I'm working so hard to produce nonfiction, of course my mind is making great strides in the fiction category. While welcome, it's almost to the point where it is getting in the way. Don't worry--all that means is the next project coming out will arrive that much faster.

When in Doubt, Make a List

The project that's going to be my main focus for March is still unknown. I didn't know how to choose from so many things that are lingering on my desktop, so I decided that making a list would help. I put restrictions on myself--I could only list projects that I could think of off of the top of my head. If I can't remember it, it couldn't be that important, right?

Here's the list:

Seems like I have a pretty good memory, because there are more than 20 projects, ranging from finished but needed to be submitted to half of an outline. I still don't know what to choose, because nothing is standing out, nothing seems clearly commercial, so I won't be choosing based on the tens of dollars of royalties I may generate.

What I'm going to do is give this list a good hard look over the weekend and see which one will come out on top.