Great topic today! I feel very familiar with this territory. One aspect I’d like to add to the idea of “you don’t need to be done with one project before moving on to another” is that’s true except for when it isn’t. As a writer working a demanding “day job” in healthcare, I find there is a limit to the amount of energy, creative energy, I have to go around. I just recently submitted a final draft of a manuscript that has been accepted for publication. During the last year of “finishing” that ms, I had begun another project I felt a lot of excitement about but it wasn’t until I hit submit on that final draft that I felt something free up inside of me to being looking at those other poems more seriously. On the same day I sent in the final draft, I immediately began to organize the newer work into a sequence. In this case it just seemed like I had to get the previous project “off the work bench” of my creative mind before moving on to the next.
This is such a valuable topic. I'll be releasing a blog on my substack this week about overcoming resistance, a stealth enemy in the process of creating art. I appreciate your clarity and insight on the topic. I've come to a place where I must stop my poetry manuscript and let it exist in the world for what it is now and who I am now. I'm sure I'll be a bit more polished the next time through. Thank you for this.
"The focus has shifted too far from, “What do I think of this work?” to “What will others think of this?” You’ve stopped doing the work for yourself and are only doing it for an imaginary editor or contest judge." This was a timely reminder for me, thank you.
Good discussion here. Speaks right to the quandaries I've been in, and then some! What I haven't yet done with the mss--ask it what more, of additional poems, it needs.
I like these excerpts from both Ocean Vuong and Victoria Chang. Both so true. Now I feel like I'm cannibalizing poems from my first unfinished manuscript for the second one. A little sad but it does provide some opportunity to go back.
This was a nice post to wake up to, and a good reminder, before the weekend writing session. Thanks Radha!
I had to move on from a manuscript after I iterated it to pieces: it’s still dismantled. Then I remember a beautiful moment where, after working more nearly a year on a chapbook-length poem, I realized it was finished (there was nothing more I could do).
Great topic today! I feel very familiar with this territory. One aspect I’d like to add to the idea of “you don’t need to be done with one project before moving on to another” is that’s true except for when it isn’t. As a writer working a demanding “day job” in healthcare, I find there is a limit to the amount of energy, creative energy, I have to go around. I just recently submitted a final draft of a manuscript that has been accepted for publication. During the last year of “finishing” that ms, I had begun another project I felt a lot of excitement about but it wasn’t until I hit submit on that final draft that I felt something free up inside of me to being looking at those other poems more seriously. On the same day I sent in the final draft, I immediately began to organize the newer work into a sequence. In this case it just seemed like I had to get the previous project “off the work bench” of my creative mind before moving on to the next.
This is such a valuable topic. I'll be releasing a blog on my substack this week about overcoming resistance, a stealth enemy in the process of creating art. I appreciate your clarity and insight on the topic. I've come to a place where I must stop my poetry manuscript and let it exist in the world for what it is now and who I am now. I'm sure I'll be a bit more polished the next time through. Thank you for this.
"The focus has shifted too far from, “What do I think of this work?” to “What will others think of this?” You’ve stopped doing the work for yourself and are only doing it for an imaginary editor or contest judge." This was a timely reminder for me, thank you.
Good discussion here. Speaks right to the quandaries I've been in, and then some! What I haven't yet done with the mss--ask it what more, of additional poems, it needs.
I like these excerpts from both Ocean Vuong and Victoria Chang. Both so true. Now I feel like I'm cannibalizing poems from my first unfinished manuscript for the second one. A little sad but it does provide some opportunity to go back.
This was a nice post to wake up to, and a good reminder, before the weekend writing session. Thanks Radha!
I had to move on from a manuscript after I iterated it to pieces: it’s still dismantled. Then I remember a beautiful moment where, after working more nearly a year on a chapbook-length poem, I realized it was finished (there was nothing more I could do).
I haven't moved on from a manuscript yet. But this process makes sense. I look forward to another step on this complicated and nonlinear journey.