Nothing like a good deadline to get me into gear, and here is the evidence to prove it:
• Submitted to three chapbook contests in October
• Submitted new work for the upcoming Kearny Street Chapbook
Now I have to get it in gear and produce more work to help round out a complete manuscript. Yeah, I know, not the smartest way to go about things but this has been the formula that has gotten me this far so I am going to keep following it for now.
Speaking of roads, I am really looking forward to going up to Copperfield Books in Santa Rosa to hear Jimmy Santiago Baca read. Baca’s work has been a major influence on my writing since (literally) day one. Not only for his consistent high level of work and productivity but just the fact that his unlikely road into poetry, for more on that I highly suggest you read his autobiography A Place to Stand, provided a great deal of early inspiration.
With that being said, I am trying to go into tomorrow’s reading with no other expectation than to hear excellent poetry which is a little higher than my baseline expectation of just good poetry, but also more realistic than having your literary idol fill some magic hole in an aspiring writer’s universe.
More soon as I will be having my moleskine out in full force tomorrow.
Palabra.
I just got my first moleskine!
Write on!