So I've been working on two manuscripts these days. I have been trying my best to proof and tighten my book of landscape meditation before things get serious early next year. I have been tweaking it and questioning my grammatical choices, just like a real poet might. But I have also been trying to put together and prepare to submit another book of poetry, this one not nearly as quiet, not nearly as introspective. It's this work of the two manuscripts which is stopping me from writing new poetry on a regular basis.
I have, for all my life as a poet, been plagued with an obsession of completeness and being finished. I literally cannot move on until I have convinced my brain the job is done. That in itself is not a bad thing to have. I may never be considered one of the great poets (and believe me when I say giving up that fantasy was the hardest week I have had in 2014 so far) but that's not the only trait I have when it comes to my writing. I am also invariably led astray somewhere around the 90%. What exactly does that mean? When I get about 90% finished with a manuscript, I lose interest in it and I want to work on other things---other poems and other poem cycles.
So the position I find myself in right now is both strange and terrifying. I have over the past decade experienced some amazing success as a poet---four chapbooks, three full length books of poetry published, another accepted for publication, and another in the wings waiting to enter into the submission process. New poetry? Not so much. This is difficult for me because of several things.
1. I am a firm believer in the idea: It's not what you have written, but what you are writing. I am not writing new poems and it has been a long time since I have.
2. I am 45, and like it or not, I also acknowledge my creativity is not what it used to be. I am getting better at craft, but I am getting worse at the creative thinking which makes my poems possible.
3. The new poems I did write some time ago have been universally rejected time and again. I don't know why, but it has been another multi-year stretch without any acceptances.
4. I have apparently burned a lot of bridges in the poetry community, with my many annoying AS traits. I desperately want to belong to a community which my personality alienates more with each of my interactions.*
The only real thread of hope I have in all of this is that I have a habit of not writing for long stretches of time and only really get back into writing new poetry when I have sufficiently panicked. Well, I think it's safe to say I am panicking. All of the material in the two manuscripts I have mentioned is old, and I want to create something new. After my landscape meditation manuscript is in book form, there is no guarantee the other manuscript will ever get accepted for publication. I know that. It's part of the game, but if it takes another two or three years of doing my best to get it accepted, that is another two or three years I will be convinced I am not ready to write anything new. That bothers me.
So I am left with working with two manuscripts---neither of which holds my interest like they should, and each serving as a roadblock to new writing and creativity. Welcome to my neighborhood.
* For clarification, I misread a lot of things because of my AS, but I have as of late felt less a part of the poetry community. Whether that is because of my annoying obsessions and poor communication skills, I do not know, but my feelings are none-the-less genuine on the matter.
