Corona Virus Week Two - Facing Isolation

As so many of us are stuck at home in these crazy times, I've become part of The Stay-at-Home Online Literary Festival. It runs from 27 March to 11 April and will have readings, book launches, discussions, all those things we're missing with social distancing in the literary world. Some of the writers included are Maggie O'Farrell, Louise Welch, the writers of Butcher's Dog, Molly Brown and Tania Hershman.

I'm offering two poets a chance to receive feedback on up to ten poems or to discuss their next moves. If you're interested feel free to contact me via my website www.grimalkinpress.co.uk or via my Twitter handle @grimalkingerry. 

On a personal writing side, E. Christine Murray has included 5 of my poems on Poethead her collection of women poets from Ireland and abroad and there is a link to this blog in her Index of Women Poets. I've mentioned Poethead on here before, I catch up with it regularly to get a taste of what's going on in women's poetry. It's a heady mix of linguistic acrobatics and seamstresses of imagery and styles, every click something new and undiscovered. I usually end up in a rabbit hole of following links to other blogs or publishers sites or looking for more of the writers' work if I find one that really hits home. It's really worth spending some time wandering through.

On a smaller personal scale, everything that's going right now on seems so momentous, but I haven't been able to write about it. I edit unfinished poems, but I can't write more than a few notes about the self-isolation. I have one poem I started just as this began to take hold where the virus is beginning to work its way into. It was supposed to be just about the drama of beginnings and endings at a hospital, but I can't help to see the impact of the virus in the stanza. In everything, I read, watch, think about the virus seems to overwrite itself. 

I started scribbling the previous paragraph last night, far too deep into the wee hours and followed up by rewriting another half-finished poem so that it looked at home isolation. So I guess it will find a way to write itself. I can't approach it head on. I'm uncertain of where to start, worrying whether my view is worth speaking. I feel so insignificant, locked away, protected by the privilege of being able to wash my hands, stay off work, protect my family. Our lives feel on the verge of a huge change and I'm just holding my breath, waiting to see what will happen, how we will be affected, what will remain.

We are all uncertain and waiting. Be safe.

Finding Balance

One word that kept coming up in my recent mentoring discussion with Angela Carr was 'balance' and it's a word I use a lot in my creative writing teaching as well. We as writers struggle to achieve balance in so many different ways.

A poem or story hangs on many fine threads; imagery, background information, action, language, emotion, and the author attempts to keep them all balanced between what the reader needs to understand the piece and what the author themselves desires of their work. If the language is too difficult to follow or the emotion not well-presented or if the writers tells too much, breaking the threads, the connection to the reader can be lost. 

A balance between what is presented on the page and what the reader sculpts from the words in their own mind. A balance between what the author wants the reader to see and what they can lay out with words. All these things carry the weight of the writing and relying too heavily on one or not giving enough attention to another can throw off the poem or story. 

Once I get past the initial rush to lay out images or the plot, I love the fine tuning, the balancing of all the finer points of writing, playing with the language, weighting words by their placement, drawing out imagery. I try to keep the reader in my mind, what they need, how much I want to lead them and how much I want them to run off on their own with my words. But also giving precedence to what I want the poem to do and say. It's a delicate act of balance above the poem while stepping within it. 

Sometimes it works and sometimes I focus too much on what I want, the 'thing' I'm trying to make the poem do that I force it into shape and it shows in its reluctance. This is when I need mentors, writing group companions and other readers to step up and tell me something isn't working. I find it so helpful to have these dialogues because I am mired deeper within my own writing than another reader and often I cannot see where the problem is, even though I may have a sense of their being one.

So even though criticism can be hard to take, it ultimately can help you achieve that balance your writing needs. But it's never easy. 

In other news, three online magazines have featured my work recently The Stockholm Review of Literature which I just stumbled upon, ink, sweat and tears and The Honest Ulsterman. The latter two I've been trying to get into for a while, so was overjoyed when they found something they liked. I'm still wandering through the issues and there is a wide variety of authors and styles to choose from, so I hope you find something you enjoy. Thanks to the hard-working editors and their staff for offering such great opportunities to get writers' work out into the world and for accepting my poems. 

Just a reminder that GloPoWriMo - Global (or National if you're in the US) Poetry Writing Month starts April First and runs the entire month. One of the challenges is to write a poem a day which until this autumn I never thought I could (see links for my thoughts on this two years ago) so I'm going to step up to the challenge, but because I'm an idiot I've signed up for two online writing courses in April - one with Angela Carr and one with Wendy Pratt, both of whom I've mentioned here before as I've done several courses with them. 

Both courses have limited places and are filling up. There is no pressure with either tutor to write a poem a day or to share them on their private Facebook pages (visible only to the writers on the course and the tutor) but they are guaranteed to have a good positive atmosphere and the daily writing prompts are a good way of getting your writing brain working. They both have a small fee, check out the links. 

I have no preconceptions that I'll be writing two poems a day, but I figured between the two daily prompts I should come up with at least one good first draft daily. And anything I don't manage during the month, I can use to keep myself writing afterwards. I hope you think about joining one of the courses or get involved with other GloPoWriMo events, check out the website listed above for activities, prompts and local events. 

Grounding

I've just had a discussion with Angela Carr in a mentoring session about grounding the reader in poems. She suggested and has anecdotal evidence of other poems/editors saying the same that the first stanza should ground the reader in the poem. By grounding I mean a good understanding of the who, what, where, when sort of details that the poem is hung on.

This idea caught my attention as one repeated comment I've had from other poets reading my work, until recently, was that I shouldn't introduce my poems so much in the first lines or stanza. That I should go for impact to grab the reader's attention and then ground them once they have an interest in the poem. They always seem to want to move the information further down or remove it totally because it was too 'telling'.

The same is said about novel openings, that the first lines and sections should grab your attention and then you can build up information from there. But with fiction you have much more space to develop these things.

I'm torn on this subject and don't have a clear answer for what is best to do. I did agree with my previous critics that many of my earlier poems did start off with a stanza that set up the location and feel of them poem and it left them feeling a bit staid and I have liked the pieces I've written recently that have more of a hook to pull the reader in. 

I'm worried a little that each of my Finnish poems would have to have the word Finland shoe-horned into the first stanza in order to ground the reader. I do rely sometimes on the idea that my Finnish collection is mostly set in Finland with me and my family as the 'protagonists' and similarly for my Scottish collection and that will be obvious when they are actually published collections, but in the individual poems this will not always be clear at the beginning if published in a magazine without background detail.

So I can see what she means. You don't want the reader to walk away with too many questions after your first stanza but I also don't want to have everything explained, sometimes it's nice for the reader to take the words and fit themselves into them, using their own experiences.

How much background info does the reader need? If I reference a myth connected to a creature, do I need to explain it to them or can I just use the imagery from it and hope if they're interested they'll look it up themselves, as long as my connections to the images and the myth work within the poem on their own. 

Yeats never mentioned Zeus in 'Leda and the Swan' and I remember a teacher having to explain the myth to the class, though I knew it. Does the power of the poem still hold if you don't know the story? I don't want to spoon-feed my reader info, but in some poems there are certain bits of info that would help the reader to understand better, so I do have to includ that. Do I have to explain every Finnish word or cultural reference, include a glossery in my book or can I leave some to context?

I need to go back and look at poets and poems I like to see how much info do they actually give when opening the poem and whether the details I want the reader to know to understand the poem come through clearly. 

It was a thought-provoking conversation and it once again highlights the benefits of having other readers critque your work, especially those with experience in the genre. 

Submitting a Poetry Manuscript

This follows on to my previous post on Bringing Together a Poetry Collection.

It's been 10 years since my first collection was published and my mind is a bit rusty about how it all happened. I don't remember how long it took or how many publishers I submitted to. I have notes of submitting chapbooks and samples for what is now my Scottish book in 2003, but I don't have any reference of submitting my first collection until 2005. I do remember I ended up having two publishers interested. One finally admitted he couldn't commit to it and gave it up while the other eventually published it in 2008.

Now that I'm prepping a new collection to submit, I thought it would be a good time to go over some suggestions for submitting a larger work to publishers. This is for poetry, the rules and guidelines for novels are very different in some ways. And I am aware that things might have changed in publishing in the last 10 years, so always check the publishers' guidelines and follow them closely. 

First of all, have some sort of publication record. As I've mentioned before poetry publishers want to see that these poems have appeared in magazines and journals, that other editors have liked them, that you are a writer of some merit. I've had poems from my collection published in 24 different venues. Hopefully that's a good indication of my publishablity. 

Make sure you have a completed collection. See my previous post for hints about how to do this.  Written, edited, formated, proof-read, the whole shebang. I've been waiting months to finish a final poem for my collection. As much as I would have liked to start submitting my book before it was done, I know that it's bad form to send an unfinished collection to editors and then try and shoe-horn the last poem in or make large changes to it after they've accepted or even worse, while they're considering it. 

When I worked in publishing you'd be amazed at the amount of times poets would send a reworked collection in for us to replace the one we were currently considering. I know the waiting times can be long and it's tempting to look over the collection again, but it will really annoy an editor if you try and make changes while they are still reading your work. I occasionally change a line or word here or there, but they'll sit until the collection is rejected or accepted. Rejected I can submit the new version to the next publisher. Accepted, I'm sure there'll be time for fine-tuning.

Make sure it's a good as possible before you even consider sending it to a publisher. If you can get a trusted writer or editor to proof-read before submitting, even better. You want it as ready as possible, no typos. Some editors like to edit the collection themselves, but others won't do more than proof-read, so make sure it's exactly how you want it. No one will appreciate delays while you change the order, add new poems or do major editing. Set up a table of contents. Make sure the poems are nicely set out, one per page in a good-sized, readable font. Usually single-spaced, 12pt in Arial or Times New Roman.

Do your research. Check out the publishers' websites, buy or borrow copies of the books they've published. Do they publish full collections or just chapbooks? Do they accept unsoliticted material? Do they publish your genre? Do you like the poets they publish and the look of their books? How much help will you get with marketing and sales? And in my case, do they publish work from non-resident writers? The more time you spend weeding out publishers you don't match with, the better chance you have of finding the ones you do. It will save you unnecessary rejections and possibly money in the future.  

Write out a synopsis and/or an artist statement to give the editor an idea of what your collection is about and your own writing history. What makes your collection special and saleable? Specify any themes or over-arching imagry you want them to be aware of. Sell yourself and your writing. Mention any publications, awards, mentoring or training you've had. Treat this as a professional job application. For a poetry collection I would keep it brief. With novel synopses you need to explain the plot, but with poetry collection you should be able to sum up the theme of the collection in a paragraph. Your biographical note or artist statement should be about the same length. Think about the blurbs on the back of books, you want to grab the reader with the first line and get them intruiged enough to want to open the book. A synopsis should do the same thing.

I would include these in your query letter for poetry collections. Keep it to one page to introduce your book and yourself. 

Pick out a selection of sample poems from the collection. A lot of publishers just want a query letter with 6-12 poems to give them a taste of what the collection is about without having to wade through 60+ poems. Sometimes all you have is a cover letter and 6 poems to convince an editor your collection is worth getting a serious look. So pick your best and most representative poems. If there are themes or series within your collection that are important, make sure they are represented if possible. Each publisher has their own requirements for how many poems and what they want synopsis-wise. Follow the guidelines. Address the editor specifically.

Check and see if they want hard copies or will take email queries. Check if they'll accept simultaneous submissions. Most poetry publishers will as they know their reading times can be long and the chance of acceptance low, so are happy if you want to sent to multiple publishers. Inform them immediately if you're work is accepted elsewhere.

Double check and proof-read everything. Make sure you have copies of everything before you submit. If you're posting snail mail, make up a SAE (self-addressed, stamped envelope) so they can post you a response or specify if you want to hear back via email and they can recycle your copies. Keep track of where you sent things and when. 

Don't be in a rush. I sent my submission to my eventual publisher in 2005 and it was over a year before they accepted and then another two before we were ready to publish. Keep writing in the meantime. Keep submitting the poems to magazines.

Don't get frustrated. It was a slow process to write the collection, to edit it and prepare it, it will probably be a slow process to find a publisher. Take any feedback you receive with good grace and consider it well. Rejection doesn't mean the collection is bad, it just wasn't right for that publisher. Do not write to the editor and question them or rant at them. Accept your rejection with good grace. Have a private strop, a cry, a drink - whatever you need and move on to the next opportunity. 

Good luck if you've gotten this far in your poetry career. I will try to keep the blog updated of any news I have on my own collection. 

Creative Writing Degrees - Are They Worth It?

When I was a lass in the United States, looking for a University to call my own, there were no such things as creative writing degrees or MFAs and such. 

Well, there were, but I didn't know about them, didn't know I would be interested in that sort of thing in the future. They were definitely there: the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop has been around since 1936 and it's just down the road from where I grew up and the University of Montana near where I went to University is even older. I had never heard of them or any creative writing degrees.

I wanted to be a writer but had been thinking along more practical lines. I signed up for a Wildlife Biology major with an English minor. I wanted to write for National Geographic, be the next Farley Mowat. OK, maybe not exactly practical. After a year and a half of this, I realised for various reasons that Wildlife Biology was not the field for me and switched to an English major. The University I attended didn't have a creative writing degree programme, but you could focus your degree electives on creative writing (or pre-law or education). So I doubled my focus on literature and creative writing. I attended every workshop and lecture I could fit in, every reading held in the town. I joined a writing group through the University. I loved it, but by the time I heard about creative writing degrees, I was looking more to leaving the country rather than continuing my education. I signed up to a literature M.Phil in Scotland and the rest is history.

To be honest, looking back on my writing then I think I would have struggled to get a place on a MFA. My writing wasn't really that good and the programmes available out there were few and elite. Or so they seemed. 

So I slogged away on my own, writing away every free moment I had. I had no real goal in mind, I just needed to write. I craved it, and used it to remember and celebrate the good times as well as sift through difficult situations. 

I was lucky enough to work in publishing early on where I got a first-hand look at rejection and publication from the other side. This gave me the confidence to start trying to get my poems published.

Around the late 90s, I realised how popular creative writing courses were and how they could benefit writers. I couldn't really afford a course, I needed to work, editing, waitressing, freelancing with teaching and other things. I didn't have a lot of free time. I slowly started getting my work published, took the occasional evening course, joined lots of writers' groups and workshops over the years and eventually began to teach them. 

All the time, I was glancing at the creative writing degrees popping up in Scotland, first St Andrews, I think, and then Glasgow and Edinburgh. I saw the success of writers connected with these programmes and wondered if it would be worth my while to join one. 

Doing a creative writing degree, at any level including a PhD, has its major benefits. First of all, you suddenly have a tribe. No more the lonely writer in the garret. Well, yes, writing is still a solitary activity, but you have workshops to share your work, events to attend, like-minded people to talk to and most importantly teachers and mentors to guide your writing. You can get a bit of this from writers' groups and working hard to be in the literary scene, but walking into an already established programme saves a lot of hard work. 

The tribe follows you once you've completed the course. There are literary magazines that focus on publishing students and alumni of certain writing programmes and 'who you know' is as important in the publishing world as it is in any other field. Friends and colleagues promote and recommend each other, of course they do. 

You also get time to focus on your writing, to really break it down to learn the underpinnings of poetry and fiction and to discover and develop your own themes and interests. You write analytical essays on your own work as well as literary examinations of other writers. This time and focus can be so beneficial to improvement, but I'm sure it can also lead to burnout. I know after spending 3 years dissecting writers I loved to learn their techniques in my literature degrees, I sometimes grew out of love with them. It must be more difficult if it's yourself and your own work. 

In a degree course, you get used to criticism and rejection as well. Not every piece will be perfect and you'll learn to recognise this and hopefully how to avoid or repair the problems probably faster than a self-taught writer. Good teachers will give a balance of support, encouragement and criticism. 

There are negatives, of course. Degrees can be expensive and in no way guarantee success. It's not just writing your own poems or stories, you have to read tons of other people's work, and do proper essays and thesis just like regular university degrees. That's one thing that's put me off. I don't want to go back to university after having done two degrees already. I want to focus just on my own writing. And just because you walk away with a MFA or whatever in creative writing it doesn't mean your writing is good or sellable. 

And just because the tutors and lecturers and visiting writers are hopefully established and experienced it doesn't mean they will give you the best feedback for your writing. They are human and have their own interests and styles which may not mesh well with yours or with teaching in general. I've attended workshops from 'names' that were a waste of time because the visiting writer was drunk or had something else going on which were not helpful to giving feedback to novice writers. I've been shouted at, and had poems torn apart in public with no consideration for my inexperience. I've also had poems praised to a false level which also didn't help me in the future as I thought I was good when I really needed more critical guidance. 

The explosion of creative writing degrees over the past 30 years also means your tribe becomes your competition. Universities continually churn out new 'writers', but publishing houses are publishing less, rarely taking on new names. With the internet, e-books and on-demand publishing anyone can publish their own books, so chances are you will be lost in the crowd if you self-promote. Jobs for writers like writer-in-residence or creative writing teaching posts are rare and highly competitive and with the economic downturn community groups and arts funding agencies are cutting back on supporting them. 

I know a few writers who have done very well after finishing their writing degrees, but I also know that they were good before they started the course. I'm sure the course improved their skills and saleability but was it necessary to help them along? I'm also sure that lots of graduates from these degrees drop off the map. You'll find examples on both sides of the aisle, those who have succeeded after creative writing degrees, those who have done so off their own backs and those who have failed whatever their background. Would I be doing better in my own career if I attended a creative writing programme? No one can really say. 

It really is a personal choice. Creative writing degrees can translate into other careers, the skills of improving your writing, and being able to read, analyse, comprehend and critique written text are essential in many careers. So it's not necessarily a waste to attend one, but it's also not always the most beneficial move. It might be the boost your writing needs, but they are a huge commitment and not for the faint-hearted. 

I'd love to hear from those who have a creative writing degree. Did it help or hinder you? Would you recommend it?

Silence - After Mentoring

My mentoring session has ended and I have returned to regular writing life, on my own. I had gotten used to having someone to talk to about writing, to getting feedback on my poems and suggestions about where to submit and what opportunities to take advantage of. 

I've joined an online poetry group but it has faded into silence as well. People have busy lives and things will get busier as summer nears, but it's frustrating to comment on other submitted poems but to have yours receive views but no comments. 

I'm not writing as much as before. I've got two poems on a slow boil and submitted some poems to a few magazines this last week, but often I just open my writing folder and just tinker with a line or two and then go do something else.

It doesn't help that the weather is beautiful so I'm trying to get some work in the garden and my allotment, that I have fallen behind on my housework while the mentoring was going on, so need to give that a bit of attention. I also need to keep some form of social life ticking over before everyone leaves Helsinki for holidays. It's hard to fit writing into all of that and this is the last week of school here, so soon I will have to fit it in between entertaining the kids and our own holidays. 

Overall the mentoring was very helpful, the criticism on my poems was exactly what I needed to gain new insight on how my writing had progressed since coming to Finland. I have been able to edit my older poems and take a stronger focus on new ones. 

I was a bit disappointed at the end with the feedback on my collection overall. The point of the extended mentoring for me was to examine my proposed poetry collection. I asked when I first began submitting sections that as well as feedback on the individual poems I wanted suggestions on how it worked as a group and on its flow. When I asked these questions again in our last discussion session she seemed surprised by my questions. 

I left our conversation feeling less sure of my collection and uncertain how to approach any editing. Though this might just be my response to the lack of support now. I look at the collection and don't know what to do with it, whether to reorder it, leave it as is and trying submitting it to publishers anyway. If I reorder it into chapters or sections I'm not sure if it's too themey and exactly how to group them. It is vaguely grouped with similar poems together, but sometimes I dip in and out of a theme as it felt too chunky to have them all together. I don't want to waste my chance with publishers by sending out a less than 'as good as I can get it' collection. I don't know which way to jump. 

It might be as with my novels when I finish them that I have to set them aside and let them mature in my brain before I can really consider a final edit and submitting them. I hope so. Besides making rough notes on possible sections I've not looked at the book as a whole since my session finished, just tinkered with some final edits. It might be best to leave it until after the summer and look at it with refreshed eyes. But I've been waiting so long to finish it and send it out, I feel I shouldn't waste more time. 

So I'm sitting in my kitchen working, sending them out into the void of submissions, writing to a silent audience, waiting for responses. 

It might be a good time to switch back to fiction for a bit. 

Taking the Hits - Criticism

My mentoring session with WoMentoring started this week and though I knew what to expect it was always going to be an emotional journey.

The basic idea of mentoring is you work with a more established writer for a short period; getting advice on how to move your writing career forward, receiving feedback on your work and assistance in whatever areas you are struggling with. It is usually very individualised to your needs.

A big part of my requirements for my mentor was critical feedback on my writing. I have been in Finland for 7 years now and I've fallen away from the old writing groups, courses, literary circles I used to rely on to gauge responses to my writing. I still submit pieces to publishers so their yes or no responses are a rough guide, but not helpful in any real sense. 

I've submitted my work to group criticism almost from the beginning of my career. While at Uni pursuing my English degree, I joined a writing group and attended any workshops that visiting writers were offering. In Scotland, I took advantage of similar experiences: the great Scottish poet Tom Leonard ripped my poems apart back in 1992 and I still look back on it with a weird sense of pride. 

I know what to expect and how to handle it, but like I said, I'm out of practice so that first reading of my mentor's comments on my poems felt like a kick to the stomach. I did send an email afterwards explaining some missed references, but then I just left the poems alone. On paper at least, I was rolling them around in my head constantly. I was gutted, I always wish for gushing praises, but I know that's not what I really want or need. I need someone to look critically at my work and point out the weak lines, the problematic areas, the chaotic jumble of ideas in need of a focus. 

I did a free writing in a cafe while waiting for my son that evening and I did rant a bit about how she couldn't see this or understand that, but after an hour my conclusion was she couldn't see my references or understand my images because they weren’t clear enough. My writing was at fault. 

Criticism is personal, it is the critic's opinion and they are flawed and human, just like us. The critic brings their own style, interests and experiences into a poem and this colours how they respond to it and how they criticise it. And even a writer as good as Tom Leonard may have a bad opinion of a poem that does work for other people. Just because they suggest a change, it doesn't mean you have to follow those recommendations to the letter. Though Tom was right on the money with my work, I was a young, naive writer who had received nothing but praise from my University lecturers over the years and I needed to see where my work was failing. It was a brilliant wake up call, if very scary. 

Over the years I have learned to take in criticism and use it to re-examine my poems. I don't automatically change everything they point out, don't rip away all the lines they don't like or rewrite as they see fit. If I did, I wouldn't have much of the poem that was mine and I wouldn't be following my own writing instinct.

So yesterday, I re-examined my mentor's comments and went back to the poems. There were lines I agreed were forced, so they went, to some extent. Sometimes I kept part of a line as it had something needed saying, just in a different way. There were lines that were just filler, so they went. 

Two of the three poems she critiqued went back to bare bones and I'm still trying to figure out which way to go with them. I need to recapture the original spark that caused me to write them which can be difficult years after the fact. The other poem I kept most of what she didn't like because there was a major reference that wasn't clear, so I'm rebuilding, focusing on that metaphor.

Finding someone who provides good criticism of your work is hard. I tend to avoid family and good friends. They usually don't have the knowledge to respond to poetry in a helpful manner, don't want to hurt my feelings, think that praise is helpful. I go with writers whose work I admire and whose opinions I trust, writers I know who won't let their egos or professional jealousy colour their view. Writers I've worked with for years.

Praise is good when it’s deserved and specific, so you can see what is working. General praise of the ‘it’s nice, I like it’ variety doesn’t help you improve. Vague critical comments are equally unhelpful. You need to know what lines aren’t beautiful, which aren’t getting their point across, aren’t carrying their weight. Fix-its needed to be given sparingly, don’t tell a writer how to fix their poem. Point out what isn’t working for you and let them find a solution, in their voice and style, if they feel it's needed.

When I had my first collection accepted I paid a poet I knew well to review it. Her comments and criticisms pushed me in the right direction to make the collection the best I could. Positive critical feedback helps you grow as a poet, negative feedback can stunt your growth.

Writing groups are not always the best atmosphere for improvement. I have been to some where all they wanted was praise. Any comment that was critical was automatically shouted down with more praise. No one walked out wanting to improve their work. I’ve been to others where the comments were so negative and full of ‘fix-it my way’ type feedback that everyone left hating their work, they could only see the negatives. Finding a group that offers a good balance is difficult and I’ve been very lucky to work with facilitators who know how to create a good group atmosphere and with fellow writers who know how to provide helpful feedback.  

Accepting criticism of your work and using it to re-evaluate your writing is a necessary and important step to moving into the more public realm of writing and being published. Learning to deal with the fear and exposure can help strengthen your voice, so it's worth building up that slightly toughened skin. But don't be afraid to stick up for your writing, sometimes you are the expert of your own work. 

Good luck 

A New Year - 2017

A bit of good news to start the year: I've been accepted by a poetry mentor as part of the WoMentoring Project. We don't start until March, but she'll read some of my work and give me feedback, help me with rewrites and generally talk to me about writing which is something I really crave. We have a theme in common in our writing it seems: infertility and miscarriage, though her struggle has been much longer and more difficult. I'm looking forward to working with her. 

I've been busy sending my work our to magazines and publishers again, both poetry and fiction. I'm also working on rewriting the first draft of my novel. I didn't do anything connected with writing over the Christmas holidays, so the kids going back to school has been a release to start working on my interests again. Still having to fit it around hospital visits and lessons, but I have found ways to make it possible. I'm not sure if I'll do much Finnish this term as the class is at an awkward time. Hopefully that will give me more time to write. 

In the next couple of months before I start work with the mentor I need to reexamine my proposed poetry collections. I have enough poems for probably 2 collections but I don't know how to split them. I originally started with a Scottish/Finnish collection and a more 'poet looks at art' type collection, but I realised that I've been in Finland so long that the pre-Finland poems need to be separate fron the Finland poems. And the 'art' collection wasn't strong enough. So now I have a Scottish collection that's not 100% complete but could be if I give up trying to finish a unfinished series of poems for it, a half-written Finnish collection and some spare poems that don't fit in either. I'm not sure if this is the best solution so want to revisit what I've done to decide. 

A new year to push on with, to continue writing and working on my own interests as much as possible. 2016 wasn't bad, it was a start of me after children, but I'm liking how 2017 is presenting itself. 

Roll on.