Reminding Yourself You're What You Are
Writing Wednesday
So, a lot of time, I have to remind myself that I’m a writer.
And to do that, I’ve started drafting poems each morning. They are poems that I will probably never actually look at again. I know! I know! Gasp. To leave them languishing like that all alone in a Word file. The horror.
I am cruel.
Poems are actually why I started loving writing when I was little. Poems are the things that made my life better again and again and again. They saved me in second grade when I was too afraid to speak, my last high school summer when I was overwhelmed with pain, my junior year of college when life didn’t seem worth it.
My voice was refined enough to fit in the poetry world beyond chapbooks here and there, a random acceptance. Plus, poems don’t tend to keep you in diapers and sheltered.
So, I stopped writing them for a long time and started writing for a newspaper, which didn’t pay well, but it paid better, and because I lacked that refined nature/voice, I became afraid of the things that had saved me over and over again.
I’ve decided to not do that any longer. So, now I write a poem when I wake up in the morning before I do anything else. They don’t need to be approved by poetry gatekeepers or even get likes on Instagram when I am brave enough to post them. It’s good enough that I know that they are there.
Here’s this morning’s.
I hope you find a way to embrace the things that save you. I hope you find a way to realize that you deserve those things and the embrace.
So many writers I talk to who are pre-published and even published have a hard time loving themselves enough to say, “I am a writer/novelist/author” when people ask. They don’t give themselves permission to be what they love.
I give you permission. Hopefully, that will help! It can be so hard sometimes.
You’re a writer or a human or a teacher or a runner or a dad or a mom or a survivor or a kid or a human or an artist or a stockbroker. Embrace it. Okay?
xo
Carrie
WRITING EXERCISE
This fantastic exercise is from Publisher’s Weekly, which has a million. You should check them out!
Prying Lyric
“Erasure poetry is a reconsideration of an existing text. There was something very satisfying about “reconsidering” The Ferguson Report—striking through whole sections of it, as if undoing the harm that had been done,” says Nicole Sealey in our online exclusive interview about her new book, The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, published by Knopf in August. In the interview, the poet discusses both the difficulty of “prying lyric from a lyric-less document” and how erasure provided access to the words she may not have found on her own. This week, find a seemingly lyric-less document and consider the words that lure you in. Try writing your own erasure poem, rubbing out words for your response to the text. For further inspiration, see this poem from Sealey’s new book.”
PLACE TO SUBMIT
Sunspot Literary Journal
WRITING A NEW WORLD
“Sunspot Literary Journal offers an Editor's Prize of $10 for each digital edition and an Editor's Prize of $35 for the annual print edition. Artwork selected for a digital or print cover will be paid $20. Visit SunspotLit.com to download digital editions for free.
We welcome prose from flash fiction and poetry to stories and essays, including scripts and screenplays, up to 49,000 words. Genre categories are accepted along with literary works. Poetry can be up to 1,250 lines. Translations welcome. Please note the word count in your cover letter.
Please take careful note of the submission deadlines. Although the journal is open year-round, the forms that allow submission of longer works close earlier in each open call segment. Submit early to avoid missing a deadline.
One piece per submission (except flash, poetry, or art). Use the correct form according to the length of your prose and poetry. Works longer than allowed by the form you select will be declined unread.”
WRITE. SUBMIT. SUPPORT.
And also there is this happening at the Writing Barn. The link is highlighted if you want to check it out.
