"it hurts to want everything and nothing at the same time"

Once upon a time, I started writing a cycle of daily short poems about the seasons of the Arizona desert year. This would be the project with the working title "A Desert Year" but may become The Book of Desert Leaves or The Sun Declines to Name Us. And yesterday, I returned to the day I started. A dozen-odd days are missing for various reasons, and the last six weeks are particularly dire as I started seriously burning out. But it's a first draft.

*is collapsed*

Hella work to do. Even aside from revising poems so they're actually, yanno, good (especially those last six weeks, where all too many entries are more like notes with line breaks) plus replacing the irredeemably lame ones and filling in those couple weeks of missing days, -- aside from all that, there's structural problems of balance and repetition and arrangement. Not to mention fixing the seam caused by this year's monsoons starting a couple weeks later than last year. All of which means at least another full year to revise this *censored* thing. But it's a completed draft. I can work with the raw material.

The funny thing is, I started this as an exercise in looking around me, to get me to focus outside of myself at what's in that thing we call "the world." Well, okay, also because I've been wanting to write the Sonoran Desert year for a while and finally hit on the form. And for the discipline of writing something every single day, even if it's just five lines. And the technical challenge of mastering a form. But since it ultimately is All About Me, shifting perceptions was the main reason. The result? I can't step outside without reflexively cataloging sensory impressions and casting them into cadences of five or seven syllables. Which is just as self-centered as before. It's like the inverse of why I distrust taking a camera on vacations -- you spent so much time looking for good photos, you forget to Be There. There's got to be a middle ground, here.

I also grossly underestimated how much writing effort "just" five lines a day would be, what with beating my head over the keyboard till I bled words, and with revising for days afterward, and weeks later. How long has it been since I worked on prose fiction? or even a narrative poem? *mumbles answer inaudibly*

But, it's a draft.

---L.

"it hurts to want everything and nothing at the same time"

Once upon a time, I started writing a cycle of daily short poems about the seasons of the Arizona desert year. This would be the project with the working title "A Desert Year" but may become The Book of Desert Leaves or The Sun Declines to Name Us. And yesterday, I returned to the day I started. A dozen-odd days are missing for various reasons, and the last six weeks are particularly dire as I started seriously burning out. But it's a first draft.

*is collapsed*

Hella work to do. Even aside from revising poems so they're actually, yanno, good (especially those last six weeks, where all too many entries are more like notes with line breaks) plus replacing the irredeemably lame ones and filling in those couple weeks of missing days, -- aside from all that, there's structural problems of balance and repetition and arrangement. Not to mention fixing the seam caused by this year's monsoons starting a couple weeks later than last year. All of which means at least another full year to revise this *censored* thing. But it's a completed draft. I can work with the raw material.

The funny thing is, I started this as an exercise in looking around me, to get me to focus outside of myself at what's in that thing we call "the world." Well, okay, also because I've been wanting to write the Sonoran Desert year for a while and finally hit on the form. And for the discipline of writing something every single day, even if it's just five lines. And the technical challenge of mastering a form. But since it ultimately is All About Me, shifting perceptions was the main reason. The result? I can't step outside without reflexively cataloging sensory impressions and casting them into cadences of five or seven syllables. Which is just as self-centered as before. It's like the inverse of why I distrust taking a camera on vacations -- you spent so much time looking for good photos, you forget to Be There. There's got to be a middle ground, here.

I also grossly underestimated how much writing effort "just" five lines a day would be, what with beating my head over the keyboard till I bled words, and with revising for days afterward, and weeks later. How long has it been since I worked on prose fiction? or even a narrative poem? *mumbles answer inaudibly*

But, it's a draft.

---L.