Wednesday Weigh Ins: Work and Writing Tasks

At work, I've been hard at work with assessment documents and the schedule, tasks which always seem to burn out the writer's part of my brain for the day--and every other part of my brain. I can scarcely read a book after looking/writing/revising assessment documents and/or the schedule. Fortunately, I've had some productive days, and now it's time to think about what needs to be done to head towards chapbook publication.

When I first got the news about the publication, I pulled up the manuscript and looked at the Table of Contents. I have a lot of work to do in terms of letting journals know that individual poems I've submitted to them will soon be appearing in a chapbook. Of course, if they'd like to go ahead and make a decision, I could include them in the Acknowledgements section if they accept my poem(s).

The last time I had a chapbook accepted, in October of 2003, I was not as swamped at work. I had already done the bulk of my Autumn submitting, which means I had already sent out dozens of poetry packets. I dutifully wrote to everyone, but no one wrote back to say, "Hey, great, we'll go ahead and accept these, even though they will be part of a chapbook."

Interestingly, I had already gotten acceptances for a few of the poems, so I wrote to those journals. I know that some journals take a long time between acceptance and the appearance of the journal. I knew that there was a very real possibility that the chapbook would appear before the journal.

Happily, none of the journals seemed to mind. I gave the journal publication credit in the chapbook, and the sky didn't fall down on our heads if the chapbook beat the journal to publication.

This Autumn, I haven't done nearly as much submitting as I had in October 2003, but I've done some. I need to sort through my submissions notebook. I'll try to do that in the next few days. And I'll also think about biographies. I need a short bio and a longer bio.

Finishing Line Press also wants me to get some blurbs for the book, so I'll work on that too. I don't have a timeline from the press yet, which makes me hesitant to reach out. Yet I know that people need time to write a blurb, so I don't want to wait. Later, I'll write one unified post on this blurb-getting process.

I've found the countdown to publication posts of other writers to be immensely interesting and helpful, so I want to do that too. I'll label these posts (countdown to publication) and that way people can seek them out or avoid them, as they wish.

But for now, it's time to think about the rest of my Wednesday. I need to get to Spin class early. I'm participating in a countdown to Christmas program--each of us is trying to lose 10 pounds by Christmas. Today is the first day--the weigh in and the measuring of bicep, thigh, and waist. I've already adopted a motto: "No cookies until Christmas!" I usually gain weight in the pre-Christmas period, and I'd like to avoid that this year. Hopefully, this weekly weigh in will help keep me a bit more on track.