Summer Writing Intentions

I have not meant to let so much time go by since my last blog post; indeed, I'm astonished to see that I haven't written since Friday.  On Saturday, I wrote a rough draft of my sermon, and Sunday, I had to be on the road by 7 a.m. to preach and preside at Faith Lutheran in Bristol.  Yesterday I was putting together the syllabus and other unique-to-me course elements for the online Professional Writing class that I'm teaching for Spartanburg Methodist College this summer.  The class starts on Tuesday, a week from today, but students have access on Thursday.

I often tell people that the only time I really feel that I have off is the week between Christmas and January 1:  no classes to teach, no sermon to write, no prep work to do.  Still, this week feels different, even though I still have appointments and online teaching duties.

It feels like the first week of summer, although it's hard for me to pin down when summer starts precisely.  The last day of in-person class feels like a demarcation line, as does turning in grades, as does graduation.  I want to spend some time this week planning for ways to get back to creative writing, the non-seminary, non-sermon writing.  I want more poetry.  I also want to remember that this summer is the time I planned to put a new poetry collection together.

Here's what I wrote in a December blog post:  " I'm going to wait until summer to do a deeper dive into manuscript assembly. I'm going to create a new manuscript called Higher Ground. The title works on several levels with the climate change poems along with spirituality poems."  That blog post reminded me that I had looked at past manuscripts--do I want to use one of them as a skeleton/scaffolding or start by looking at files of individual poems?

I also want to return to my New Year's resolution, which was also my 2025 resolution:   "I am not feeling OK about how many poems I am not writing. I do a good job of writing down fragments and inspirations, but I'm also aware that I have fewer inspirations and fragments in the past year or two than has been usual. I want to end the year with 52 poems written, finished poems. They may not be worth sending out, but they need to be finished. Fifty-two poems gives me space to catch up, and space to have a white hot streak that sets me ahead."

Here's hoping for some white hot writing streaks this summer!