Positive Movement Versus the Whirlwind

As a gigantic hurricane whirls its way up the East coast (which was also recently rattled by an earthquake…) I am thinking about movement. Specifically, movement we can control and movement we can’t control. Positive momentum that spins us up to where we want to be…

After your book comes out, if you’re anything like me, you can’t help but sneak peeks at your Amazon rankings, depressed if there is no movement, willing the numbers to go in the right direction. Amazon’s Author Central has made tracking your book’s sales depressingly accurate. And yet…what can we do about these things? How much control does an author have over her own book’s sales? I want to promote it, display it like one of those tantalizing pink cupcakes in the store, I want people to love it…but ultimately I have very little control over what other people do. (Right now, for instance, it’s in the top 100 bestsellers of Kindle books of poetry, but the paper version’s rank hasn’t moved…)

So instead I try to make headway on my projects at hand. Having no classes this quarter, I’m applying for part-time contract work and teaching jobs. I’m working right now on a bear of an application that requires pages of statements and samples. I try to make a little headway each day. I’m also working on a book review of a difficult book. Yesterday I wrote two paragraphs of the review, not too substantial, I’m afraid, but enough to say: I made some positive motion on it. I finished a poetry consult project. I’m trying to create a sane reading schedule this fall, but of course all the readings want to fall on the same weekends, invitations to read out of town inevitably all come for the same three day period. I’m excited for the upcoming readings – the chance to finally introduce my new little book to the public, officially – but of course, nervous as well. How will these poems play to an audience? Which poems should I choose for which reading? I’m trying to design afternoon workshops for teenagers, a talk for community colleges on superheroes and mythology, and something on speculative poetry for a general audience. I’m trying my hand at a little fiction, and I’m still writing poems on radioactive elements (apparently, I thought I was done, but I actually wasn’t. The news on Fukushima makes it seem alarmingly relevant and demanding all over again.)

If I try to do all these things at once, I will fail. If I make headway bit by bit, and keep track of what I’ve accomplished each day, instead of feeling overwhelmed, hopefully I’ll just feel productive enough. And it will keep me from checking my Amazon rankings too often 😉