Copper Canyon Holiday Book Party, Early Family Christmas Dinner, and Working on Poetry Manuscripts (Again)

Cheers to you!

Wishing You a Happy (and Peaceful) Holiday Season

It’s been a busy week this week – an early Christmas dinner and presents with family, a visit to the endodontist (a root canal in my immediate future, boo) and the Copper Canyon Holiday Book Sale/Reading Party. That’s along with working on my two poetry manuscripts some more before sending them out before the end-of-the-year deadlines. Not to mention trying to get everything else – holiday cards sent out, decorating, shipping out Christmas presents to family in Ohio and friends in other states, tax stuff – done.

But even when you feel overwhelmed by everything going on, it’s important to take time to enjoy the little things when you can (I say to myself.) I haven’t gotten out yet to see any holiday movies or check out the local holiday light shows (of which we have many!) But I did get a chance to celebrate a little with friends and family, and even listen to some great poetry, and I’m thankful for that.

Glenn, me, little brother Mike, and his wife Loree

Family Time – Celebrating an Early Christmas

Since my brother is going home to the Midwest for real Christmas, we had our Christmas dinner and presents early. Glenn made a wonderful duck dinner with chocolate peppermint cake for dessert, and it was great to catch up with Mike and Loree since we haven’t gotten to see them as much lately. It’s important to take a little time out for family this time of year especially, I think.

We are thankful to have some family close enough to celebrate!

Pre-reading with Abi, Sarah, Rob, and me

Copper Canyon Holiday Party

We have been busy, but happy we set aside some time yesterday to make the trek downtown to the Hugo House for the yearly Copper Canyon Book Sale/Reading/Holiday Party. It’s always fun to see old friends, the readings were great (especially Natalie Scenters-Zapico and Taneum Bambrick, both fire!) they had live music (Glenn bought a CD from them – gotta support the arts!) and came home with new books to read. I love to support local presses and I’ve been an admirer of Copper Canyon Press for a long time.

Deer visitors in the yard

Poetry Work on Two Manuscripts, and Book Reviews

This week also had me taking a hard look at my two manuscripts. One seems pretty finished, the other one is still in process, and so I printed it out again and sorted it out on the table. I’d missed that I had taken out a pretty important couple of poems in the last round of edits, and I added in some new ones, which means I need to edit a few others out. Then the harder work of targeting publishers – the ones that will take a chance on me. I also updated my acknowledgments pages with my recent acceptances, which was fun!

The tricky part of messing with poetry manuscripts – especially two at a time – is keeping in mind the themes, avoiding unnecessary repetition, and making sure the book is fun to read, even if the subject matter might be deemed “depressing.” You want a certain amount of momentum in your first ten and last ten pages, for instance. You don’t want to bury your best poems in the middle of the book, which is easy to do. You don’t want it to be too long (which is probably around 70 pages) or to feel too slight. You have to think of targeting the right presses for each book – and unless you have a “home” publisher, that means doing your research and checking out new presses, older presses that have changed direction, that sort of thing. Then, make sure your TOC is updated, you don’t have any obvious typos, that kind of thing.

Reading material for the holidays

I also try to get book reviews done during the holiday break, though I’ve been busier with medical/dental stuff than I thought I’d be, so I haven’t gotten as much done as usual. I’ve been reading Fanny Howe and Rachel Zucker’s latest books, and enjoying them. I’ve been a fan of Fanny Howe’s work for some years, and Rachel Zucker’s book – which reads more like prose than poetry – has a really funny section at the end about writer’s residencies.

Plans for 2020 – A Feminist Speculative Reading at Open Books!

Are you making plans for 2020 yet? I’ll be reading at Open Books January 11th for a Feminist Speculative Writers feature with my friend from the East Coast Lesley Wheeler, which I’m very much looking forward to. And I can get some poetry shopping done there too! I haven’t done a reading in a while, so I’m hoping to read some new work and that is always exciting!