January’s prescriptions for doldrums – reading, writing, and writer-socializing

In the last few days since I’ve posted, I’ve met for the first time with the Seattle chapter of the Horror Writers Association, a group I joined last year (at Wayward Coffeehouse, the appropriately geek-themed downtown Seattle coffee shop), had sixteen tubes of blood taken out of me for neurological and autoimmune testing (the biggest pull the phlebotomist had done, she said, but not, I assured her, the biggest that had ever been done on me), had physical therapy for neurological issues, I stayed up all night with a sick husband (food poisoning, we think, not anything serious, but still not pleasant), mourned David Bowie, wrote a new poem, and an essay response to the recent essay on the terrific Ellen Bass (and her subsequent disappearance) which will appear in The Rumpus (!!). I’ve been sleeping irregular hours and eating oddly at odd times. I caught up on my reading a bit – from supremely great Japanese superstar author Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge (if you’re any kind of fan of Haruki Murakami’s short stories, please read this immediately) from The Unprofessionals, a new anthology from The Paris Review, to the Four-Legged Girl by Diane Suess. I hadn’t written a poem for…well it’s been over a few weeks, at least, and I’m usually good for at least a poem a week. It must have been a combination of the bloodletting, the strange winter sunshine we had for a few days, and the reading. Plus a lack of anything good on television.

I’ve been thinking of the things we do to keep from disappearing in our lives – to forcing ourselves out in the cold to take in a few minutes of sun over the admittedly still pretty barren landscapes, from making new friends and acquaintances to doing things like writing books and hey, blogging. It’s so easy to just live in our routines, to refrain from making a fuss or any noise at all, sometimes, especially in January, a month where cocooning seems downright practical. While my husband was sick, I wrote e-mails and stayed on hold with his doctor’s office – an attempt to keep him from being invisible to his care providers. We’re still (seemingly in vain) searching for a house to buy. In a month that can, with its cold, its short days, its worries about post-holiday bills and flu viruses, depress even the shiniest of people, how do we prevent ourselves from dimming?

I’m getting ready to get into a second round of edits on my PR for Poets book for Two Sylvias Press, removing unclear language, defining terms, adding quotes, examples and exercises. I’m really hoping this will be a helpful book for a lot of people who feel like they don’t know how to launch a book, how to get people to pay attention in a sea of self-and-traditionally published books. I’m also thinking about my next (!!) poetry book launch with Moon City Press (blurbs, cover art, do I need a new author photo, etc) even while helping Mayapple Press send The Robot Scientist’s Daughter out to be considered for book prizes (which it may or may not have a good shot at – these things are worth doing.) I think part of what keeps us motivated in cold, shrill January is the awareness that reaching out, connecting with and helping others is not only good for others, it’s good for our own souls. Part of effective book marketing has to do not only with what we say about our own books, but what we say about other’s books, how we communicate with the writing and reading communities at large. We can’t let each other disappear from view.