mimsy and outgrabe

The following is a day-by-day log of my progress and thoughts throughout last week, as I completed an "Artist Residency in Motherhood" with my colleague at Stuffolk, and frequent collaborator (in teaching and in art), visual artist Meredith Starr . During the week I worked on revising a poetry manuscript and finishing one of my plays. M.S. has a year-long painting project she's been working on, and she spent the week catching up/getting back on track with that series.  This log makes for a long blog post, which may not be everyone's jam, but since I keep this blog more or less for my own edification, I thought I'd include this disclaimer at the top. If you like to read about other artists' processes, read on. (And, I highly recommend Daily Rituals: How Artists Work and Daily Rituals: Women at Work , both by Mason Currey both of which I read in the first weeks of this summer.)  Playwriting photos are not very exciting, admittedly. If ...

I know! Two in one year! It's a small miracle! Day One, June 10, 2019:  Okay, I didn't follow my plan very well. I DID make it out of my home and to Starbucks but I didn't reread my play there. Nor did I read or revise any of the poems from the new manuscript. But I was productive. I submitted Fabulous Beast: Poems to a book festival, and then I revised a review and submitted it to a journal for consideration. These were necessary things. I consider today a warm-up for getting back in the game of writing every day. Day Two, June 11, 2019: Rained-Out. (A joke. I had a sick kid at home. I know. In June. Jury's still out about whether or not she was actually sick.) I did manage to work on poems from my manuscript, but basically the end result was figuring out what I definitely DON'T want to do with my poems going forward. Not exactly time wasted, but I don't have much to show for today's work. In the absence of actual productiveness, I give you: Our ...

I haven't written here in quite a while. I've liked the silence. (I'm sure you have too!) After writing a post a week, more or less, last year for the Poetry Blogger Revival Tour, I felt a little burnt out.   Since my last post, I've worked very sporadically on poems -- written maybe four of them. Much of my morning writing time has been used to grade, or answer emails, or prep for a class. That last part annoys me because I've really tried to get the classes to the point where I have everything done before the semester begins, but sometimes I make changes to the schedule that seem really necessary and then that means more mid-semester prep.  At home we're renovating the second bathroom in our tiny cape, so that means everything from that bathroom is spread out around the house and there's a fine film of sheetrock dust over everything -- mostly because I haven't had time or energy to thoroughly dust and vacuum like I probably should. (Renovatin...

M.S. and I are teaching our Creativity class again this semester. It's funny -- not in a haha way, but in a how odd way -- how much questioning I do every time we return to the course and the material.  Of  course, maybe it's also cyclical, as we're in the heart of winter and low temperatures also do something to keep my mood low, my mind disquiet. But I think it might be the tenets we teach in the class, tenets M.S. and I created together, agreed on, tenets we wholeheartedly believe -- and the way I have to face them again, and in their light confront my own creative practice, see where it falls short, where I might be phoning it in.  And once I do that, I hold myself up: I confront my own identity, how much I've tied it -- with stubbornness, with obstinacy -- to art-making and creativity. I hold this image of myself up to the weak winter light coming through the window, and I examine all my inconsistencies and flaws.  It's necessary,  I suppos...

Waaaaaaaayyyyy back in September of last year, I wrote: OH. And I kinda-sorta have the best news in the world (for me, right now) but I can't post anything until I know more/confirm said best news in a legit way. Anyway, that's vague, but pretty accurate. When I can, I'll spill. And then it took another four months to actually confirm the best news. So THAT was pretty underwhelming. But now I finally feel more comfortable sharing the following: I signed a book contract, ya'll! In September, I was notified that my full-length manuscript, Fabulous Beast , was the runner-up for the X.J. Kennedy Prize and that it was selected for publication in the fall of 2019. The contract didn't arrive until January, but it's finally signed. (Yay!) And now we're moving into book cover stuff and that's making everything feel more real. Most of the first section of this manuscript was published as a chapbook by Hyacinth Girl Press in 2015, as Fabulous...

My first post for 2019 is about my third complete micro-sabbatical. It's nothing short of a miracle that it occurred, too, considering that my family traded viruses and recovered from illness for no less than three weeks following New Year's Eve. For real, peeps. It was gruesome. But it's over now (knock wood) and we're moving forward. Kind of. I mean, everyone's sniffly or coughy, but roughly back to our normal schedules. So anyway: micro-sabbatical. It was really micro this year, as I could only spare mornings for the writing. I had to use my afternoons to prep for spring classes. But I kept a log each day inside this blog post, after I worked toward each day's primary project/aim, and here's what happened. Essentially: Day One: Tuesday, Jan. 22: I used my early-morning writing hours to read and also write my micro-sabbatical plan. I am nothing if not last-minute, as the rest of this sentence will prove: after putting the kids on the bus (and do...