everything is about to change I warned you

Coming back home from Somerset, my mind began to formulate a plan about what happens here after the poetry project is done. I’ve purchased a new planner, will print out some month to view calendars shortly for the three months to September, when the three major projects I want to work on all have deadlines. One is going to be a re-write, another the completion of a project I’ve been trying to finish for months, the third an original piece already in progress.

This time, instead of killing myself trying to do everything new, it makes real sense to reinvent existing pieces in a new way. How that happens doesn’t really matter that much at this stage, just that this is the way things will work, so that planning can be instigated well ahead of time. Both July and August are quite busy for me personally, so this will be essential work to ensure everything gets finished on time.

The clarity of thought over this progression is considerable too: no worries there won’t be time, or that the final results will not be of sufficient. On top of this then can be laid other awards or submissions that could be achieved with the existing portfolio of work: breaking myself up into three month lumps is perfect means by which all this stuff will be properly organised. The space on my wall’s already set.

Let’s do this.

It will be two years in June since the journey to transform myself from casual to professional writer began in earnest. However, it won’t be until July that I can say I submitted any work with a belief it was finally good enough. Looking back on those early efforts, some days it feels as if words were being drawn on cave walls in darkness.

When I won something back in November, the sense I’d got lucky was very tangible indeed, because that’s what it was: luck. Trying to work out what it is that editors are looking for can be incredibly tough to fathom, especially if you only just learnt the basics of the language. Some will give an idea, many others none at all.

A lot of the time, your poetic voice is the only dialogue heard.

As time has gone on determination to get this right and learn my craft well refuses to diminish. Quiet revelation comes and goes, trying to balance a desire to be two separate people: one who writes ‘a certain way’ because she knows that’s what’s being asked, and the other who resents her voice being garbled to make a point.

Slowly, of course, the two begin to intersect: those resultant works may not win me anything, on reflection, but have become markers pointing a workable way forward. It helps hugely that there’s been some significant and pretty damning psychological changes during this period too. Those changes are only now beginning to emerge.

The difference, I suspect, could be everything in staying focused and determined.

What circumstance presents me with is a clear, fear-free path forward. Sure, I’ll still get angry when a well-known publisher can’t be bothered to use the software I had to submit with to acknowledge my failure. That’s just politeness and respect for your audience, after all. Failing no longer scares me, because that person has been left behind. This isn’t about validation either; to be honest, it never was.

Being different is absolutely fine. Not winning is totally acceptable. What matters now, more than anything else, is being true to the new person I am becoming. My poetic voice is becoming louder and more strident than it has ever been, and it will be used in new and liberating ways. The future is no longer something to be afraid of.

Happiness brings so many new possibilities.