Summer Focus: A ChapBook
The Struggle To Publish In Print
While some people in my life still revere the book and might tell me that my perspective on publishing is dour, I think the time is running short for an aspiring writer to see their words in print. In this month’s Atlantic there is an article which foretells a better time for content creators, writers, who are seeking to break in; that the very elements of our destruction may in fact spur a greater forum for success. I fall into the dubious column when looking at those forecasts: it’s that stalwart magazine’s necessary position to see greener pastures, to support the engines that are as ubiquitiously in power as the printing press 100 years ago.
I’m not equating my search with that greater, overarching state of the state of publishing. I am one of those aspiring though, no denying that fact. I was raised with books, a love of Powell’s on Burnside, the security of a shelf of paperbacks only half mastered. I accept that should my fate come to pass, and I become a writer, then a majority of my voice will be something other than print. I say something because, no one really knows what that thing might be. Crave that spine with my name, I still do though.
Even if it’s just once, just a single shot to start and everything else that follows is unfamiliar, it feels important.
This summer as I work through my poems as I do, I’m going to start piecing together that manuscript. There are a sufficient number of presses offering the opportunity, I’d be foolish not to. Right? I’m at least six months from starting a novel (and therefore so many more months from finishing it). I’m pushing that short story stone up the hill. Will it ever summit? The best laid plans right now feels like a slow return to the basics. I’m a poet. Although muddied in recent days with depression and self-doubt (talk about unoriginal) I feel when I reassemble myself on a bedrock of core values, I need to see this particular project through. It’s been too long.
Too long. Too long and the opportunity to make right, dwindling.
Posted: May 13th, 2010 under Blog, Commentary.