If You Want Something Enough, Magic Works.

I'm marveling at how little time we all have left for this semester. Granted, part of me is wishing it was already over. My brain, once overwhelmed, tends to do that. It's harder to want to do my other work... I've enjoyed the poetry and the fiction so much that I'm trying to pretend the other classes don't exist. I mean... it's not a good plan. But I've done so much in such a short span of time that the synapses don't even care to fire in ways that will make me pay attention. Maybe that was a little bit of an exaggeration, but only just so.

So, as for my chapbook – revision is daunting. It always is. It's a task I'm always up for – but I'm never sure when the poems are 'good enough.' I was talking to a friend and we discussed that sometimes it's good to give your brain space and work on other things. Maybe let the project ideas steep for a while. But college seems, thus far, to be set up in a way where there is simply no time to work on other things without feeling guilty for using the time better spent completing assignments. (I hate that. Oh, do I hate that.) In a way, it feels counterproductive – and … if I may be so bold … countercreative, too.

Back to the chapbook – I look forward to writing out everything. I can't explain why, but I love the old fashioned ink pens. I also love the kind of paper I am using for the book – and while it's not as “authentic looking” as writing on parchment, the ink will absorb better and make less of a mess. And, since I'm nerd about this, I couldn't be happier. I use the pen and ink to make sigils (like the signature sigil on the front and back cover of my chapbook) for my witchcraft, and have acquired a basic amount of skill in using them. Writing, apparently, was much more difficult back in the day. I can't yet do fancy calligraphy. The gods know my day-to-day handwriting is atrocious enough as it is, so it's incredibly difficult to steady my hand enough to do the fancy, artistic lettering. I'll do my best, though. Last time, with my other book Mythopoeia, it took a tremendous amount of effort to write out the book with regular pens. But I know I can do this. I want the look of an old fashioned pen being used, and so I'm going to go for it. It's all coming along quite nicely, I think. Once it's done, I'm going to try and scan in all the pages and make a digital copy of this one. I tried recording myself reading some of the poems out of Mythopoeia...but in a dorm, silence is only an abstract term used to describe the lighter din at 3-4am – recordings, then, are peppered with background noises and echoes.

I want to eventually make this chapbook something that could possibly be considered for publication. Which means more than 10 poems. And I think I already do have more than 10, but maybe not enough to make a “whole” chapbook with. One of the poems got published in the GLR this semester. Even though I love it, and they accepted it as-is – I almost want to cry that I didn't see ways to revise it before I sent it in to them. But I think revision of previously published pieces for a whole book is almost required. It has to be the best representation of your poetic self there is. I don't tend to separate my identity into smaller compartments – I am simultaneously a witch, a poet, a pagan, a student, a psychic, a writer, a reader, a thinker, a Pisces – it's all part of being a Katie Morton, you see. So, if the poems aren't the best representation they can be of my poetic self, they're also not the best representation they can be of me as a whole. And it's daunting. It really is. But we learn as we go, I suppose. I don't know what it means to have a literary agent or to be published outside of the GLR. But one day I'll figure that out. And I'll get back to you. And I'll have more to say and more wisdom to share.

I know from experience that if you want something enough, magic works. If I wanted nothing else in the entire world but this, to be a writer wholly and completely is it. I don't know what I'm getting into entirely. I mean, even I can't see every consequence to every step and action along the path. I will make progress though. Of that, at least, I can be sure.