Cleaning the Attic

Renovating my blog has been a bit like cleaning out the attic. I remember being the one who had to go up the attic stairs to bring down the holiday decorations. Sometimes, I would sneak up there and play with old toys or thumb through things I made in grade school and laugh at how clumsily they were made or how poorly they were written. I cherished the things I had saved for sentimental reasons and took great care when handling them. It never failed, everytime I ventured up into the attic, it always took me longer to get the job done than I anticipated, because I was so easily distracted by memories.

Well, I discovered a feature on blogspot that allows you to create pages for your blog and I thought this would be a good thing to do and move my poem and story links to their own page with more room for descriptions and possibly teasers. I started this endeavor...thinking...oh, this will be a snap...I'll knock it out in a jiffy.

Oh no, I discovered I have links that no longer work and poems and stories that were published...I had forgotten about. Since I've only been at this (publishing my work and managing a blog) a little under two years, much of my work is pretty sloppy, but I didn't notice it at the time. After developing a keener eye where editing is concerned, I cringe at some of my previous mistakes, but I try to look past those blunders and remember the emotion behind the story or poem. When I do this, I am transported to the moment I created the piece and all the things that influenced it bubble up inside of me.

Lately, I've been hungry to publish a poetry chapbook, but didn't know where to begin...what was my  "link". As I go through my poems, I'm categorizing them based on voice and content. I'm starting to see patterns in my work I had not noticed before. I think I probably have several collections in the making. Yes, I need to write more, but there is a shape and direction I can see emerging and that helps me know what I need to write more of to finish the collection off.

This blog renovation is time consuming, but I'm quite enjoying it. It is forcing me to check all my links and move files about, make sure everything is saved properly, and it is helping me see that I have grown as a writer. That excites me--just knowing I am growing.

Also, I read things that I know my heart was not into...things written for a prompt or for a theme of a market and I realize...I shouldn't bother doing that anymore. Those pieces only clutter my attic and they really should go out with the trash.

Okay, so off to do more work. It feels good to be organizing my past and clearing a path for my future. You should give it a try.