It's the end of the year and I have statistics. Who doesn't like looking back and trying to make sense of numbers? Honesty requires me to admit I only like reviewing numbers when I have numbers worth talking about—which I do.
Six months of 2024 were spent in Asia, Europe, and Japan. Three months were spent moving back into my house and searching for a job. And the last three months of this year has been filled with working my new tech job, visits with family, and holiday shenanigans.
Please remember that my "fiscal writing year" is from mid-May to mid-May, so the numbers I give you here is really a half-way point. If I don't write a poem today, I will have written 68 poems from May 15, 2024 to now—ahead of last year's pace of 66 when compared to the same time last year. If you'd like this in capitalist-speak, that's a growth of 3% YoY (year-over-year). Yikes. That felt disgusting to say. Let's not do that again.
I've only had one acceptance this year, from Moon City Review, a tough year for me when it comes to rejections. I'm down from eight acceptances last year (five of them were to a single publication). The crazy part is, I honestly believe my work is better than last year, and I'm convinced that I'm making progress towards becoming a better poet—that is, writing poems I wasn't capable of writing before.
Poets I met this year include: Richard Jackson, Barbara Siegel Carlson, Andrea Jurjević, Travis Mossotti, and Adedayo Agarau. All wonderful people. Very kind. Travis gave me good advice to just start cold-emailing poets and see what comes back, and it's been good advice. The onus is on me to build the community I want.
I went back to River Pretty again. And I'm applying to workshops like Bread Loaf for next year. I'll be at AWP this year. A lot of me getting out there is due to my friend, Kelly, whom I've known since we were in college. In fact, I'd say my re-entry back into writing as a whole is largely due to Kelly.
For any of you who have said "when are you going to put a collection out", I like to let you know that I'm speaking to Andrea Jurjević about helping me cut a collection together so that I can start shopping a first collection to small presses. I'm hoping that work starts in February.
Speaking of next year, I want to start making more videos for newsletter subscribers in 2025. I'd obviously like to get more acceptances, but I think that goes hand-in-hand with getting more eyes on my work. Richard Jackson workshopped three of my poems this year, and it was exactly what those poems needed.
