what does success even look like?
I took the summer off, almost entirely, from any of the familiar measures of writing productivity. Here’s what I did instead.
Carolee Bennett –> poet. artist. crankypants.
I took the summer off, almost entirely, from any of the familiar measures of writing productivity. Here’s what I did instead.
Since my style is associative and imagistic, I’ve typically depended on being able to see the strange places things intersect. Losing that spacial awareness, even metaphorically, has been quite challenging.
2022 is unlikely to be any better as far as the state of the world is concerned, and so my task is to be more selective with what I consume. Less circling the news/social media drain, for example, and focus instead on quiet time and ritual around generating new work.
I have no regrets about what I did/didn’t accomplish in 2021. I rested more than I wrote (2021 was also full of some huge life changes), I showed up for workshops and readings that will inform and inspire me for years to come.
Except for Arielle Greenberg’s I Live in the Country & Other Dirty Poems (which I LOVED and hope to write about at some point), the “reading books cover-to-cover” list hasn’t included poetry. Here are the fiction and CNF books that have been on my mid-pandemic reading list.
I’ve been think a lot recently about the idea of safety. Specifically how powerful it is to turn to someone and say, “You make me feel safe.” To trust them fully. And at the same time how important it is to learn to how to make my own kind of safety. A deep breath. A lit candle. A good meal.
A friend calls this “writing weather.” I guess that’s one way to get through dark, cold, snowy winter. Willie Nelson helps. Mimosas, too.