Creating a Poetry Collection

An update

Creating a poetry collection has been a daunting task. But I am still trying to meet my deadline to print by the year’s end. If something personally good comes out of my life this year, I hope it will be this book of poems.

My poems have been selected and put into three separate parts or chapters. It has a working title. Now comes the fun, but difficult part: creating a narrative flow to the poems.

At first I thought this would be easy. I would simply put them in the order I wrote them. That would be a chronological experience. But stories are not always told in a linear fashion, and my thoughts and creations don’t all line up. Nor do I want them to.

My hope is that a reader will understand the story as a complete narrative, but also be left with a sense of wonder. I hope to inspire people into healing, whatever that may mean for them.

As for the process, I am starting to get sick of my work. And when I am tired, I feel bored with the project and self-doubt starts to creep in. This happens a lot with projects. The follow-through is tough. Are you like me? Great at beginnings, but not so hot with endings?

The fortune is in the follow-up, so they say. But the fine-tuning, formatting, and getting it just so are starting to activate a stress response.

Any advice from you published and self-published poets out there?

Samantha Lazar 2020

Related posts:

You may want to convince your boss that you deserve to get a raise. You may want your child or significant other to eat healthier. Or, perhaps you’re in desperate need or persuading your partner to…

Whitney Museum Logo Response. My initial reaction to the Whitney identity system was that it was interesting. Not a lot of a companies take the leap and have a design….

HR staff may frown at the idea of committing time and resources to forming and running an employee volunteer program (EVP), especially at a large company. Employee volunteer programs are company…