Last weekend i turned in final edits, on my end—no more
adding/removing poems or switching things around. Which makes me feel both
relieved and a little nervous.
In fact, sending out my advanced reader copies to those
poets who’ve agreed to write blurbs for the book made my stomach turn to knots;
I admire these poets very much, and I was touched that the first three I asked
wrote back so quickly to say yes! I just hope that they like my book—even if
they half-like some of my book, that is enough.
As many times as I’ve looked through my book, I kept coming
to the same two poems as the opening poems (though I’ve switched their order at
least a dozen times). I changed the
ending poem a few times, but I feel like the concluding poem is more complex
than the one I ended with previously.
I ended up taking out three or four poems written in persona
surrounding a funeral home director’s family—I don’t feel that they were, in
themselves, callous, but juxtaposed to some poems about miscarriage, they
didn’t work for me.
I had, at one point, removed the sections from my book, but
settled on having three sections and focusing the middle section on my Leah
persona poems. Giving her a section to herself created some interesting
perspective on a few poems that I’d not originally written to go with her
story. I’d had her poems here and there in the book, but in the end she
demanded more of a leading role.
Revising titles was another task I wanted to tackle when
going through the book one last time. I’m not great with titles, so this took
some time. I ended up going with a suggestion a reader gave me a year
ago—changing many of the titles so they include “keep” in them, to go along
with the title of the book “keeping me still”. I think doing that made the book
more cohesive, overall.
Keeping Me Still is scheduled to come out in late March,
and I’ll give you more updates as they come up! the next update will be the
cover reveal on the Winter Goose website, sometime in the next couple weeks.
yay! i'm so excited to read your book! :)
ReplyDeleteCan't wait :)
ReplyDeletethanks y'all!
ReplyDelete