I’m freakin’ out, like we used to say back in the day.

Any moment now, this little baby will be public, thanks to the editors at Kindle Singles.

Meanwhile, I want to thank you for reading this blog by sending  you a free, free, free PDF copy of my 2013 poetry collection, BACK EAST.

Just email me at michelejleavitt <at> gmail <dot> com, and I’ll pop it right out to you.

Maybe too much with the baby metaphors?

 

 

For a long time, I’ve wanted to be published in NorthAmerican Review — and it finally happened! The Summer Issue (Volume 301, #3 because it’s the  oldest literary journal in the country) arrived in my mailbox today with my near-elegy for my brother James, who is thankfully still alive. Stay tuned – I’ll have a post on the NAR blog soon about the process of writing this poem.

 

Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I’ll have a short (30,000 word) memoir published by Kindle Singles. It’s been a new adventure for me to work with the folks over there for the past six months – an editor, a copyeditor, another editor, a cover designer.

In the last month, I’ve been sticking to a regular writing schedule, getting up at 5:30 am and writing until 7 am when I have to get ready for the day job. This is a practice I’ve often thought I “should” do, and somehow, miraculously, I’m doing it! But I’ve worried that having a book published will make me press the “Pause” button as I obsess over its reception, or lack of reception.

Luckily, I came across this blog post today by the excellent Sydney Lea, who was one of my mentors in the 1990’s at Vermont College of FIne Arts, and also after that. He says “I also seem to go into lulls shortly after the publication of books, and my twelfth collection, No Doubt the Nameless, was published last month. I suppose a psychologist could make something of that tendency to lapse after a book shows up, but it’s not really something that especially troubles me. I used to think, “Uh-oh, I’m all done– out of material.” But I have learned that I seem to revive.”

So I”ll try to chill, like Syd.