There is something about a new year that makes me want to redecorated or remodel. There's a cozy element, it's 28 degrees out and I'm tucked inside. Or maybe it's my last year in school and I'm looking for new and useful ways to procrastinate, I'm not sure, but just as I remodeled my living room last year, this year, I'm redoing the bedroom and the downstairs bath.
Tonight, I started retiling the bathroom floor and will probably paint one wall a warm taupe color. This will be news to my husband. I've repainting this bathroom before to his surprise. But I didn't go dark enough. I don't want it to look like the bat cave, but I want it to have that warm feeling, especially now that I've added warmer darker tile floors.
What does this have to do with writing or poetry? You know, not much except I find I do some very good thinking while I'm cleaning or remodeling. Better thinking than I do when I'm staring into the computer screen. It's easier to get distracted, find yourself googling "lunar eclipse" instead of writing a poem. When I am doing work, my mind goes in and out of poems, it retitles my manuscript, it organizes my work.
Sometimes just the act of sitting at my desk can stall me. Oh so many *other* things to do. Oh where to begin...
I am currently deciding if my manuscript *should* be reordered. Right now, it's in alphabetical order. When I started the manuscript, this was intentional, I wanted a clean order A - Z. Now I worry that this has become more habit than necessity. So I've started MSS #2, the unalphabetized version.
Right now, I'm leaning towards mss #1, alphabetized, but I'm not sold on it (I know, "sold" the language of commerce.) I think a little more remodeling, redecorating, and cleaning and I will know the answers to this question--to alphabetize or to now alphabetize...
There is a point when I am too close to my manuscript, that is this point. It's as if I'm getting dressed by standing two inches away from the mirror. I cannot tell if my shoes match my skirt, I don't know which earrings to choose, I can't see the whole image, just bits and pieces of things. Right now, this is how I feel about my manuscript. I have my face against the paper and I am screaming, no, I'm smiling, I'm tossing the poems in the air and seeing where they fall.
