TGIPF!

To set the context for today's Poetry Friday, I have had a few things published.  A couple of short stories made the cut for my community college’s webzine, and a few of my poems were published in my university’s humanities journal.  I also worked for a newspaper for the better part of a year, where I wrote a weekly column and also wrote several articles.  I have done movie reviews, book reviews, and even a couple of pieces of creative non-fiction.  Then, of course, there is this blog, though a debate exists amongst the writing community as to whether a blog counts as being published.  Regardless, a smattering of my work has appeared in various publications; therefore I suppose I can say that I am a published writer.

It has been my life’s dream to have a novel published, however.  Since I was fifteen (which is rapidly becoming longer and longer ago) I have worked on one novel or another.  Now, I am closer than ever to being completely done with one—I tried to garner some interest with a publisher by sending them the first few chapters.  Naturally, I received a very polite form letter, but that hasn’t discouraged me.

The other day I was thinking about how much of my life I have poured into my writing; it has occurred to me before that the amount of time an author puts in is gargantuan in respect to the amount of time a reader does.  Particularly if that reader is like me, who demolishes books more than she reads them.  I can read a 600-page novel in under a week, as long as I don’t actually sleep very much.  But even if I take my time, the most time I will spend is probably one or two months.  One or two months of my life is all it takes to consume something that the author spent years crafting.  Some authors can churn out a novel a year—but even then it’s a year versus one or two months.

So, when I think about the prospect of my novel being published, the idea is bittersweet.  It’s weird to think that something I put years into might be read in a month or less. 

But this is the nature of all art.  

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[Untitled]

(c)2014 A.L.S. Vossler

Here between these pages,

I have spilled ink

like droplets of black sweat,

like dark splashing tears,

like a pouring out of blood,

a pouring out of life,

of years of careful crafting,

obsessing, perfecting.

Hours and hours of labor

are typeset and reproduced

as easy as pressing a button,

as swift as a bird in flight,

as myriad as a flock of doves

bursting from their long-shut cote,

only to be caught a moment,

admired briefly, and released.