On December 18 of 2013, I published my fourth and fifth poetry books. I don’t really recommend publishing two books on the same day; it’s a little like having your birthday on Christmas. The two books threaten to eclipse each other. It happened that way because I was trying to get them both out before Christmas. and they took paths of differing speeds through the proofing process.

Journeying is my first unillustrated book. I was excited about it because it has four times as many poems as my illustrated books, and it’s thick enough for my name and the title to appear on the spine. It had different proofing issues because the black and white printing process called for a different font for the poems, which I had to test out.

Cuddle Your Curmudgeons is my fourth illustrated book. I had been hoping to find a collaborator to do the artwork — thought I had one lined up, early summer. But when that didn’t work out I was back to considering illustrating it on my own, a prospect that turned out to have substantial procrastinative forces lined up against it. I did thumbnails for the poems that I could, but I was having trouble getting the vision for how I would execute the pictures. The publication of Journeying was, in a way, a very constructive form of procrastination from those illustrations.

I think I got a boost from talking to a new acquaintance, an artist, about possible collaboration on another project. (Funny how far just a little encouragement can go.) I used the added impetus of the month of November, in which many writers engage in National Novel Writing Month (something I’ve done three times) to get busy on the illustrations. And I pretty much got them finished by the end of November. Then there was the process of creating the print-ready pdfs, and the proofing. So the two books ended up gliding to press at the same time.

The other way in which I begin to approach prolific is that I now have over 900 poems on my blog. I expect to roll past the 1000 mark in the next three months or so. Meanwhile, my goal for the year is to do everything I can to increase the audience for my poems. To that end, I’m working on pulling together this website, doing more speaking engagements, and trying to get the word out about my books. Any help towards any of that is greatly appreciated!

For many years, the notion of getting published was lofty and mysterious for me — deeply desired and too daunting for me to even quite set as a goal. Now I have two poetry books published, and more on the way. Granted, I’m publishing them independently as opposed to through a publishing house. But many things in the field have changed so as to make independent publishing feasible, and also more desirable in several ways to traditional publishing.

In traditional publishing, the first hurdle to overcome was that you had to sell your work to a publishing house, or to an agent who would then sell it to a publishing house. And agents and publishing houses want work that they think will sell. But their formulas for what makes things salable seem to be as follows: People who are already well in the public eye sell. Compelling concepts may sell. Concepts that fit stuff that is already selling well may sell.

Concepts. An interesting term. They don’t even want to look at your work, don’t want to step into the flavor of the first sentence, if you can’t summarize your whole book up mainly in one sentence and then polish off the experience in the rest of a short paragraph. (This is for the ditty that is called a “query”. Much is written about how to make a good one.) If your story is something that sneaks up on the reader, is not easily characterized but may captivate and move them, you don’t stand a chance, unless you can condense that same experience into one short paragraph.

But my experience with this was in the attempts to publish my novels. Poetry is a whole other story. Basically, the conventional wisdom is that poetry doesn’t sell. Most people who are considered successful poets, and have published several books, also have day jobs.

In traditional publishing, there seem to be two routes to getting a poetry book published. One is to become a professor associated with a university that has a press. The other is to submit many poems to various literary magazines and get them published, thus developing enough of a name that you might be considered for the publication of a book. Of course, those magazines have to agree to publish your poems, and from what I’ve seen in many of them, their criteria for what makes a publishable poem are different from mine.

So the fact that I can publish these poems myself is extremely liberating to me. In publishing my first book, I have had great help and support from my artist collaborator, Mellissae Lucia. In publishing my second one, I’ve had great support from many friends, who encouraged me to follow my muse and the call to develop myself as an artist. My third book, in production now, has support from still another source. I will talk more about this in my next post, as well as sharing my experience with independent publishing.

My main blog is Earth Whispering, in which I practice the discipline of writing a poem a day. You can reach it with the tab Earth Whispering Poems, above. This blog, the one you’re reading now, I don’t expect to be as prolific, but I want a place to post my thoughts about the process — writing, publishing, illustrating, presenting my work to the world. I hope it will encourage others who yearn to bring forth their unique gifts.

Before I started writing and publishing a poem a day, the poems that I did write would pace about my head from time to time. Some of them had tunes, and I would sing them. Others just had rhythms that would lend themselves well to the steady pedaling of my bicycle, and they would play themselves as I rode along. Behind each one of them would surface the plea, “let me out.” They would say, “listen to me, I’m good, am I not? Isn’t that image great, isn’t the juxtaposition of my words inspired?”

“I don’t know,” I’d tell them. “I like you, but who am I? I don’t know anything about poetry and how it is judged.”

So the poems would play themselves and go away, and come back again with a certain wistfulness. They gave me both joy and sadness, in the cloister of my mind.

Now that I write and publish a poem a day, they no longer haunt me. I haunt them sometimes, looking at the stats from my blog to see if anyone has looked, hoping for comments. But I don’t memorize them – there are too many of them for that, and each day demands its insights to be chronicled. They now bring me joy, with no sadness.

So if you are a closet poet — if you, also, have poems and songs that pace in your head and plead for you to release them, I deeply encourage you to let them go!

2012 marked, in addition to my blog, the print publication of two collections of poetry. This has been a remarkable experience, with much to share. I’ll talk about that in my next post.

Dear readers,

I’m delighted to announce that my second poetry book is now out. You can view it on Amazon using the link below, but if you’re local, please buy it directly from me. (It’s a much better deal for me, and I can also sign your copy.)

Capture Rapture is about romance — all facets of it — from the initial attraction through all the uncertainties and questions, and including both the joy of union and the necessary regrouping when things don’t work out as hoped. Through all the aspects of romance, it provides spiritual resources that lead to the calm of love.

I also did the artwork for Capture Rapture, deriving great delight in the artistic process, with all its struggles. I endeavor to give a feeling of the poems without being distractingly literal. I hope you will check it out, and I hope you enjoy it!

-Wendy