Immediately, the funniest thing about this whole process to me is that if I really wanted, I probably could finish this in significantly less time than the 18 weeks or so that I’ve allotted myself. But I have the 18 weeks, and I’m trying this whole thing of “taking my goddamn time” as opposed to the battery of microprojects that I am accustomed to because that is in fact how we end up growing.

What Happened During Week 1? Well, firstly…

As with any puzzle, the beginning involved is figuring out what pieces that you have to work with. So that’s how this week started.

The first thing I did was go through approximately six years of backlogged writing. Six years sounds like an incredibly long time, because it is, but the fact of the matter is that it wasn’t that much content to sift through, especially during this cursory gut check.

I would go so far as to venture that my 30/30 at the start of this year probably contributed to about a quarter of the content I sifted through and more than a quarter of what I initially gleaned.

Some of that of course is a recency bias, but I think it also speaks to the fact that I was trying things and that the things I was trying were successful in some way, shape, and form. Going back through the other five years was marginally quicker, if only because I was not writing every week, or every month. But there was still some good there.

My initial cultivation involved about 40 some pages of unorganized poems that would serve as the main bedrock of the chapbook.

I then also scoured my non-poetry work to see if there was anything worth gleaning, which there were something things that can be excerpted methinks.

However, not all of the pieces were going to be found in my work.

Secondly…

My inventory of my mother’s work consists of four notebooks, three folders, three free packets of paper, three envelopes, and two bound texts that I am pretty sure were classroom assignments at some point.

My first pass was mostly just looking for things that spoke to me and crucially, things that I wanted to avoid including. Just because my mother has passed doesn’t mean all of her work is open to the public. Although admittedly, as I discovered, almost everything in my possession was intended to be sent out to a publisher or journal, but the principle still stands. Some stuff can stay tucked away.

I also made the decision not to digitize everything this go-round. I think that’s a separate project and separate endeavor, and the only things I scanned (or took photos of in a handful of cases where the scanner just simply could not get the text) were the thing that I intend to use in some capacity.

This isn’t a comprehensive list. After using my post-it notes as indicators of what to scan, I also removed them ensuring that when I inevitably return to the archival material, I would have to go through them thoroughly once again and with a different set of eyes.

What have I learned about myself?

The biggest thing is that I am still processing a shockingly similar set of issues as I was when I was in undergrad, and also that some of my stuff in undergrad has held up surprisingly well to the point where I have considered for inclusion. It certainly helps that the pieces in question were accepted by a lit mag, so there’s some external validation that the work was good and thematically they fit into the grander thing that is beginning to coalesce.

What have I learned about my mother?

This one is a tough question to answer in a public forum, because you do not have the same background knowledge about my maternal relationship, so the speedrun is as follows:

I knew my mom was a pediatrician. I knew that my mom was also a writer. I did not know that my mom was equally prolific in her writing throughout the entirety of her life, which in hindsight, does explain a fair bit about me.

Throughout this process, I’m not going to be sharing any actual works in progress or arrangements publicly, but if you message me, I’ll give a peak or two in the the machinations.

What have I learned about the book I’m making?

Mostly that the title is very much going to remain unchanged, although the general themes that are starting to manifest do make for an interesting progression. It’s really funny seeing how even decades apart, the work that I’m penning and the work my mother penned are in conversation with other. However not much has actually changed, which is both depressing and relieving depending on exactly how you look at it.

What’s next?

I’ve allocated six weeks for this curation/collection phase, but I think there’s a third C that needs to be added into the mix, which is creation.

Even looking at the scattering of content I have, there are some things that are very apparent in my head that have not been converted into words that help explain. I have at least one thing I need to formulate from scratch, and two things that I need to make in response to the artifacts discovered during the archival delve.

I want everything on the table before the arrangement, and even though I have many pieces on the table, I can already sense some don’t exist yet.

I don’t know if it take a week or take five to do what I need to do. But those chronicles are why we have this blog.

Thanks for joining me on this adventure dear reader. The roller coaster is immense on my end, but hopefully some of the highs and lows are transferring.