Let’s talk about momentum.

Right now, I have confidently 38 out of the 40 pages of my hybrid chapbook. This up from 34 from last week (or at least it was last week for me. Due to a slip up, you probably didn’t see Week 3’s update until yesterday).

The start of the project always seems to come fast. It’s the end of the project that things begin to grind to a halt. It’s funny though. The thing I’m saving for last is the piece I intend to open the book with. But I digress.

I’ve gotten a chance to really look at the submission guidelines and then also look at submission standards, and as I was doing so, I realized that while Affinity was a fun visualization tool, I would ultimately need to submit this in a .doc format which meant I needed to start working in something that can be exported to a .doc format. Once I did that, I realized several things, although the chief among them was that I had too much content. So content had to be cut. I got rid of about three pages of poems that didn’t fit in with the required formatting and while I think they could have still had a place, everything else felt much more important. Namely, the four page spanner where I do different takes on a piece of my mom’s writing and also giving some of my essays some more room to breath.

The book is beginning to tell me things which is neat. A piece prompted a title change once it realized what it preceded and then it needed two more paragraphs to let sing. Another one demanded a picture be moved onto a different page. This has also ruined some of the spread alignment I had internalized, but I quickly reconciled the fact that the reason I need to double space most things is because books aren’t printed on letter sheets and the line breaks make it easier to read. I also did not 100% comply with the double spacing, but I’m chalking that decision up to the hybrid nature of the book. Someone more professional than me can make sense of the layout if it comes down to it.

I’m having a lot of fun with the project which I think is the most important. It’s nice having something to work on consistently and watch it develop. I imagine this is a similar feeling to gardeners or sculptors, two things I will only ever admire philosophically rather than partake.

This marks not quite the halfway point of my solo jamming. Page 39 will be completed this forthcoming Saturday. Page 40 I’m leaving till the very end of September.

But then yeah. September 22 is when I started sharing and beginning the arduous process of revision.

Terrifying. Electrifying. I don’t know. It’s nice being exciting about a thing.

Any ways, now’s the time to start thinking if you want to be a beta-reader. I may approach some of you independently, but maybe you’re out there and want to call dibs on a prototype.