Building the Perfect Beast #30

Starting in October 2005, I decided to talk honestly about the business of how I write poetry. There are people who teach how to create poetry, how to format it, how to submit and how publishing in general works. I am not seeing that many people doing work on what you need to do with your brain and mental attitudes to make that stick, grow and then evolve. HI THERE.

Let’s see if we can change that.

I am exhausted. Project 1668 has gone off to submission. This is being written at 8:30pm because this is LITERALLY the first point today I have been able to find the time to do it. This level of work not going to let up now until the end of July and I feel that it needs to be stated, quite categorically, I bought into this 100% last November. I KNEW this would happen. Being tired is utterly expected.

The Plan B mentioned in the image above will become common knowledge Soon [TM] and when it does, I will have effectively fulfilled EVERYTHING that I'd notionally wished for at the start of 2026. When I began writing this series, that was a state of affairs I could not begin to imagine. Now I find myself asking a question that may surprise a few people.

How do I follow this year?

Shouldn't we simply be enjoying the moment and celebrating my successes? If I'm honest, that is currently happening at least three times a week. When there's an Artist's Visit for the Art Trail. When I speak to a certain person on Zoom. When I speak to friends via Signal or Instagram Messages, and when I meet friends at the Gym... all these are celebrations. My life has become satisfying.

I also know exactly how much work this took to accomplish. As a result, the effort required for future planning has to take place now, not when my life goes quiet again. I had a project that I was going to go for this week, but have discovered that the company has links to political nastiness I'm not prepared to entertain. So, there should be other stuff on the table before the work dries up.

This also does not take into account what might take place were I to win or place somewhere unexpectedly, so that's a good place to keep the momentum.

I have some interesting possibilities for submission, some new spaces and a couple of contests where work could be thrown at. The National opens in June and I dunno this year if I should throw my work into that fire again, considering how frustrating a process it has been over the years, but we'll end up forget and submit anyway and the work will turn out be out of date by Easter 2027. There's at least a routine in that which is inescapable.

There are also a number of other ideas floating around which may yet get an outing, and next week I am supposed to be doing an artist's residency at the Local Arts Centre, which they have not yet confirmed. I may swing round there tomorrow just to check I am expected... and if that is a Thing, I could do a lot worse than spend seven days there laying all the potential projects on the table...

There ought to be an actual plan for past November though, without doubt.

This week has seen a submission acceptance as well, so we are on track for a piece published every month in 2026. That's a streak that would be fantastic to keep up, and feels to me like this continues to be the correct direction to travel in. Hopefully, as time goes on, we'll have a better idea of what is going on and which parts of these new processes require more leaning into than others.

I may also this year finally manage to lift my own body weight \o/.