Another month, another … month

Here we are at the beginning of the second third of the year. And I had such plans!

I was going to have the manuscript of book #3 ready to go out to my readers (err, another month? Or maybe two?), I was going to have all my teaching for 2026 booked and ready (umm…), I was going to have the garden looking magnificent, and I was going to be settled and happy and writing like a writerly writer.

Reality, what did I ever do to you?

On the plus side: I am writing. Not as much as I need to be. But I will get there. And NaPoWriMo went well and produced a lot of really good poems, even if they were all other people’s poems. It counts for karma, right? And I do often go back to my own prompts, so they are all there, ready and waiting. That’s got to be good.

Plus I’ve been doing a heap of submitting, and had a series of really great acceptances earlier in the year – a piece chosen for The Fib Review, another for the May issue of Landfall Tauraka, another coming out in Rattle 92, a piece in the next issue of Meniscus, and I’ve also got another piece coming out in Rattle’s forthcoming Best Of The Ekphrastic Challenge chapbook! So 2026 was off to a roaring good start!

Aaaaaaand then I got three rejections in a row … in the space of four days.

Ouch is one way of describing it.

But today the sun is shining, I have all my class prep for Hagley done and ready to go, and a poem that I thought was finished and slightly disappointed with I’ve cracked right back open and am deeply immersed in the reimagining of (am I doing the right thing? —too soon to tell. Is this just another form of procrastination, albeit one dressed in the garb of productivity – an impressive trick –? —pass) is something I’m feeling really pulled into. So some reasons for hoping that I will actually be able to get on with being a writer.

And maybe book three will be ready … soon? Sometime? If I don’t completely lose my courage yet again?