Excitement, inspiration and EXCESSIVE CAPSLOCK USE. Hello 2012.
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012Happy New Year, ONS readers! Are there any of you left, I wonder? 2011 was a quiet year for One Night Stanzas; a bit of a muddled year. 2012 will be a better one.
As the long-time readers among you will know, ONS started life as a kind of informal how-to Q&A blog for young, inexperienced writers. At the time, I was running Read This Magazine and receiving endless emails from folk asking about all aspects of writing and publishing poetry. I got so tired of being an unpaid email-answering advice service that I stuck it all online instead. For those of you who’ve arrived since then, you can check out the best of ONS: Year One here.
It’s weird looking back at that Year One post and seeing how productive and organised I used to be. A post a day, every day? That seems like insanity, looking back. At around that time I finished my English Literature undergrad degree and went straight into a Creative Writing MSc — I was also working as a private tutor of English, Creative Writing and Drama and living in a tiny attic bedsit (I miss that flat — can I just say, roofgarden! — so much, even now!). I was still running a magazine, and started a small press soon after. I made jewellery and ran a vintage shop. And still had time to go to the pub. Where did that life go?
Fast-forward to 2011 and One Night Stanzas is a barely-updated wasteland. I pop up every so often to talk about the books I’m reading — usually only the ones that have made me feel strongly about something — and to post the odd Procrastination Station. My vintage shop has been “on hiatus” for months, Read This is no more now the editors have all graduated and scattered to the four winds. I gave up on the jewellery thing because I couldn’t handle breaking up typewriters, however broken beyond repair, any more. I have irate poets emailing me constantly, asking to be considered for the Featured Poet posts that haven’t existed for ages, and then sending me snotty call-back emails when I don’t reply. I still don’t reply. I’m reading for a PhD in Creative Writing but I’m barely putting pen to paper. I’m burned out doing a challenging, tiring, rewarding job that I used to love but have come to resent. My friends have all moved away — to different cities, countries, continents — and most of them don’t return my sporadic Facebook messages or texts any more. By the end of the year, I’ve been diagnosed with stress and insomnia: my body is in survival mode, shutting down bits of itself to try and keep the rest going. 2011 has felt like walking along a mineshaft: it’s got increasingly dark and narrow as I’ve gone along; I lost the coal seam but just kept wandering.
Thankfully, I haven’t wandered far enough that I can’t find a way to climb back out again. I feel like I’ve woken up, and looking in the mirror I’m pretty shocked to find that I’ve turned into one of those people who lives to work, who has become their job and can’t find the energy to even think about anything else. A person who gets up at 6am, goes to work, gets home by 6pm and collapses in front of the TV, then goes to sleep… and I never even noticed it happening.
So no more. I don’t care what everyone else thinks of New Year’s Resolutions: I make them. Usually in a kind of sneaky, abstract way. This year I am only making one:
IN 2012, I AM GOING TO RECLAIM MY LIFE.
One Night Stanzas is coming back, with a vengeance. It’s not going to be a writing advice blog again, nor is it going to continue to be the Serious Poetry and Writing blog I tried to turn it into more recently. It’s just going to be MY blog, and I’m going to fill it with whatever I fancy. So I’m guessing you should brace yourself for owls, tea, typewriters, tattoos, cute animals, cool Youtube videos… and some poetry. If you want serious ruminations on the latest petty poetry squabbles (e.g. OMG your anthology sucks and you’re clearly STOOPID!), or if you want your collection to be reviewed by someone who definitely won’t use excessive CAPSLOCK and the word “awesome,” then you should probably go elsewhere. But if you fancy sticking around and watching while I try to re-inject some positive, fun, POETIC energy into my life, while I remember what it means to get properly excited and inspired again, then fantastic. You rock. Watch this space.
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