December 17th.

Happy Birthday Kel. 

One of my oldest and dearest friends. We both rotated around the same circles in high school, tethered by the gravitational force of mutual friends and bonded by humor. I’m grateful for our many years of comradery and kinship. 

December 17th is a day that always seems to want to get noticed. I don’t know if it is a self-fulfilling prophecy, though, because I have made such a big deal about it with all my lamentations over the years. 

Today I had time to pour over some notes that were sent to me by a writing mentor who I have reached out to for a favor. I had asked him for a blurb for my forthcoming book and what I received was more than I had bargained for. He not only sent me the blurb, but also additional suggestions to improve my forthcoming book.

After rolling his comments around my brain for a few days, and also consulting with one of my most trusted advisors, I’m ready to accept the suggested changes. What was once the most brilliant notion I had ever had, needs to be left in the past. This too, is a part of an ongoing evolution. A growth process that never ceases to amaze me.

You see, when I first put together the poems that make up the majority of the book, the inspiration was a concept from my past. It had come to me in a flash during the last in-person residency I had in my MFA, which was coincidentally just before the pandemic hit in 2020. That was to be my last semester in the program, and the one where we form a manuscript as a part of our masters thesis. Mine was titled “punctuated equilibrium” and was based on a theory of the evolutionary biology. 

It was a term I learned about while I was still married to my first husband. His major in college was environmental, geology, or something like that. I was always fascinated by the term and the theory so when it came to putting a title to my first full body of work, it just fit.

I was a woman experiencing her own punctuated equilibrium, pushed into change by a series of major events. And as the theory goes, after a cataclysmic event, a species must evolve, or it will perish. Part of my evolution as a writer was influenced by what I had learned in that MFA program. 

I have been working on that same manuscript for the last four years. Many of the poems have continued to go through revision and, for better or worse, I made it my personal goal to get as many of them as possible published in individual journals. 

That goal turned into an obsession and had replaced any motivation I had to write something new. I exaggerate, of course, but it is true that I have not written a ton in the last couple of years. But now that I have finally found a publisher for my book… I have a bit of faith that releases me from the burden of being the primary caretaker for the beast that is this book. 

But I digress, because my point is not about the new writing. Or the process that I’ve gone through. Those are other posts that are itching to be written. 

My aim here is to describe how good it feels to let go of that original title in favor of one that more accurately depicts the themes of the collection. I’m not ready to reveal it just yet because I’m still thinking… always thinking… And will know for sure very soon what it will be instead. 

It’s also a true statement that the chapter titles inside the book were closely connected to the main title and the aesthetic I was going for. So those will probably be changing as well and that is, somehow a tougher task. Maybe because my mentor didn’t give me any suggestions. He said that I should look to other poems within each chapter for lines or titles that could be used instead,. Like I said, I have more thinking to do.

Needless to say, the simultaneous acts of holding on and letting go feel pretty good. 

December 17th has historically been noteworthy, and I am holding on to all the positive memories and letting go of the ones that are not. To have the ability to do that is a gift. And it’s a gift that no one else can give me but myself. 

Today I feel happy and positive. Sometimes I use the mantra “everything is going to be OK” to soothe myself when anxiety and sadness are dominating my feelings. But today, the phrase “everything is going to be OK” is something I’m smiling about because I feel it in my core.  

It’s a great place to be as we head into these final few weeks of 2024. 

2025 is somewhat unknown but it will be what I make of it. And no matter what, unless the sun goes, nova, that book is going to become a real thing.

I think that’s a good place for me to cut and run today. 

Thanks for visiting, and thanks for reading.

Peace and love, always, 

~Miss SugarCookie