Just the Fact, Ma'am: The Statistics of a Manuscript

So I have spent the last week proofing my manuscript.

While proofing I noticed a few things I thought I'd share here.

There are 46 poems in this collection.  Of those 46 poems, 34 of them have been previously published in literary journals (73.9 %).

The manuscript is alphabetized and organized into 3 sections:

Section 1 has 16 poems (titles that begins A-K)
Section 2 has 14 poems (titles from L-Q)
Section 3 has 16 poems (titles from R-Z)

Thanks to WordCounter, I learned the top three words in my manuscript are:

say
want
God

(which is kind of poem itself and pretty much the core of the collection).

Other words that are used quite a bit--

letter
father
word
love
without
star
year
white
body
found
open
ask
night
maybe
blue
hand
Emily
room
call
appear
never
broken
mother
sky

***I was amused to find I used the word "love" so much because it's one of those words they "teach" you not to use in poetry workshops.  I love to use the word love.

I was surprised I used the word "body" so much.  Same with "white."  But "white" is so Emily Dickinson, I was happy with that find.  "Find," another word I was surprised I used.

There's a lot about universe in here, even nebulas, so I wasn't surprised with "star" or "sky."  "Ask" surprised me, how did I work that word in so many times?

~

Other notes--

When the book is published in October (10-10-10), it looks as if it will be about 97 or 98 pages.

The collection is not dedicated to one specific person.

The first poem mentions crumb cake and the penultimate poem mentions crumb cake.  I cannot tell you the last lines in the collection as that will hopefully be a gift to you when/if you read it, but I can tell you the first and last poems mention "passion" (not the Mel Gibson movie) and have references to Alice in Wonderland in a couple ways along with Emily Dickinson if you're paying attention.  ;-)

I do hope if any of you get this book, you enjoy it.