Confession Tuesday: The Making of a Manuscript Edition

Dear Reader, 

It's been over a year since my last confession. I am slightly out of practice and am slipping through the door late on a Tuesday evening, then pressing the button on Wednesday. I am making the sign of the cross with sparklers and cheese sticks. I am opening the confession door and carrying my manuscript inside...


I confess I have been working for years on my current manuscript. I have watched my manuscript morph in front of me, moving from a waltz to the current of waves.

I confess I did not send it out because I had pinned "perfectionism" to my shirt and wore it like a badge.

I did not send it out because I felt it wasn't done, because I didn't give myself enough time to work on it, that I allowed my job to be a greedy child stealing all my Kit-Kats of time. Actually, I gave my Kit-Kats away, then complained I had no Kit-Kats. 

I confess I had a title, changed the title, then spent over a year seeking a title.

I confess procrastination came in years that look like productivity.

I confess I have become less anxious about "publishing a book" and more interested in finding a press that is right for me and my manuscript. 

I confess at my writing residency I said, "I am writing the best poems of my life" and meant it, unironically. 

I actually do not know what "the best poems of my life" look like, but sometimes it's more of a feeling than a fact. 

This is what I tell my poet-self when she's in that euphophic phase with a manuscript. That said, I do believe I've done some good work, and while as a perfectionist, this can be hard to say, I'm become better at it.


Amen.



~ Kells ________________ 

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