Feeling ambitious, and other various nonsense.

Good afternoon, readers!

We had a very productive work shop tonight. Abbey, Rachael, and I made a goal to submit to two writing contests by the end of the summer. I feel really good about this! I will have to write 12 new poems! Unfortunately, I can't publish them here, so that they meet the basic requirements. I normally write that many poems in a year, not a couple months, but I think I'm up to the challenge! I'm excited to work for a goal, excited about the prospects of being published again, and excited about pushing myself to put out that level of content (hopefully quality).

We also decided to do a reading in mid-September, to showcase our work. Keep an eye out! It will be a reading and picnic in the park (a twirling maenad picnic, if Abbey has anything to say about it!) I'm going to start working on a flyer as soon as possible.

I'm so excited.

I'm also working on my first poetry compilation, which I imagine I'll self-publish, called A Record of Night: 14 poems. This compilation will contain several of my favorite poems.

I've also been reading You're a Writer (So Start Acting Like One) by Jeff Goins. It's inspired me to keep the ball rolling, as it were. There were several tips that I'm not buying whole-sale, but the book has been really good, regardless. I don't know if you've noticed, but I changed the layout of my blog, Facebook, and Twitter to the same imagery and the professional photo taken by Pam Roe (an amazing photographer, who I definitely recommend. If you want her info, shoot me an email and I'll send it to you).

One of the things that Jeff talks about really resonated with me. He talks about self identification: do you identify as a writer? Why? Why not? And I realized that the only place I self identified as a writer and a poet is here (and a little on my twitter). He suggests that you (me) own the label. Rock it. So last night I went through all of my social media and updated my profiles to reflect my writerly bio. When I got to Facebook, I started listing all the projects I've worked on, or currently work on, and I had a moment of "Woah! I really am a writer! I guess that's a true thing!"

So I'd like to introduce myself. Hello! I'm Kirstin. I'm a writer.