Puntitas had a small but important revelation concerning the almond poem and her poetry in general. While she’s liked the idea and the overall shape of the piece, she’s had trouble finishing it. The problem hasn’t been trouble moving from Point A to Point B or trouble resolving a technical issue. It’s been lack of motivation, which is odd since Puntitas is generally interested in writing this poem.

She’s noticed that this lack of enthusiasm is sometimes overcome by a little formal poetry, either reading or writing it, so she started writing another sonnet, and she spent some time on the web Googling around for other forms and for articles on forms.

Two stayed with her, and now that she wants to cite them properly, she can’t find them. Ah, well …. One was an interview, and the other was the forward for an anthology of formal poems. Both talked a lot about sound.

The first said that a poem is different from prose in that the former seeks to create an emotional effect, which is reinforced by the sound of the language, sibilants for soft soothing poems and plosives for capturing terse, harder pieces. He used many of the terms high school English teachers quiz their students on: assonance, alliteration, caesura.

The other said that the problem with free verse is that much of it is actually prose with arbitrary line breaks, prose and poetry being distinguished thus: prose is stressed roughly every ten syllables while poetry is stressed roughly every four. He talked about other things as well, most especially the line break and the need for concreteness not only in the imagery but also in the experience or moment described. But he returned to the sound of the piece, echoing the first writer’s thoughts about the connection between the emotional impact and the aural experience.

Puntitas’ first revelation was that her almond poem was stressed like prose. When she went back into the text to stress it more poeticly, she discovered that she was more motivated about working on it because the piece sounded like a poem again, and she realized that she is very aware of the way her work sounds. This is in part because of her writerly esthetic, having grown up on formal poetry, lived around songs, and listened to, officially studied, and worked around the rhythms of speech, but it is also due to the way Puntitas writes, typing to the echo of a robotic synthetic voice and considering a piece to be finished when she stops being aware of that voice. When a draft isn’t working or when it contains lots of research, she gets stuck, and she often finds that what produces her stuckedness is a prosaic rhythm, which she either modifies to something more poetic or emphasizes for something prosy.

Her second revelation was that she isn’t clear about how important sound should be in her own work. Some of her poems are rich in sound, working hard to reinforce the content aurally. Others strive for a starker soundscape, letting the content carry the burden of impact. Puntitas own impulses are toward valuing sound, but she wonders whether that isn’t an old-fashion tendency, since much of the poetry she reads has a prosier feel.

Puntitas reads _The Elegance of the Hedgehog_ by M. Barbery, _Dirty_ by M. Hart, _Hell House_ by R. Matheson, _siete años secuestrado por las FARC_ by L. E. Perez, and _The Link_ By C. Tudge. She has decided to finish books she’s started. Three or four are left on the metaphorical stack.

Puntitas has received two more rejections since her last post. She didn’t have much hopes for either (well, a little hope for one), so the news wasn’t very disappointing. She did entertain the thought of assigning an acceptance probability rating to each submission, but entertained it briefly on considering that such ratings would only highlight her inability to predict the likelihood of success. Puntitas is no stranger to self-flagellation, but she isn’t into cesspits of despair.

She missed some manuscript deadlines, the books to have been sent out by Saturday, but she’ll send them out tomorrow anyway on the assumption that editors will want the money enough to accept them. Her excuse of the day is that she was having serious trouble sleeping for much of last month and couldn’t think clearly enough to finish the revisions and editing she had in mind, then was suddenly overtaken by sleep the last few days. Even now, she’d rather be sleeping than typing though dinner is still a couple of hours away.

Today’s poetic efforts have centered around reorganizing the poems in the books. In one book, she has moved two poems in one section, moved one poem in another, and removed two poems in a third. In the other book, she’s thinking more work will be needed. Two sections make sense, one sort of does, but the third doesn’t at all. She’s thinking about changing the title of the book, but hasn’t quite figured out how to organized the two iffy sections.

Since her last post, Puntitas has also been working on two new poems. Well, she hasn’t made much progress at all with the almond poem (waiting to be less sleepy), but she did start another one, a Shakespearean sonnet on a subject she’d written about before (she destroyed the previous poem because it didn’t really do what she had intended).

She’s thinking she really does need to finish up a couple other drafts and maybe strengthen the pieces in one section. She’s thinking she can’t believe she thought her books were done last year.

Puntitas reads _Amy, Come Home_ by B. Michaels and _Wicked Game_ by L. Jackson. These were a nice Halloween break. Today she resumed the other stuff where she left off.

Puntitas has received two rejections since her last post. One was for the tanka, a short formulaic note with her first name in the salutation, but nothing else to suggest it was written especially to her. The other one was more encouraging.

It was for a group of poems Puntitas sent out last May. It appears to be a surprisingly positive standard rejection with a personal note imbedded. The text reads as follows:

Dear Puntitas (last name included):

Thank you for sending us your poems (listed by title).

Hello Puntitas (first name only),

Please do accept my apology for taking so long with your poems. It was not that they were languishing, but that they were under consideration. While these particular poems were not what we were looking for, I would be pleased to see more of your work in the near future.

Thanks and hope to hear from you again real soon,

Poetry Editor, (name of) Journal

Unfortunately this particular piece was not a right fit for the journal, but we were very impressed by your writing. We hope that you will feel encouraged by this short note and send us something else.

We look forward to reading more.

Sincerely,

The Editors

Puntitas is very happy. She would have been happier if she’d been accepted, of course, but this is good enough for now.

Puntitas reads _What Came Before He Shot Her_ by Elizabeth George. She is still reading _Siete años secuestrado por las FARC_ And _The Link_. Both are interesting, but the George is quite the page turner.

Since Puntitas’ new postal scale should arrive some time next week or so, she decided to piddle away part of her afternoon by reading up on first-class postage prices of the United States:

http://www.usps.com/prices/first-class-mail-prices.htm

(Puntitas really will update her blogroll links between now and January 1.)

Wow, Puntitas had clearly underestimated the complexities of postage calculations and the specific stresses put upon the American postal employee, whose job is it to keep track of it all.

Previously, Puntitas thought that postcards of a maximum length and width were mailed at a fixed rate of X while envelopes were delivered at a rate of Y per ounce. She had a vague notion that large envelopes, the ones that are the size of a half sheet of letter writing paper or larger, had a higher postage minimum than other envelopes, but it was one of those nebulous and possibly mistaken notions based on the coincident circumstance that such envelopes usually hold more pieces of paper.

Now she discovers that she was right about the postcard, more or less: it takes 28¢ to mail a postcard that is 3.5×5 to 4.25×6 inches in size, provided that it weighs less than 1 oz., has a thickness that falls between 0.007 and 0.016 inches, and is addressed conventionally in landscape position.

But she was completely misinformed when it comes to letters, large envelopes, and packages (Puntitas book-length manuscripts, when combined into a single mailing, may actually be packages). Yes, size does matter where envelopes are concerned, and so does girth, heft, flaccidity, and degree of conventionality in terms of general dimensions and weight. Who wouldn’t have guessed that postmasters have traditionally been male?

Puntitas had to read the page several times to familiarize herself with all the esoteric details. She has no complaints about the rates themselves. They seem reasonable enough. At least they do at this point, while Puntitas has no real way of knowing how much her manuscripts weigh. Her neuroses center around all the factors involved in coming up with the right amount.

Hmm, Puntitas just realized she doesn’t always figure postage into her expenses.

Puntitas reads _First Comes Marriage_ by M Balogh.

A rejection sure can take the wind out of the old sails. Puntitas was feeling very writerly and accomplished all week. She revised, pondered, experimented. She had a positive workshop with a friend, who really liked her narrative essay and gave her helpful suggestions. She had an idea for a new poem. Then she received yesterday’s rejection, which was especially disappointing because she thought it was the most likely of the journals to take her work.

Today Puntitas caught up on email, had lunch with a friend, floated around the house doing very little of consequence, spoke to two other friends on the phone, finished the fudge in the kitchen. She thought about working on the essay, thought about working on her tables of contents, thought about revising her resume for a couple of possible jobs. But she didn’t do any of those things, and she didn’t turn off her computer because the week’s activity had gotten her into the habit of writing, and not writing was making her restless.

So Puntitas decided she’d do a little writing anyway–start that poem that had been rolling around in her head, the one with the ending, but no beginning or sense of voice. She wrote a few short lines that didn’t grab her, a vague description that didn’t do much even on the literal level. She thought about them to figure out what to do next, And she realized that the items she described were nested, like Russian dolls. That was the first metaphor she came up with—Russian nesting dolls, which is physical enough and universally understood, but not really part of Puntitas’ experience, more a literary cliche. She asked herself what other mundane thing nested or stacked naturally, and she thought about the almond tree she grew up with, the nut inside a woody shell inside a suede-like hull. She added that to her draft, only she didn’t know the name of the hull, So she went to Wikipedia to read about almonds.

Wikipedia is a beautiful thing.

Puntitas learned lots of interesting things about almonds. They’re native to the Middle East and Mediterranean. The wild varieties have pink blossoms and are poisonous, even lethal in large enough amounts. the domesticated varieties have white flowers and are safe to eat. The almonds themselves are technically not nuts, but a drupe. If the shell has been removed, they’re shelled, and if the shell is present, they’re unshelled—the most amusing part of the entry hands down. They’re related to the apricot, And forty-two percent of the world’s production is cultivated in Puntitas’ home state.

She read the entire entry mostly as an avoidance mechanism, but when she returned to her draft to properly name the shell and hull, she discovered she could use these details to shape the poem, to develop the speaker and set up the conceit. She wrote two expository stanzas and thought about what images and information they would lead to. Then she stopped, with the plan that she would continue tomorrow. She doesn’t think this poem will draft itself, but she does think that it will allow her to discover its rhythm and help her write it.

Puntitas is sleepy now. It is time for bed.

Puntitas reads _The Link_ by C. Tudge and _first Comes Love_ by M. Balogh.

Puntitas received another rejection today, a form email beginning, “Dear Writer,” from a journal she thought would probably like her work. The poems she sent were strong, and the audience seemed ideal.

Very disappointing.

Puntitas reads _The Link_ by C. Tudge, which is really short and interesting, but slow-going somehow.

In her many wanderings on the web, Puntitas found a journal that publishes Senryu and kyoka. Since she didn’t know what the forms were, Puntitas did some Googling:

Senryu is a haiku that comments on society rather than nature. In English, the form is a three-line poem divided into five, seven, and five syllables. It does not contain a nature word, and the tone is reminiscent of the grumpy old guys on The Muppets or of any gathering of Puntitas and her collection of displaced friends.

Kyoka is a tanka with senryu convictions, the English form having five lines divided into five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables.

Since Puntitas still isn’t comfortable with very short forms or capable of saying anything succinctly, she decided to turn both of her twenty-five-word short shorts into tanka. Surprisingly, having a line break to organize ideas around was really freeing. Puntitas was able to cut words and set up images more easily than when she had nothing but punctuation to work with. She likes both poems (which are even shorter now) better than she did before though she is not confident enough about them yet to make firm decisions about including them in her books.

She did submit them to the senryu and kyoka journal. If the work is rejected as favorably as before, she will probably add them to the books. If not, she will keep working on them, possibly expanding them though only a little. What Puntitas thinks she did well is to pick subjects small enough for the form.

Puntitas reads _The Link_ by C. Tudge and _What Was Lost_ by C. O’Flynn.

Puntitas’ single writerly act of the day has been to move two poems in one of the books to reflect the change she made to the chapbook. As she read over one of the tables of contents to make sure it had updated properly, she realized that some sections make more sense than others, so one possible mission this evening is to rearrange the poems in the books.

She may put it off, however, because she’d like to add at least two new pages to each book. She’s got a couple of drafts, but she isn’t sure whether/where they’d really fit in, and she’s had one idea (complete with closing) that has been eager to get out on the page, but she hasn’t settled on the tone or the beginning. She also has a long poem that is more finished than not, which would really pad out the pages, but she isn’t sure that it will be ready enough by next week, which is when she wants to send manuscripts out. Whatever she does, Puntitas needs to hurry up and decide.

Oh, yes, there was one other writerly event. Puntitas noticed that one poem was one page and two lines long. She tinkered with the line spacing around the epigram, and now that poem and the book it’s in are both one page shorter, Making each collection fifty pages in length.

Puntitas reads _The Link_ by C. tudge and _What Was Lost_ by C. O’Flynn.

Thanks to a recent bout of insomnia and to a slow work week, Puntitas has been putting a lot of time into revising her narrative essay. She was surprised to read it today and discover that minor changes would fill in a lot of gaps, hint at back-story, support themes, unify apparently disparate elements, and address many of the evils she had worried about last night. She was satisfied enough with the day’s revisions to send the draft on to a friend for feedback.

Puntitas really needs an outside reader for this piece since her emotional response to it on first reading tells her she’s still too close to the subject to gauge the work objectively. The person she sent it to isn’t an ideal reader in that she shares a characteristic with Puntitas that is likely to filter her interpretation, but Puntitas wants to hear what she has to say anyway because Puntitas values her skills as a reader and because their shared characteristic makes her a good person to discuss the subject with. After their conversation, Puntitas plans to go through another round of revision. Then she may ask another friend, who does not share the characteristic, to comment as well, but that will depend on how she’s feeling about the piece at the time.

Inviting others to experience a foreign world is a hard task. Puntitas hadn’t thought about how hard until recently, when she read Dry by Augusten Burroughs, a memoir about a gay man going through rehab and trying to maintain sobriety despite the illness and death of a friend and former lover.

Puntitas was able to identify with much of the book. The narrator’s friendships reminded her of her own friendships. His experiences with addiction and recovery connected her with the people she knows who are in their addictions or recoveries as well as with aspects of her job. Specific scenes and moods evoked parallel episodes in Puntitas own life and in that of her friends’.

One part of the book, however, that she was less able to connect to was a certain portion of the gay story line. Puntitas isn’t gay or particularly oriented to finding a life partner of any type, so love stories are generally interesting as curiosities (hence Puntitas’ fascination with formula romances). This one was more interesting than usual in that it was about someone who has to “fall out of love” and maintain a friendship with a person who doesn’t reciprocate. The story drew Puntitas less when the former lover develops AIDS and dies, prompting turmoil in the narrator, which eventually leads to relapse.

Stories about terminal illness are generally hard to pull off because they tend toward the sentimental or sensationalistic, because characters’ reactions follow a few expected paths, and because the death, which comes at or right before the climax, leads to a handful of predictable events. Puntitas has an especially hard time with stories about women with cancer and (A) big families or (B) close friends.

The few books Puntitas has read by contemporary gay writers have tended to figure a character (major or minor) with AIDS (often in its more advanced stage). For Puntitas, who is an outside reader, this feels like a cliché, but she suspects that, for the gay writers and readers, the AIDS character is an acknowledgement of someone who is part of their landscape and that other characters’ responses to him are significant markers within the community.

Puntitas’ own narrative essay risks the same kind of resistance that characterized her reading of Burroughs AIDS story line. The piece is about exclusion. That will be clear to anyone who reads it. But because so much memoir about this topic centers on exclusion, readers may not bother to tease out the subtleties of the type of exclusion being described. The nuances aren’t buried enough to actually need teasing out. But the readers’ expectation and lack of direct experience or real empathy dull their perceptions. This is why it will be important for Puntitas to have outside readers.

Puntitas reads _The Link_ by C. Tudge.

Puntitas deleted half of the contents of her nonfiction prose folder. This was hard. In page-length alone, she was two thirds of the way to a collection, and in terms of quality, the pieces she deleted weren’t bad. She deleted them anyway because

 they were incomplete.
 they needed a lot of work.
 the style/voice was so annoying that Puntitas couldn’t stand the thought of working on them even to fix that.
 They covered the same couple of themes and handled them in the same way.
 The settings and characters were so uniformly the same that the pieces blended even for Puntitas.
 No unifying theme suggested itself in terms of how the individual pieces can be combined into a collection.
 Nothing jumped out as far as how to reshape the individual pieces if they were to be revised.

Of the six pieces left, only two will definitely remain essays. A third, the one she has been working on, will most likely also continue to be an essay. The last three, however, will likely evolve into short stories though one of these last can go either way.
Though Puntitas understands that essays are about ideas while stories are about characters, the distinction gets harder for her to sort through when she considers the memoir with the hammer-and-nails part of her brain. One piece is clearly about an idea, which is really only described in the current draft, so that piece will continue to be an essay. Two other pieces cover both characters and ideas, but because Puntitas wants readers to know the experiences actually happened to at least one person and probably others, those pieces will also almost certainly continue to be essays. The other three pieces can be revised to emphasize either the character or the idea, each type of revision calling for more or less the same amount of work.

What she finally does with the pieces will depend on more pragmatic factors. In part it will be based on what the material suggests once she settles down to work on it. In part it will depend on how many pages she needs to complete her fiction anthology. In part it will depend on whether a piece is published as a particular genre. Puntitas is not above sending prose out as fiction if it can pass for it. She doesn’t expect to do the opposite because she doesn’t believe in claiming an experience that isn’t hers, But she also knows that we don’t behave according to our ethics as consistently as we would like to think.

Puntitas reads _the Link_ by C. Tudge.