This was the year I was going to finish writing my middle grade novel. It’s only March. I tell myself there’s still time. Yet, somehow the universe keeps placing opportunities for establishing myself as a poet in my path. The moment one anthology is completed and out into the world, I’m invited to participate in another. An invitation to write a haiku prompts me to search for calls for submissions to magazines focused on haiku and shorter poems. I get my act together and start submitting poems to different magazines that have been on my radar for far too long.
This is wonderful, of course, and I’m thrilled that momentum is building and my words are finding homes. Maybe I’ll get around to writing a novel this year and maybe I won’t, but no matter the form my writing takes, I will keep on writing.
Poetry has always stirred my soul. I began scribbling poems when I was just ten years old. But somehow, I never really considered myself a poet. A writer, yes. A poet, no.
I wonder what it is that stopped me from claiming this role for myself. Why did a career as a novelist seem more attainable than one as a poet? Why did I shut down this dream before it could sprout tendrils?
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