It’s Been A Long Time . . .

. . .since we rock and rolled. So long, in fact, that my hair color has changed from purple to blue and then to silver. Apologies to anyone who might have missed me. It was April the last time I posted something new. I’m not including July’s essay “Reflections on 37 Years of Marriage” because that was, essentially, a reposting of the essay I wrote a year earlier. It appears that I have written nothing and that I have basically given up on The Book I Read podcast, the last episode of which appeared in March. So what gives? Why so much silence? What has Michael Jarmer Writer Guy been up to?

The period has not been completely fallow or unproductive–that’s the good news. I’ve been working pretty diligently on an album of new music with my friend Adam from Vermont–a long distance creative endeavor that entails the two of us sharing studio tracks back and forth through the miracle of the internet. Our first single under the moniker Project MA should be released into streaming services in the next month or so, and an album should follow shortly thereafter–or another single, and another after that, and another after that, until an album takes shape.

I’ve been playing a lot of drums. I think I’m getting good.

Because for the first time in my life I can afford the time for the job, I have been circulating my writing to magazines and contests and presses, a clerical task that writers must undertake, that has, until now, completely eluded me. I signed up for Duotrope. I’m subscribing to the LitNotice service So I am making submissions and collecting rejection notices in earnest and keeping the fingers crossed that at some point my writing will find the right readers. So a lot of the time I may have spent generating blog material has been spent reading and revising various writings for submission. Out of the last two years of National Poetry Writing Month, I have put together two chapbook manuscripts of poetry. I have been chipping slowly away at a revision of last year’s NANOWRIMO novel, and I have an assortment of other finished pieces of fiction and a recently finished memoir that I’ve been circulating as well. So–not a ton of new material, but nevertheless, a productive and creative time.

I am currently gearing up for NANOWRIMO 2023. I participated last year in this mad endeavor to write 50,000 words of fiction in a single month and I was successful. At first I thought I might use November this year to work on more revisions for what I wrote last year, but the rush of a generative month sounded like a richer experience to me. So I’ve decided that revisions have to happen outside of November and April and that I want to try again the 50,000 word goal. I feel a little bit more prepared this year in that I have an idea that’s been brewing, an idea that I’ve got a little bit of a head start on–so that makes me feel more confident. Last year, even in the days leading up to November 1st, I was pretty much clueless. Clueless, but still eventually “successful.” I have found over the last decade or so that I am a writer who benefits immensely from these kinds of forced creativity experiences. Maybe it is the perennial good student in me that loves an assignment. It’s a huge motivator. And making it public somehow, announcing it to friends, posting the endeavor on the socials, or posting the word count on the NaNoWriMo website–these things keep me in the game–even though I know that no one is holding their breath, and no one would begrudge me for bugging out.

Don’t ask me why I don’t post the results of NaNoWriMo like I do each April with NaPoWriMo. I don’t think I know the answer. I could guess. Perhaps an early draft of fiction is a far uglier thing. I can write a poem–and it might be ugly at first, but I find it possible to mess with it a bit over the course of the day so that it arrives in a place where I am no longer embarrassed to share it. And because it’s a tinier nugget, even if I am not terribly happy with it, it still seems like less of a risk. I think my serious poet friends would probably hate this. Most of the poets I know (who take their work seriously) would never publish a poem on a blog site on the day that it was penned. At least–I don’t know any poets who do this. I do it rather shamelessly. But I can’t do it with my fiction–or at least, I prefer not to. Am I wrong? Am I a silly person? Feel free to chime in.

In the meantimes, I will try not to be such a stranger. Welcome back and thank you for reading.