State Of The Blog: Doubts

No poem tonight. I am taking time to run a D&D adventure for my oldest son. Planning for that, and working on painting has taken most of the day.

But here’s a quick update on my doubts:

I am a little over twenty months into this project, and if I’m being honest, I'm feeling pretty low. While I know this writing practice has helped me develop my style, and more than ever I am writing poems I actually like, and while I am tremendously grateful for the very few of you who read and return to read, I can’t help but feel disheartened by what little readership this blog gets week by week and month by month. 

I have come to the conclusion that either (1) my poetry and other writing royally suck, (2) nobody cares about poetry anymore, or (3) all of the above.

One of my poems has been published in a recent anthology of Suffolk County Long Island Poets. I am waiting for my copies to arrive. I’m excited to have been published, but this kind of vanity press charges its poets for copies of their own work, and won’t get much attention outside of the circle of poets who published and then purchased the anthology. 

I have entertained the idea of self-publishing a chapbook of poems and art as a zine, but have had some difficulty working up motivation to continue the project with such low readership here. Social media feels like an increasingly poor way to advertise for the arts though, so a paper zine with a somewhat wider distribution, and possible electronic distribution, may be exactly what I need. Anyone who reads this blog will find out here first if that happens.

Ultimately, I’ll continue posting here until I don’t. I don't see stopping this practice any time soon. I only hope people will read, and share, and find some value here.

Be good to each other.

~MS