All signed off and (no)where to go

Hello. My name is Shanna. I am a poet without a manuscript.

Signed off on the final final final cut of Down Spooky last week and am expecting sample pages from the designer in a few weeks. (If you are keeping score, there were four more cuts since my last post on this topic: "Cherry" (that one hurt), "Avalanche," "Non-Ultra Joy" (had waffled on both of those) & "Uberdesigned Happy Juice" (oh well). "Under This Umbrella Is Another Umbrella" was almost cut, but I just couldn't stand to see it go. So it's down to a lean, mean 45.)

All that's left to do is look at page samples, then proofs, then they'll print some galleys for potential reviewers, and then they'll print the book itself. Next week and during AWP and beyond I will be back to booking the reading tour planned for October. Wait for the remaining blurbs.

The MS formerly known as Brand New Insects is still intact, mostly. But I haven't been sending it out. That beauty queen is retiring. She's waved enough. She enjoyed her status as a runner-up and is now getting out of the pageant game gracefully. She's said this is what she wants, and who am I to argue? She's the one who has to endure body tape and hairspray fumes and the constant trotting out and twirling on the runway. I'm just the stylist.

So I'm entering new territory. For the last dozen years or so I have been actively revising one or two manuscripts--or more properly, as Nester would call them, Word documents. Suddenly, there's nothing left to tinker with or reorder.

I've got plans for the next big project (that I don't feel quite ready to start yet) and some new collaborations working, and some chapbooks by other people to produce, and naturally other books still to edit and design for Soft Skull. I'm retiring from LIT with this issue too. But I don't really know what will be next. It's liberating. It's unnerving. Page one is blank.