Waning Confidence

I felt good this morning. Really good. So good that I decided to tackle a task so Herculean that I'd been putting it off for so long.

I decided to chop several poems out of my manuscript and slice up my eight-section long poem. All this makes manuscript version 3.0.

I've taken out stuff that seemed unrelated to the collection's strongest narrative. The long poem, which appears in manuscript version 2.0's first section now has sections sprinkled over three sections. I felt the long poem was too loud with all of its sections together and that by distributing the pieces over the course of the manuscript, a reader can build up a relationship with the themes and ideas contained in each long poem section.

But . . . now that I see how short the sections have become, I'm a little worried. Prior to my cuts, the first section was about twenty-one pages. It's now thirteen pages. I haven't complete all my cuts, but for reference, the page total of 2.0 is 75 pages which is too long. I'm trying to get the manuscript to 55-65 pages.

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The good news is that those poems that were cut could fit into another project that I'm working on, thereby boosting the numbers of poems for that particular collection.

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Finals week. I'm collecting my first batch of portfolios tomorrow. I'm so ready for the summer. I'll be done with everything, including grading, by Thursday.

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Current Spin:

Iron and Wine has a new CD out with a bunch of B-sides and covers. This gem is on the newest CD.