Category: Poems

Front Cover Sells The Book

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This was the hardest venture… finding an illustrator who could see the exact vision that I had envisioned for my first book. I looked all around, asked friends, coworkers and acquaintances if they knew anyone who could draw, and had experience in graphic designing. Some knew them, but everyone had their own time, and I wasn’t waiting for anyone to do me any favours. Long story short, I could find someone who’s work that drew me in and the rest was history.

I’ll explain further what the colour schemes were, the reasons behind the art, and the symbolisms of each placement.

Get ready for the reveal!

Reasons Why I Wrote a Book of Poems

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Reasons Why I Wrote a Book Of Poems

Reasons Why I Wrote a Book Of Poems

I’ll just start off by saying that this is my first book. It’s a chapbook, so there won’t be a lot of pages. The maximum number of pages there will be is 43 to 44 pages with the sum of 18 poems. I say that range because I’m publishing this on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and there’s an extra page on Barnes & Noble.

The season of last summer was bittersweet for me — things just came and went. My birthday falls in July… another year of life that’s worth celebrating, meanwhile my Uncle’s in the hospital fighting for his with Cancer. Even while I took the week off to celebrate my birthday, it was hard to ignore the fact that this may be it for my Uncle; I didn’t know when, I just knew it would come, and four days after my birthday, he passed away. It seemed to be the finale of that week with my birthday.

Death puts things into perspective. Last year, especially during the summer, I was trying to find myself creative wise. I attempted to practice playing the keyboards (still an ongoing process), painted, sketched, began doing pottery, started singing again, and writing short stories that eventually turned into poetry. 

Growing up, I was always fond of poetry. I just didn’t know how to write it. It gets a bad rap for being a snobby form of creative writing, with the stereotype of having to bring a dictionary to look up fancy words hard to pronounce and intimidate many. Also, there’s that stereotype of having to rhyme per sentence and paragraph, which is beyond false. Some of the best and most notable poets barely rhymed in their poems (Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, etc.). The misconception of feeling out of place for the reader, creates the imposter syndrome not appealing to the general crowd. However, through trauma, I finally got it.

All these pent-up frustrations of why I made it feel as if I couldn’t breathe. Anxiety’s a bitch for real. There were times where I felt like I couldn’t breathe, over hyperventilating, other times it was just pure worrying. I’d worry about when and where I would have the seizure. Would it be at work? At home? While I’m out for a run, or worst event full of people? A concert, the movies, crossing the street? What about at the groceries? It was no longer me being afraid of the nocturnal seizures that I’ve had before. All thoughts let to my demise. Just trying to navigate this change in my life has been an uphill battle. Most days are good. I release the frustrations through journaling, being outdoors, going for a run, laughing, spending time with family and friends, and just being creative, but I felt mad and sad.

So, with the evolution of my writing, I journaled. The journaling inspired me to write short stories… specifically horror themed stories, in which led to writing poems. I know that’s an ironic order— from horror short stories to poems, but this was the case I couldn’t control the journey.

I didn’t want to just start off by the struggles of being black, because we all know that struggle. Despite it, I wanted to state the message of the struggles of mental health, having an invisible disability, being a woman while being black. It was a message that we’re human and we struggle too.

I’m 90 percent finished with this book. I have the cover-page; I’ve reedited the manuscript while cutting down several poems (from 30 to 18 poems). The colour theme of the cover page will be purple, which is the colour to bring awareness on Epilepsy.

Creatively, there’s joy in expressing the trauma. Overall, my life has not been an easy journey besides this condition, but I’ve always pushed forward. Poems are not about fancy words and rhyming per sentence and paragraph, it’s about painting words to a canvas creating a mental picture, in formation to any aesthetic you want in whatever rhythm you’d like.

I’m not even sure how good the poems are, but this risk is something I need to do for myself to feed into my goal of publishing a book, in my own terms and creative control. I’m not expecting this to sell a million copies (although the money would help and I’d welcome it greatly), but I hope it reaches someone who’s struggling with whatever. Because that’s the whole point:

 The writer connecting with the reader.

The name of my book: The Lover’s Pool (Out June 14th)

Things I’m Learning From Publishing

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As someone who blogs posts on plenty of topics, I’m not new to the publishing world… Persée, however, in the world of publishing a book, certain things are different. Here is what I’ve learned so far when publishing a book.

Writing About Yourself Will Be Hard

I’m one that likes to talk about different topics in pop culture and also what’s going on in the world… past and present, but with creating a mini biography in this book, it feels weird. I love writing about my experiences, but it’s rare. Just to talk in a third person feels a bit cringe, but I have to sell myself, no matter the audience. There’s a certain level of professionalism within the whole process.

Writing An Acknowledgement Page is Personable

I plan on writing this at the ending of this whole project, even though I have so many that I plan on thanking. This is my first book, but I feel that this aspect of this project will paint a full picture of it, and give the reader a little more detail on me, the author, who’s been the main inspiration for me. My reasoning for writing this is because it will be the end of it all. Like thanking my loved ones on top of who will help with the visuals.

Finding the Right Artist is Crucial

I have someone in mind to literally put the picture together, but there’s always a backup that I need to consider. I want my vision to be in art form for the cover page, as this will be the selling point. Besides this, I just want it to look professional and cohesive. This by far has to be one of the most important aspect of this chapbook… besides the poems. This is the icing on top of the cake.

The Trials of Formatting A Page

This has been the most stressful part of conducting the format of each poem. From trying to fit the poems in a cohesive manner instead of it flying left or right or just jumbled up page by page…it’s been frustrating. Also, Amazon Kindle Publisher does not properly upload the word documents as pdf’s are your best bet of choice. The one tricky thing that I’ve been working around is fitting the illustrations within the lines of the book.

Choosing Between a Pen Name or My Legal Name

I’m so tempted to go incognito and create a name that would express my creativity… like being a true author/poet, but posting my legal name adds to the legal aspect of my work. I’ll get the proper credit for the work that I did, and who knows if I get discovered by someone within the industry. A pen name creates anonymity to my work and I can fully express my writing in full blast, plus the name would be a cool one too. With that being said… I’ll still be expressing myself fully too with my legal name. Oh, the decisions.

The process is still ongoing and I’m not sure when this will wrap up. I have a deadline in mind; this will be early next year. It seems so far from now, yet very close. There’s not much time for me, but yet there’s enough in the sense that I have to strategically set everything in the right place, and timing. Let’s see what happens. I am enjoying the process!

Update on The Publishing

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So I’ve started putting together the poems that I’ve written, placing them in a cohesive order. Just getting in the moment of organizing the pieces of work has been quite enjoyable, but there have been certain aspects that are less to be desired. The first thing is a formation on certain companies that assist with self publishing. Before I list where I’ll be conducting my work, I think it’s best that I discuss the work that I’m writing about. Foremost, my poems are all in interpretation. That’s the main thing, and this is what I’ve enjoyed overall in this project. 

The subjects that I’ll be covering is:

Self-Love

Self-love will be the main topic, I don’t think that this topic will ever tire out, because as cliche as it may sound (not to me), we all need to love ourselves first, before anyone else. So many of us have different ways of how we can do this while also sharing our unique experiences. For me, I not only had to look within myself on my experiences, but also listen to the surrounding people. It’s all in a combination of experiences, mended in a pot of art therapy for me.

Mental Health

Self-love and mental health are twins in a family, but sometimes this is often ignored. It’s never a tiring subject, nor does it make anyone weak. It takes a lot of bravery to speak about the experiences, heartbreaks, and the wins that we experience. Part of why I included this topic was because of my diagnosis with Epilepsy and also the Pandemic.

Love

Love can be romantic, but also having love for family, friends, a pet… etc. I also put myself in a space of thought about who I’d react to certain things and feelings. It’s a scary thing to be vulnerable no matter what. To show that part of yourself to anyone, including family, can be daunting yet rewarding. But first you have to look within yourself first before opening up to anyone else… because of the self-acceptance.

Identity

Everyone is something unique about them. For me, this is something that I wanted to explore, and share my experience, as a black woman, and someone who now has an invisible disability. This topic is based on what I’ve been through as a child, a teenager and now. It’s not necessarily to point specific fingers to one person, but as a collective… especially with society and the media. It’s also a sum of the other topics blended in together. Think of it as a dash of self-love, the focus or mental health, and loving others as the ingredients, identity as the equation… the cake of it all.

I don’t know if this will reach any audience, yet alone a large one, and I don’t care. All that I know is that at the end of this project, I will feel proud of myself for doing it. I believe in my work. I’m not sure how everyone will view it or critique it, but I’ve done a lot of critiquing myself, so I’m ready to put it out there. It’s also quite daunting and surreal at the same time. It may just get an audience from my family and friends, and I’ll be fine with that. But there is the possibility that it could reach to some sort of another target… who knows? Overall, I’ll be happy with whatever. No matter what, if it reaches one person who is positively affected by my work, that’s the main reward for me.

A Change of Plans

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I know I said that I was ready to write a series of topics that interested me, but there’s been a slight change in that project.

For the last month, I’ve curated a new blog that’s inspired me to extend writing my thoughts in a poem format.

It’s with great excitement that the work that I’ve been putting into these poems will be part of my new project of self-publishing my first book.

This has been a long time coming. I’ve had so many people saying that I should write a book, I just didn’t know how I’d go about writing one. In the past, so many thoughts had run through my mind as to what I’d write about. I’ve considered writing short stories, children’s books, and memoirs. I knew I could write them, but I wanted something I could resonate with, what I believed to be as genuine as I could be. It struck me that poems would be the best format to express my feelings creatively.

For the last three years, with everything going on, especially being diagnosed with Epilepsy, I went into a confusing place. It was a dark place, but I was also hopeful and felt a sense of freedom.

Doing therapeutic things like running, listening to music, and journaling spurred a need to expand my creativity. I expressed this beyond writing. As I became vegan, my interest in baking came about. I even dipped into playing the keyboards( it’s an ongoing process); all of these things helped my journey toward getting into a place of clarity. I can’t stress enough how journaling has inspired me to write poems.

My choice in going towards the self-publishing route was already a plan that I made even before coming up with a full plan as to what I’d write. I’m just ready to display my work out to the public… big or small.

This is all in fun for me, not something where I’m considering to be famous…it’s a creative project of mine.

On this blog, I’ll be sharing my journey in the stages of the process of writing the book.

The other topics that I’d plan to do will be in pause, as this will be taking up a lot of time for me. I need to focus.

Get ready for this journey and also what I plan on writing: the themes, how long I plan on writing this, and also the title.

Let’s get started!