Update

It’s been almost a month since I’ve posted here. There are many reasons for this, but I’m back now.

I wait in anticipation for the results of the The American Poetry Review /Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry. I have a sneaking suspicion that I will do rather well on this contest. I’ll tell you why after I win. But I wanted to give an update on my projects.

My lifetime friend and brother, JohnE (here at http://www.edingfield.blogspot.com/) is an illustrator. He initiated doing a project together. We threw a few things around, and he left it up to me. I choose to complete my graphic novel project. It is titled The Image. It is a great story and his illustrations will be extremely complimentary to the script. He is one of the best cartoonists that I have ever seen.

If you are not familiar with what a Graphic Novel is, I’ll explain. It is a novel, which is scripted and illustrated comic book style. This may seem easy to you, but it’s not. You have to take a story and turn it into a panel by panel script. Where in a novel you would use description and setting, in a graphic novel you have to think visually. The artwork should tell the basic story without the use of words, and it’s the writer who tells the artist what to draw. It is a complete team effort. Not only does the artist do the layouts as directed by the script, they also do all the coloring, inking, and the word bubbles. However, there are computer programs that can accommodate much of that. JohnE is talking about doing some water colors and mixed media, so I’m very excited about it. It will be a quality project that should become a must buy for many.

We are looking at self-publishing at www.lulu.com. It is going to be great. I’ll let you know about the progress. I’ve started the script and have a real good sense about the story, but I don’t have the story complete. I am currently writing out a full synopsis, then I will finish the script. I am quite confident that as the story takes place with JohnE’s illustrations, the story will be altered.

I am also always writing poetry, but in truth, I haven’t written any in a couple of weeks. I feel that it is mostly because I haven’t taken any time to just think. I usually do quite a bit of contemplation, and use meditation and heavy thought. I am a strong believer that prayer and meditation should be two separate events. Meditation for introspective contemplation and prayer is for praise and petition. I think it best to let meditation come before prayer. Anyway, I’ve been relatively focused on recovering from my surgery (incisional hernia repair) and not focused a great deal on poetry. I did write some, but nothing finished. Mostly just conceptual thoughts and ideas that need alterations and formatting.

I am also doing some editing for a friend that I know from poetry club. He has written kind of a memoir based on the old tales from the Kentucky hills; it is humorous and entertaining, but full of grammatical errors. I know for me it always takes someone else to read what I have written, a fresh set of eyes, to really make something worth while and error free. I’m about half way through his book at this point. My enthusiasm is starting to slow down, so I need to put more life into my efforts. That might be a reflection of the text also. We’ll see.

American Poetry Review has a couple of really interesting aritlces. I think if I thought that anybody who reads this is also reading APR, then I’d discuss them, but yet I have not that faith. However, I highly recommend reading APR if you consider yourself a poet at all. Poetry theory is discussed often, and it is enlightening.

That’s all I have going on at this point. I will be posting more often from this point on, so check back in a couple of days.