I’ve been onstage for twenty years now, since my first role in high school when I was 16. In that time I’ve played supporting roles, character roles and leading roles. I’ve done contemporary shows, Shakespeare and modern drama. I’ve performed for full houses and crowds of half a dozen. There have been shows that moved me and shows that barely touched me. By this point, I can walk out in front of a theatre crowd of pretty much any size in pretty much any capacity and treat it as just another day at the office. It’s still special, but it’s not new.

But reading my work in front of people scares the bejesus out of me. It’s very different when I’m reading stuff I wrote. The stuff I do with theatre is someone else’s creation, someone else’s guts and blood spilled out onto the page. When I’m reading my poetry and other writing, it’s all me. And that’s a different level of scary than anything I’ve ever experienced in theatre.

Last night I had a blast at Just Do It. I read two of my pieces that were written specifically for the event, which was themed “Nobody Told Me.” One was titled “Girls Like You” and the other was “Octogen.” Suzy shot video of the performances, but it was overexposed and didn’t look good, so I won’t be posting that here. The first one was a lighthearted piece about getting dumped, and the second was a more serious piece about my aging mother. They were very well-received, and I sold a couple of books at concessions, which is always a plus. It’s always funny to me when theatre people who have known me for years read my stuff or see me read, because most of them have no idea that I write. I’ve written poetry much longer than I’ve done theatre, but with theatre taking up so much of my life for the last dozen years or so, many of my friends are shocked when they see me read poetry that I’ve written. It also helps that I don’t look like the average poet. So while I love reading my stuff, there is still an element of stage fright involved. Not gonna stop me, of course, because that’s the best way to promote my book. So come on out to Story Slam next Saturday to see me!

So last night I was the featured speaker at the Charlotte Storyteller’s Guild meeting, and it was a blast. I read a couple of selections from Returning the Favor, and answered questions about self-publishing and things like that, and that got me to thinking.

I did a lot of things ass-backwards along this journey, and I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or not. The typical route to “success” as a poet in the US is to write a bunch of stuff, polish it either in workshops or solitude, and submit a bunch of stuff all over the place, collecting rejection letters by the pound until a few things start to get published. Then after you’ve had some things accepted by literary journals, who don’t actually pay anything for the publication, or make any profit themselves, you might get one of the small presses that print books of poetry to publish your collection instead of having to do it yourself. Then you buy a pile of the books to sell at readings, and hopefully your publisher can sell a few as well. In the meantime, you continue your life as a stay-at-home parent or English professor, because the number of people who make a living as a poet in the US is smaller than the number of people who actually are profitable on the major poker tournament circuit.

But instead I printed a book, ordered 100 copies, and got seriously motivated to sell them. Turns out that I’m not out much more money from doing it my way than I would have been if I’d gotten a book published in the traditional method and bought 100 copies from a real publisher. Maybe a couple hundred bucks, but not much more than that. I was tech-savvy enough to do all the layout myself, and even though I still missed some typos, I’ve found typos in mass market books as well, so that just goes to show that human beings have to read these things, and we miss things.

The polish is what I missed. I really do think that writing begets writing, and if you have any talent or skill at all, the more you write, the better you write. So obviously I think the stuff I’m writing now is better than what’s in the book, but that’s not the case with all of it. Frankly, if I hadn’t published the book, I wouldn’t have done nearly the work I’ve done getting out there in the public eye as a writer, and that has led me to a lot of good associations, like joining the Charlotte Writers’ Club and things of that nature. It also led to a rollicking adventure yesterday that I’ll write up when the time is right. Suffice to say I could go a couple weeks without eating any more fried chicken.

So I did plenty of things out of order, but I’m okay with that. What I’m not okay with is the paradigm of there being no commercially successful poets except for Billy Collins. Let’s face it, poetry is the same as songwriting, only accessible to those of us that can’t sing. And if Springsteen can get rich playing his poetry, I should at least be able to figure out how to make a little extra coin playing mine. I’m thinking on it. I have no answers right now, but there are a few percolating. If I can make it work, Story Slam will be the place it will happen, because I think they’re on to something big over there. I know I pimp that joint a lot here, but it’s for two reasons. First, I agree with a lot of their stated goals and think they’re cool people who deserve my support. Second, they let me come by and play, and have supported me, which is hard to find. I have no official capacity there, just a belief that there’s something going on that I want to be part of.

Tonight I’m performing at Just Do It! at Theatre Charlotte, which I’m very excited about. This is a series that gives people an opportunity to get rid of the excuses and Just Do It, whatever IT happens to be. In my case, I’ll be reading two new poems written for the show. Tickets are only $5, so come out and see it if you’re in town.

And not the Girls Gone Wild type that have made Joe Francis a bajillionaire.

I keep track of tiny little tidbits of stories and poems in my notebook. But I keep my notebook on my phone and in my computer. I use a program called Evernote to keep track of my multiple to-do lists, and I use one of these lists for story ideas and things I hear that stand out to me. Then when I’m stuck on something to write, I roll these over and over in my head until something falls out. I also think Evernote is a pretty killer productivity tool since it syncs your electronic to-do lists between phone, web and computer, and if you’re as scatterbrained as I am, if it doesn’t make it onto a list, it never, ever gets done.

So here are some flashes that I’ve got in my little notebook right now -

black burkha in the carolina southern sun

standing on one leg on a street corner with no foot left

tie you to my soul with strands of blood and hope

I leaked milk and cried blood into the snow for you.

fly on concrete angel, let the winds of the city carry you away.

porn for breakfast.

she wore her androgyny like a badge of honor

I have walked through the fires of my souls and come through battered scarred but whole

girl can’t afford seminary tuition so she works as a stripper

He sees the world in colors

Right now, the last two are my favorites, the girl who is working her way through seminary as a stripper and the boy who sees the world in colors. That last one is a reference to autism that I saw on some TV show this week. Somewhere there’s a story about the confessional girl, living in a sinful world, dancing for dollars and working her way closer to God. What should I tackle first off that list? You tell me, I’ll write something tonight and bring it back to you. It might suck, but I’ll take the assignment.

So Saturday afternoon I left our work event in Winston-Salem to attend a poetry workshop at the Main Street Rag offices outside Charlotte. Most of my hangover faded by the time the workshop kicked off, and I got some pretty valuable information out of it. It was essentially two workshops, the first half dealing with revising and polishing your work before submitting, and the second half dealt with how to select literary journals and places to submit your work.

I found the second half of the workshop really valuable for the information I gathered, because I’m very new to the whole submission process and have no idea how simultaneous submissions work, or things like that. So that was good as a learning experience, but I got a lot more out of the first half. Mostly because it woke up a part of my brain that I haven’t used in years, that piece that takes apart a poem and puts it back together stronger. There’s a certain analytical bent to revising your work that has been pretty dormant in me since I got back to creative writing, and I think it will make my work stronger, not just in my poetry but my short stories as well.

This whole “be a writer” kick is an interesting ride, and I need to make sure that I refine my technique and acquire all the skils that I can to augment whatever minimum of talent that I might have started with. Because talent isn’t enough, and there’s no real judge of whether or not I have any. But if I polish my technique as much as I can, I can create good work, and with the right information behind me, I can get some stuff published and maybe the next time I publish a book, it won’t be on my own nickel. And maybe, just maybe, sometime I can make a few pennies doing this.