I got an email from Lee Byrd at Cinco Puntos Press today, telling me that Bobby always said he shot himself in one foot when he decided to become a poet and shot himself in the other foot when he decided to become a publisher. Then she said, “Well, you already know what it’s like not to be able to walk.” (She’s referring to the 3 months I spent in a wheelchair post-getting-hit-by-a-truck-twice while I was trying to cross a busy intersection.)
This is what scares me MOST about this new venture. The last two years in the Ph.D. program, it’s been hard hard hard to do both. I readily admit it. I am miserable, trying to do both at the same time. When I’m just writing, I’m fine. When I’m just doing the Ph.D., I’m fine (well, not fine, exactly, because I’m miserable when I’m not writing but it’s not as stressful as trying to do both at the same time.) My adviser, who has always been incredibly supportive, has told me just this: You can do both, he has said several times, but you probably can’t do both at exactly the same time. He might have used the word “sequencing.”
And now I’m publishing books. Am I crazy?
Yes, somebody shoot me now.
But this is precisely why I’m a) going to keep the number of books I publish small, very small and b) not follow the traditional publishing format. Tons more on that at the press’s blog, of course, in coming weeks. And here.
I hear you! And now I’m applying to a Master’s Program, while running a press, writing a novel, freelance editing, and being a mom. Crazy making sometimes, but it actually can be done.
I know, I saw that on your blog. You are nuts, that is all I can say.
But it is a friendly statement, from one nut to another.
I wonder what it is about us modern people that makes us want to do everything all at once? Count me in to the club of nuts