Rebuilding my platform, perhaps…?

NOTE: I re-posted this to test out the x-posting to LiveJournal feature. For those who want to comment without setting up a Vox account, now you can!

I hit 13 on Monday night, a last -minute call as I was working late, catching up on post-BEA stuff, and decided it would be a good time to test out my latest poem, Truth is an Olympic Gymnast. I wrote the first draft a couple of weeks ago when I went to Botanica to clear my head, and had just given it a pretty thorough edit during lunch earlier that day. It’s a bit of an accidental attempt at humor, though true to form, it’s more of a dry, cynical humor.

Anyway, I probably paid closer attention to the poems read that night than I have in the past couple of years, and I think that’s partly a result of slowly reconnecting to the scene and mostly a side effect of my writing more often. I think the extended break definitely did me some good, and I’m entertaining thoughts of jumping into the slam next season in an attempt to maintain the momentum I seem to be building up. For its many faults, the one really good thing about the slam is that it kept me writing, through thick and thin. It also kept me listening, as I tend to be more attentive in a competitive setting than I am in a casual one.

I half-jokingly told Roger that I was writing again because I was planning to take 13 back! Mwu-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Seriously, though, it hit me earlier this year that next April will be the series’ 10th anniversary, which is quite simply, fucking amazing! In a city where few things last more than a couple of years, a little bit louder / louderARTS has been going strong for an improbably long time, and like the divorced parent who didn’t get custody inevitably realizes one day that his kids are teenagers and he missed out on so much, I want back in. I don’t want to run the place again, but I do want to feel more connected to it; read more often, slam now and then, host on ocassion.

This time around, I want to focus more on myself and my own writing, and leave the mentoring and curating and all that other fun stuff to other altruistic masochists.  Those days are long past and I’m not trying to burn myself out again.

I want to rebuild that platform I used to have, creaky and ill-maintained as it was, and get back to being Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, Writer.

That’s my oft-hinted-at Master Plan. Now, I just need to pull together the lumber, hammer and nails and get to work!

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Written by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is the Chief Content Officer for LibraryPass, and former publisher & marketing director for Writer’s Digest. Previously, he was also project lead for the Panorama Project; director, content strategy & audience development for Library Journal & School Library Journal; and founding director of programming & business development for the original Digital Book World.