Projects, or how one little idea becomes a whole Megillah

  

Well, it’s summer. I, like everyone, still have a million and one commitments, including teaching a summer class, but this week there has been some time. I worked on a few new poems. I updated some of my project lists. David Allen, my productivity guru, says that most professionals have between forty and sixty active projects that have our attention at any given time. This is true for me. While reviewing projects this time, however, I realized that I do not list creative projects individually in my project lists. I have simply generic projects like, publish the next book of poems, or write book reviews, or read lesbian fiction. These work fine, but in reflecting on things, I realize how many large projects I have in mind for my creative work that I have not committed to on paper (or virtually as I use this great tool for my project management system.)

So I am contemplating the creative projects that are a gleam in my eye. While reflecting on these projects, I am thinking about how one small idea triggers more related idea and then suddenly the one small idea becomes a whole Megillah. Does this happen to other people? Or are there only some of us that cannot quite leave well enough alone? Some of us for whom every little itch has to be scratched?

I am not going to disclose all of my Megillah creative projects here, but I will give a few examples of how a small idea becomes a Megillah. This year, the lovely William over at Lambda Literary asked me to review a new lesbian novel by Helen Humphreys. I loved the book; I decided to read another book of hers. Suddenly, I want to read her full oeuvre. Humphreys was born in the UK but now lives in Canada. This connects in my mind with the great experience I had reading Sarah Waters’s new book, The Paying Guests. After reading that, I thought, I should read more of Waters’s books. I do not think I have read on of her novels since the first, Tipping the Velvet. So I picked up a few of her earlier titles and read those. Now I am deep into reading two lesbian authors with UK connections and so I am thinking about how they compare to Emma Donoghoe and Jeannette Winterson. And so it goes.

Poets talk about how one poem grows into a sequence. At first, without consciousness. Then it becomes a productive area to explore. A sequence, a book. Sometimes when you read an author’s complete works, the obsessions become clear and evident. Sometimes you can see where they begin. Not always. I think that they sneak up on people.

Maybe it is like the oysters and sand. One small grain. Though more than just getting under the skin, ideas that become Megillahs seem to leap from the mind, from the body, into the air. They circulate in the world and we follow them. Or at least, I do.

I am going to spend part of my summer thinking through my Megillahs. I want to turn them into projects that I can work on just like I keep the cars in good repair and the animals attended to by the vet. I think part of the reason why I had not made them into projects is that I think of the Megillahs as being less like big books and more like delicate butterflies. I do not want to crush them. I want them to live. I want to fly away with them.

Photo Credit: https://butterflymoms.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/butterfly-flying-in-book.jpg

Filed under: personal writing, poetry Tagged: creativity, wriitng projects