I’ve had walking pneumonia twice this year, confirmed by doctors, and I suspect I’ve had it two more times. I usually like to start these newsletters out with something more poetic, but that’s been the story of these last few months. After never having pneumonia up until this point – and rarely being sick – I’ve spent the first four and a half months of this year trying to live my life like normal while trying to hide that I’ve hardly been able to breathe. At the same time, the alternator on my car went out, and it’s really the perfect metaphor. The alternator charges the battery, so without that, the car can only run until the battery dies. Then, you can recharge it and drive a bit more before it stops again. That’s how I’ve felt. While I was sick, my body wouldn’t recover from anything: sore muscles, headaches, even small scratches. I was just barely able to care for myself the exact minimum to get through each day. The difference, of course, is that with my car, I accepted that I’d have to live without it for a week and invest in its repair. With my own body, I just keep pushing and pushing and wondering why nothing gets better.

I haven’t really written much of anything good so far this year. Since just about every religion, culture, and language in the world has some connection between the breath and the soul, there’s nothing really original about this observation, but more than anything else, not being able to breathe normally makes it impossible for me to be poetic. I’ve taken advantage of this time, though, by sending my work into a ton of journals, contests, and publishers and by reading a ton, like nearly 60 pages a day, on average, for one stretch of time.

In terms of the submissions, like I mentioned last time, I want to send my poems into bigger journals before working my way down the chain. That means longer wait-times for responses with a much smaller chance of being published. I’m still waiting for my first accepted poem in English of the year, but I’ve had my Spanish-language verses published in some pretty noteworthy journals in Latin America. Aside from that, I have novels in both languages and poetry collections in both languages awaiting judgement from a number of publishers. I have a good feeling about those, but we’ll see.

I’ve also joined on as a poetry reader for wildscape. literary journal, which is a newer journal that had previously published one of my poems. It’s an awesome journal! You should check it out! It’s so interesting to see poetry submissions from this side of the equation to better understand what it looks like when a publication is evaluating one of my poems. One word or phrase could be the difference. Is the poem not original enough? Is the author trying too hard? What makes this poem special? With the other readers at wildscape, we’ve started a writing/reading workshop group to share our own work and give feedback. It’s terrifying for me since all of the other members are so accomplished, but it’s good to finally hear feedback on my work instead of just writing and sending it off from the solitude of my basement.

I wish I had more to say, but I really don’t. I haven’t been able to get any traction with any of the new projects I’m working on. It just seems like everything is moving so slowly except for the time.