My plans for 2024
Not my desk.
What am I about this year?
There is chaos that clings to my thoughts like algae on a river. I pull myself in many directions. I have ideas, so many ideas. Some glimmer, form and unform. Some make it into the world and take on a life of their own. Some retreat back to the dark spaces of my desk drawer.
This year, I want to bring more projects into the light.
This year, I want my creative waters to run clear.
A plan to make a plan
In order to understand where I am going, I must look to where I have been.
My 2023 was about deepening the poetic self. It was about blogging from the ground up and exploring alternative ways of living. It was about learning and failing and learning again.
It was not about money or career or stability or socialisation. In many ways, it was a lonely, hard year. It had challenges and triumphs. Breakthroughs and breakdowns. It was about experiencing the reality of being broke and living for the art. It was about immersing myself in the fertile soil beneath a comfortable existence.
It was also about getting organized and laying the foundation stones for this year, this moment in the now. Not materialistically, for I do not own much. But spiritually, poetically and emotionally. I have learnt that hunger and hardship challenge my devotion but do not break it. There is strength in this.
It was about building trust with the source of my poetry. It was about feeling the breathing, bare earth while my body is still able to sleep on the ground. I’ll admit, there is an element that romanticises the relationship between poverty and poetry. I’m writing an article about it, keep an eye out for that.
Now, my attention turns towards the city. Wherein, I refine the raw material that I collected from the otherworld. I am allowing myself to inhabit the slowness of time. I am encouraging myself to transmute my stories of the otherworld into treasure and maps.
Dreams and intentions
This year, I want to keep making time and space for writing. But I also want to step out of the creative isolation that can so easily surround deep work. I’ve just moved to a city and I’m actively seeking and building community.
Right now, it’s Summer in the Southern Hemisphere. The days are hot and my body wants to be outside. This creates an interesting tension with my working ethic to be at my desk. I mention this because so much of my feed and the information I consume is from the Northern Hemisphere. I see conversations about the deep dark, resilience and rest. These are all great things but they are not potent in the here and now of the South.
This year, I want to realign myself with the physical world around me. This involves listening to the cycles of my body in orbit. It also involves a great deal of learning. Because honestly, at this stage, I don’t know enough about the cycles and ceremonies of the Southern Hemisphere.
Sitting with the process
I’m exploring these thoughts as I’m writing them. I’m sitting with the process of the unperfect. The part of me that doesn’t need to obsess over the details. At least not here, not for these journal-like entries. I recently wrote about breaking the surface tension of writing. I’m finding it immensely helpful to cultivate a space to explore the messy thoughts, unrefined ideas, glimmers and seeds of projects. There are other places where I draft and redraft and strive to find the grace of words. But it is a challenging process to give myself permission to write in this unperfect, fearless, way.
I’m always curious about the behind the scenes, insider look, at other writer’s lives and processes. I find comfort in knowing their challenges to make art. I need to remind myself that great art isn’t made in a vacuum. Words don’t shape themselves easily. Simplicity and precision take effort, vast amounts of effort. There is a curiosity here to learn about the ways other writers work.
Perhaps, this idea will shape itself into conversations or interviews. Perhaps, it might remain an idea. Either way, I enjoyed exploring the thought.
Tangible plans for 2024
Host writing workshops.
Create an online writing course.
Collaborate with others.
I don’t know the shape of this yet. It could be guest blogging, helping with events, organizing a poetry competition.Submissions, lots and lots of submissions.
This is a core pillar of my path this year. I’m aiming for 100 submissions. I’m working on an article that explores this in more detail.Work on my website.
Write one article a week. Schedule 3-4 articles in advance.Launch my monthly newsletter, Thresholds.
Develop the skillset of grant applications, article pitches and book proposals.
This is my first iteration of writing down my path for this year. The next stage of this would be refining these ideas into actionable goals and plans.
Talk soon,
Harley.
