I envisioned the playlists that went along with this as companions to enhance the experience of the book – read a poem, listen to a song, etc. I’m not sure anyone used them for this purpose, and I’m not even sure that would have felt cohesive. But it sounded lovely in my head, and I sure had a great time curating these playlists.
I had a few narrative ideas when I arranged the book itself, and thematic imagery that I wanted to put in the forefront. But this book happened to me more than I happened to it, so it was surprising to find narrative threads and imagery that I hadn’t intended springing out of it. Listening to the full playlist of all seasons locates all of those things into an entirely new ecosystem that is equally surprising and interesting. I find this encouraging – that the things we create can take on a life of their own beyond what we intended. It makes me want to create more of them (which I’m doing, of course).
So, happy birthday to SOLACE, and here’s to many more book birthdays in future years!
(if you read the book, would you be so kind as to leave your honest Amazon or Goodreads review for it? I would be most grateful!)
It’s been a brisk, clear-blue-sky kind of day here in Indiana – the perfect start to autumn.
Of all seasons, autumn is by far my favorite. Though I love the changes – the reminder I need that every day is another day closer to Christ coming back and making everything right – autumn somehow captures my heart. It stirs me up. It’s bracing and invigorating, full of the weight of harvest and the impending weight of winter snapping at its heels.
It’s also the final season in my book SOLACE, and the one that somehow comes to terms with so many of the things the other seasons have wrestled with.
Autumn is a complex season. It signals the returning power of freezing temperatures, darkening days, and the death of living things, while celebrating the joy and abundance of harvest in a riot of gorgeous color. It is preparation – for sleep, for hibernation, for the long dark days of winter. But the preparation is exciting. It’s laying down root vegetables and winterizing pipes and raking leaves into fire pits and making cider.
I find autumn to be the natural capstone to the overarching narrative of SOLACE. The book begins in darkness and encounters it often, and it finds light and grace and goodness in unexpected places. But in the end, the cycle will return to the dark and cold of winter. I know this. I know this about my own life – that darkness will go away for a while, and then return. Perhaps it will be lighter this next time, perhaps darker. Perhaps it will be shorter, or longer. Either way, it’s as sure to me as the hope I hold that more darkness lies ahead.
But autumn is stacking firewood inside the mudroom door, so that throughout the winter we can keep the fire going. It’s carrying bushels of the harvest in so we can feast well. It’s cellaring joy and stockpiling grace and preserving patience for the long winter ahead.
And that, my friends, is an invigorating, hope-filled thing to be a part of. Death is coming, but it will not find us unprepared.
The songs contained in this final playlist for SOLACE, poem for poem, match autumn words with autumn tones. And because I just couldn’t choose between the two songs I wanted to use to end the book, I kept them both.
chicago in season iv / Pulaski at Night (Andrew Bird) familiars / Slack Jaw (Sylvan Esso) through fathoms / Autumnal (Teen Daze) blanks / Shatter (BAYNK, Martin Luke Brown) US-20 in october / Big Smoke (Tash Sultana) bleeding in, bleeding out / Humble Heart (Jess Ray) suspension lament / Maranatha (Jackie Hill Perry) ode to autumn / The Fall (Ben Shive) but now i see / Explaining Jesus (Jordy Searcy) bon-fire / Dream State (Son Lux) crowns / Virile (Moses Sumney) perhaps the sea / Dissolve Me (Alt-J) wanton / Just and Just As (Penny and Sparrow) and there will come a time / Be Kind To Yourself (Andrew Peterson) burn on steady / Lift a Sail (Yellowcard) bonus track / Into the Darkness (Drew Miller)
It’s the extravagant amount of light we get from dawn to dusk. It’s watermelon and fresh tomatoes and sweet corn. It’s no school and no responsibilities. It’s releasing my shockingly pale legs from their denim prison just long enough to feel an ounce of deserved shame. It’s fireflies and staying up late because the sun is, and vacations with family.
Of all the seasons, summer is brightest. Maybe for this reason, it feels like it yearns more than the other seasons.
Fall embraces darkness with a blaze of fiery light. Winter slumbers and waits. Spring bursts out in song. But summer never rests. Summer is always moving, always longing for something else, always busy about bringing that something else into fruition here. Summer sees something beautiful on the horizon and wants to be there more than it wants to be here, mowing the lawn or washing the windows or writing the next word. Summer gets to work to bring that something else about, but sometimes misses the point of the present.
I’ve noticed that the collection of poems in the summer section of SOLACE, and likewise, this playlist, have been shaped by these competing states of rest and restlessness.
So here it is, friends: the summer playlist for SOLACE. May we all find rest in the midst of our longings for something more.
(You can pick up a copy of the book at my shop or at Bookshop.org to read along, or check out the spring and winter playlists)
TRACKLIST:
chicago in season iii / Lake Shore Drive (Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah) julep / Julep (Punch Brothers) that postmodern crap. / Faith (Bon Iver) ode to the city / Velours (Anomalie) kyrie for july fourth / It’s Not Working (The Truth) (Propaganda) starling / Lose That Light (Folly and the Hunter) placeless / So Far, So Fast (The National) chasingheaven / Five (Sleeping at Last) golf-ball sized hail / Ice Cream (William Fitzsimmons) three moments: her head in the palm of my hand / Little Flower (Peter Bradley Adams) three moments: safe no more / Letter to the Editor (J Lind) three moments: birdless / The Road, the Rocks, and the Weeds (John Mark McMillan) leech / Transform (Daniel Caesar) call and response / Good News (Mac Miller) rainplay / Storms (Nick Box) quiet / I Am the Antichrist to You (Kishi Bashi)
In reflection on that event, and now that the act of publishing is sufficiently in the rearview mirror, I thought it would be a helpful exercise for me – and hopefully for you in some way – to think through how everything shook down in that process with the intent of learning something from it.
So let’s start with some quick notes on the practical side of things.
Editing and Selection: I had the benefit of having four poet friends do a read-through of the book and give me their thoughts and edits, as well as a variety of outside listeners and readers along the way. These wonderful people helped me shape not only the poetry but also the overarching order and thematic elements of the book with their comments. I also was able to pull poetry that had been sitting for a little while, marinating, so that when I returned to edit it I could look at it fresh and know which ones had the most merit. This is not to say I didn’t sneak some fresh poems in, just that I had a bank of poems already written to choose from and craft into final products. One thing I would change is to find one editor who would go through with a fine-tooth comb and a totally brutal attitude, because I know there are things that could be better.
Choosing a Print-On-Demand Service: This was a relatively easy decision for me, because Ingram Spark offered hardback options. I’m sure there are smaller POD publishers out there that could offer the same, but Ingram also had strong distribution offerings. I also considered KDP, Blurb, and Lulu, all with their corresponding pros and cons, but ultimately the design was something I cared too much about, so I went with Ingram. The point, in my mind, is to choose the POD service that fits your goal for the book.
Running an Indiegogo Campaign: This took a large amount of effort, but was also one of the most fulfilling aspects of making this book a reality. I could write an entire post about this in and of itself, but if you’re thinking about doing this, pay close attention to three things. First, have a short run-time, both for your mental health and for the sake of keeping attention. Second, calculate in a buffer on your cost analysis (you will likely run into costs you didn’t know about, so it’s best to add some extra in). Third, take great care to schedule in updates, additional promotions, and bonuses for your supporters. Honestly, though, I couldn’t have been more thrilled with both the response and care of everyone who got involved. More on that later…
Design and Illustration: I had a superstar collaborator for this in the mythical form of Josie Koznarek. Not only did she create the whole aesthetic of the book out of a few scant ideas I gave her, she was great fun to work with. I knew coming into this that I needed help in the design and formatting area. You may be more savvy with those things than I am, which is great. But I really cannot overstate the value of collaboration here. Also, pay your artist friends. They are worth it, and in the case of Josie, well beyond worth it.
Timing: When it comes to my ability to deliver something on a deadline, I am usually dangerously optimistic, and this was no exception. Especially because I was doing it for the first time, there was no real way I could anticipate all of the back-and-forth between me and Josie and Ingram to make this happen, beyond such things as extended shipping times and corrections. I ended up releasing the book a full month after my chosen date. In my case, this didn’t prove to be too problematic in the end, except for my sanity. Next time I will just plan to add a month of buffer time into the schedule to manage the extra time.
Amazon: Amazon really provided nothing but a series of issues from day one when I had to jump through ten hoops just to get the cover to show up. After that, once they sold out of the copies they had, they gave the Buy button up to a third-party seller who cranked the price sky-high and never ordered more copies. I’m in the process with them of making this right, but I’ve been pretty disappointed with the whole experience. However, I’ve recently learned about Bookshop, and not only are they selling the book at the right price, they’ve pumped over $2M into local bookstores.
Now onto some more overarching thoughts.
Expectations
When it came time to launch the book, I was just ready to get it out the door. I had put together a number of launch week events and ideas, and executed those when the week rolled around. But overall, I had not built a very robust platform for the launch to get it out to people who weren’t already familiar with it.
However, I did have a built-in launch team with all of the wonderful people who supported the book. They did some very kind promotion, posted reviews on Amazon, and generally provided a great rah-rah environment. And here’s the thing: they were technically my first sales anyway. I had to keep reminding myself about this when I got only 8 sales in the first week.
While I definitely could have prepared better for the launch, lining up more interviews, reviews, and publicity, the real problem was my expectations. Not only did I launch a self-published poetry book existing in the space between sacred and secular markets after Christmas, but I was in the launch team of another traditionally-published book by an established author during my own launch. This meant I got to see all of the things I could have been doing while not having the ability to do them.
I’m laughing out loud at myself right now as I write this, given the circumstances and perspective that time provides. But I was actually really discouraged by this at the time, and not a little bit jealous. I was disappointed in myself for not doing more, which is kind of my besetting sin anyway. And I was so proud of my book that I couldn’t help being a little crestfallen when it didn’t “make a splash.”
I’m also grateful, in a weird way, for how the launch went down, because it pushed me to invest in the long haul of the book. I began livestreaming Behind the Broken Season, which has been a huge growing experience for me. I created playlists for each season. I moved on to writing new poetry more quickly.
I will change a few things based on this experience, for sure. Next time, I’ll plan more time before the launch to do promotional work like podcasts, pre-orders, and advance copy reviews. I’ll go about building a launch team with rewards for those involved. I’ll plan an actual physical launch party at a local bookstore or library.
But mostly, I’ll control my expectations and remember that the goal of all of this was different than making a bunch of sales. If that happens, it’s only icing.
Community
I loved doing the Indiegogo campaign for two reasons. One was that I literally could not have produced the book the way I envisioned it without the start-up funds. But the other was that it was pure joyous shock to me to see how many people cared enough to support it. That’s why the acknowledgements page of the book is so precious to me, because all of those names represent actual people who are directly responsible for the existence of this book.
The point of this is not that everyone should do an Indiegogo campaign to publish their book. But it reminded me of the reality that no work of art ever comes to be in a vacuum. There are so many people who influence creative work that it’s impossible to acknowledge all of them.
This makes me incredibly grateful to those people in my life. It makes me want to make more and better art for them. It inspires me to seek out ways I can use my art to encourage and support my community.
And collaboration with Josie was this kind of grace in abundance. Our collaboration was a pure joy and the book is exponentially better because of it.
The Act of Making
Coming into fall of 2019, I was pretty low. I was picking up the pieces of several big disappointments, including one project I had been working for most of the year. I knew that I needed to make something, and at the bottom of my list for 2019 was to make a book of poetry. So I pivoted.
The primary goal of making SOLACE was not to make money off of it. It was not to build my platform. It was not to become a “legitimate” poet (whatever that means). I made SOLACE because I was discouraged and I needed to make something beautiful.
I’ve talked with a few poet friends about the nature of poetry as a way of seeing. Poetry, for me, has functioned as a light in the dark. It’s a reminder that I am my Creator’s child, that I am not alone, that I am more than my words or my work. Writing poetry reveals to me, somehow, the through-lines of grace and hope in dark situations. I mean, this is what the book is all about, so maybe I don’t need to reiterate it.
What I’m getting at is that creating something, and seeing people gather around that making, was exactly what I needed at the time to keep going. I’m not sure I knew that at the beginning, but when I finally got my proof copy of the book, it definitely sunk in. And since then, the gradual process of unfolding SOLACE over the last few months in Behind the Broken Season, the notes from people of poems that encouraged them in their own dark places, etc. have been an ongoing celebration of what God has wrought out of that dark place.
I guess that if there’s a takeaway here, it’s that we should never underestimate what God can bring about through and in us when we obey the call He has given us to create. He truly does make beautiful, rich, true things out of dust, and I’m not just talking about poetry books anymore. Creating this book was worth it for that reminder alone.
So, on to the next one! 🙂
I’m sure I’ve missed something in this post, so if you have questions on the process of self-publishing or just want to chat about making things, let me know. I genuinely love the longer letters I’ve received from people in response to my monthly Tethered Letters, so please take that as an indication of my interest in hearing from you!
Josie Koznarek is a fine artist and designer based in Chicago, IL, working primarily in ink paintings. She’s also a long-time friend of mine.
Through the years we’ve crossed artistic paths here and there, often talking about further collaboration. This year we were able to do just that, with a little book of poetry you may have heard about called SOLACE. Josie not only created four original art pieces for the book, she designed and formatted the book itself, and put up with all of my questions and flights of fancy along the way.
She’s an incredible artist and an incredible person, and she recently took the time to talk with me about her creative process, inspiration, and bliss.
What was the impetus for you to start creating art?
A person’s habits are often intrinsic; you’ve more than likely had the same tendencies and been doing the same actions over and over again since before you had memories. Most adults sleep in the same position they slept in when they were babies. My mom tells stories of my creating an immense amount of art from an early age. I’ve just kept that habit going.
How have your artistic style and priorities evolved over time?
My style may change, but my voice remains the same. I would argue that it has been the same since I was little. My constant priority is to somehow manage to connect my fluctuating style to my intrinsic voice.
As a child and as an adult artist, you find people and projects whose style resonates with your voice. You look up to them, and often imitate them, in ways as formal as robustly studying art history to simply drawing fanart for an anime you like. You let your practice and influences guide you, continually playing a game of Marco Polo with yourself until you (hopefully) find the connections through which your voice can flow freely, however that may look.
Can you walk us through a typical (or atypical) process of creating a piece? What’s your favorite part of the process?
Sometimes I just take 15-20 minutes out of my day to let the brush move as it will and it’s as simple as that. A recent painting of an orchid I made happened that way, and it looks great.
With more complex work, however, I’ll usually take a few more steps to ensure that it turns out the way I want it to. Since my work is usually based on flowing, bold strokes of ink, if I mess up and the piece looks bad, I have to start over. There’s no covering up a misplaced line without ruining the texture of the paper. For pieces such as the ones I created for SOLACE, I start by refining a thumbnail of the piece to test various compositions. When I find one I like, I’ll practice that composition on smaller pieces of paper so I know where the brush is going to go. This usually takes a couple of hours.
Once I’m happy with how the tests went, I’ll dip my brush into ink and place each major line exactly where they need to go, allowing smaller lines such as textures and shadows to manifest as I work. The pieces I made for Solace took about 6 hours each using this process.
My favorite part of the process is falling into the process. If I enter a flow state, I can work and have no idea how long I’m working for and it is bliss. This does not always happen, however, which can be quite gruesome to witness. My husband once came home to find me painting and angry-crying over a watercolor painting of lily pads that was taking too long. It was not a good time. The painting turned out great, though.
You created four original art pieces for the book. What inspired this particular character that we’re encountering in each season?
The artsy-fartsy answer, and the one that’s more true to how it actually happened, is that the character felt like they belonged there, so I put them there.
If I were to reflect on that decision to try and rationalize exactly why I put that character there, I would say that physical embodiments of emotional/spiritual realities permeate my work. An early series of mine called “Cool Girl” reflected on societal acceptance through various portrayals of “cool” women. Large twin pieces I recently completed portray the sun and the moon as sisters sharing two different natural reactions to pain.
This particular character I painted here, in my mind, is both the reader and someone else entirely. The character is the reader in the way they interact with the seasons; a little mournfully, and simultaneously drowning in and clinging to the flow of things. The character is also the spirit of these woods, as the character not only repeats but the location does as well. The four paintings take place in the same forest over the course of the four seasons. Weather and temperature change drastically, and the forest is very remote and lonely, but this is the way of things. There is beauty in it and a groundedness to it that make the forest spirit almost seem to glide from season to season with an effortlessness that only emerges through centuries of knowledge. Knowledge that we humans can find in the art and the poetry we have been creating and preserving and sharing with one another since the beginning of time.
You’ve done a number of live art pieces, and that just blows my mind. What does it take for you to execute those in real time?
I am a fundamentally lazy artist; the quicker I can get a piece done, the happier I am. Plus, it might not seem like it reading these very serious descriptions of my own work, but in real life I am very much a ham, and hamming it up is something I’m very comfortable doing. My two character flaws of laziness and attention-whoring interplay with each other in just the right way to make my work-flow perfectly adaptable to live art. This means that I can stand in front of a crowd painting long, dynamic, impressive ink lines and end up with a beautiful completed piece in less than 2 hours. It’s not something most people can do, but for some reason I’m accidentally naturally suited to that environment.
What’s the most difficult thing about being an artist?
Being your own business. Making art isn’t just making art (although it would be great if it was). There are emails to send, galleries to attend, phone calls to make, invoices to write, checkbooks to balance, and entire websites to update. This would be less difficult if there was a manager above me telling me what to do and when to do it, but that’s on me too. Naturally it’s difficult to be perfect at all of that. So there’s a lot of guilt there, too, even though wearing all of those hats is a superhuman ordeal that no one should have to put themselves through. And yet here I am torturing myself!
What’s your favorite thing about being an artist?
As of last year, I’m finally making artwork that I’m fully satisfied with. In the past, I couldn’t bear to hang my own work in my house, because I’d always look at it and see the ways I could grow or improve. I still have that eye, and you need that eye in order to be a good artist, but now I actually like the art I make. It feels like a literal lifetime of working and pushing and refining is finally coming to fruition, and it makes me so happy.
Another more simple answer to this question is that just making things is bliss. The beauty of the process and the satisfaction of completion spreads to a lot more in my life than just art, but it certainly manifests itself the most in my personal practice.
One thing we’ve often talked about together is the difficulty of making art or writing (or any art form, really) into a financially-viable vocation. How do you care for your sanity in the midst of that reality? Asking for a friend…
A key concept/mantra I repeat over and over to myself is sort of similar to what I was talking about earlier; that when you go to an office job, they hire janitors to come in literally every day to make sure your space is clean and nice so you can keep working well. When you work from home, you literally have to be your own janitor. Which by itself is a full-time job that companies pay full-time wages for. And that’s far from the only role you have to fill for yourself… you’re your own secretary, web designer, social media manager, content creator, and financial advisor, all of which in most places are full-time jobs with full-time wages and vacation days and sick days and benefits.
All that to say, be gentle with yourself. Log your work hours, and keep the boundary of 8 hours of work a day with an extremely strong hand. Take a lunch break every day. You always need it. When you have to work overtime, balance that out with an equal amount of rest and recovery. Rome was not built in a day, and Rome was also not built by working 10 hour days to the point where you can’t even work anymore because of extreme burnout. I say this from experience.
What’s a common misconception about your work?
I think the number one question that I get is, “How long did this take you?” It always feels like a trap, because I know the answer they’re expecting from me is, “OHHH my gosh this took me eleven-hundred HOURS you don’t even KNOW the work I put into this.” But the reality of my work is that most of my more popular pieces, from concept to completion, didn’t even take a half hour.
Fast work is just as impressive as work that took 20+ hours. The amount of practice and refinement that I’ve had to put in in order to place such sure, deliberate brush strokes took years to perfect. In certain ways fast work is much harder than slow work, like oil painting or sculpting. If you mess up an oil painting, you can cover up the problem area or slowly work it into your composition. Unless something goes horribly wrong, you can always even out a mistake in a clay, wire, or stone sculpture. But with minimal ink painting, the line is the line and that’s it. There’s no going back or erasing or pushing it around to make it work. If you mess up, you have to start over on a new piece of paper or discard the idea altogether. The time spent on my pieces does not equal skill, it’s the thousands of hours of practice behind the scenes that make my skill what it is.
What advice would you give to creators?
Go and have fun.
Who were you as a 5 year old? Do you remember? It might not feel like it, but that’s still who you are. Go out and play. Write what you want. Sing what you want. Draw what you want. Maturity is not the rejection of that person. It’s placing that person on your shoulders, embracing that person, and speaking as that person with a new, strong foundation that can only come through time and experience.
It’s called SOLACE: poems for the broken season, and it focuses on light in the darkness, faith in doubt, and courage in the midst of fear. It includes four original art pieces (one for each season of the year) by my friend and incredible artist Josie Koznarek, who also designed the book itself. I’m extremely excited to have it out in the world and into your hands!
Like anything made by anyone, the poetry in this book didn’t come about in a vacuum. It came about within and because of multiple communities. This book exists because of a couple dozen people who believed in my work and supported me on Indiegogo, and because of hundreds more who spoke into my life and work when I needed it most.
But even beyond the communities that shaped this, every poem in this collection was influenced by a broad range of other art forms – stories, song, visual art, etc. Those of you who know me well know that I imbibe a massive (possibly unhealthy) amount of music when I’m writing. And also all the time.
Naturally, when I began thinking about how I to bring extra dimension to the experience of reading these poems, I knew I had to make a playlist.
The last few months have been full, to say the least. In the midst of all of the chaos surrounding making the book, editing, proofing, working with Josie on the design and artwork, navigating the printer’s requirements, ineptly “marketing” this thing, and getting copies out to Indiegogo supporters (you know who you are and I know how awesome you are), normal life still went on. Or rather, in the midst of normal life, all the other things went on. I’m at work from morning to evening and a dad until the kids are in bed, and then I kick whatever energy I have left into overdrive on all of the other things.
I’m so grateful to all of you who supported this project, for all who made it a reality through editing and encouraging, for all who pre-ordered (which you can still do!)
I did not make this book. We made this book.
taking the next step
Today (which I’m referring to as “SOLACE eve” henceforth and forevermore), as I’m flipping out and flipping through this little volume, I’m surprised at what has grown out of something so simple. Several years ago, when I began writing poetry in earnest, I determined to keep myself honest by posting one poem every week on my blog. This habit grew into a steady stream of poetry, which was then bolstered by the merry poets of the Poetry Pub.
This book came out of just doing the next thing. Or rather, making the next thing.
One poem led to the next, to the next, to the next, until a vision for how they all fit together materialized. From this, all I needed was a push out the door by a party of very generous dwarves and wizards. Yes, publishing a book is a lot of work. But that kind of a journey starts with taking the next step, and then letting your community in on it.
I don’t know who needs to hear this right now, but here it is: make the next thing, and let your community in. You might be surprised at where it leads you.
experiencing SOLACE this winter
So, fair warning, in the next couple of weeks I’m going to be talking a bit about this book. But I hope to do so by creating avenues for all of you readers to experience these poems in new and exciting ways. In that spirit, here are two upcoming avenues I’m stoked about…
I’ll be doing live “Behind the Broken Season” events on my Facebook page starting this Friday (and then probably every three or four weeks or so). These will include poetry readings, random rabbit trails, and Q&A opportunities, all over at my Facebook page. There will also be some GIVEAWAYS during these, so if you like free stuff and poetry, tune in! It won’t just be me bloviating, I promise. Like my page to receive notifications about these, and join me for the first one this Friday!
Next Monday I’ll be releasing a companionplaylist to the Winter season of the book. I don’t think I can properly communicate how excited I am about this, friends. I’m a sucker for experiencing multiple forms of art together; it offers dimension and layers that would previously never have been explored. I love that all art is influenced in some way by the art around it, and this playlist is an opportunity to experience that. Plus, I’m having a blast choosing the music…
Friends, thanks for joining me on the adventure!
P. S. Remember, today is your LAST chance to pre-order the book, because tomorrow you’d just be ordering it like everyone else. Be a pre-orderer, not an ordinary orderer.
