Morale, and how to keep it...

The light is low, the days short. Here are some ways to boost your morale during these dark winter months, when we are feeling depleted of our energies, emotional stores, sunlight (this list is just as much for me as for you):

• The “make it a practice and commitment” route: submit to two journals every week. Or commit to taking a single hour out of your week and submitting poems during that hour. I believe in you. Time-box that process! Return, return.

• The relational boost: send a poem or two to a small press editor (or editors) you love. It is a good feeling to be read by someone you love and trust.

• Read a book of poems you’ve been longing to read (Lucille Clifton’s Collected is my book of choice right now).

• Go outside. Find a walking plan (I use Nike run app) or something that will provide you with a framework for going outside. It is cold in North Carolina (“I am a SOUTHERN! FLOWER!,” I protest), and I want to huddle under a blanket with my dog on my legs, and tea, and books, and all the snacks. But we need the outdoors for our writing and our mental health and our imagination—even if it means sitting outside for fifteen minutes with a cup of tea, or sitting by a window and looking, watching.

• You know that beautiful manuscript you’ve been working on, or avoiding, or tweaking, or shoving in the drawer, or ignoring, or loving, or, or…? Send it to three presses. Maybe you can afford a contest or two. This is less about winning something, and more about committing to sending out. THIS IS HARD. I full confess that I have been in extreme avoidance with my own work lately. Try to keep your manuscript submitted at one place, always. Keep your options open. Do not self-reject! Resist that urge! (Someone pulled their manuscript from River River Books this last week, without a note of acceptance elsewhere, and I groaned, dear reader).

• Ask someone you admire and trust to read your manuscript, and give you feedback (on how it feels to them, on where they think you might send it).

• Give yourself time to think. We need the time for sitting and thinking. I can be too productive for my own good, even during recreational time (what an amazing word, recreation). Sometimes, activity is not the answer. We need time for sprawl, to cite one of Les Murray’s favorite philosophical-poetic words…

• Make some time for yourself. Many of us are caretakers, many of us have chronic pain and disabilities. I ride the pain waves, and some weeks it is a lot just to exist/come through. Give yourself grace. Let those around you know how you are doing/feeling/what you need.

• Celebrate everything. Celebrate. Find someone to rejoice with you. Share your good news with a friend. Write a gratitude list poem. As Iris Murdoch wrote: “Find something good and hold onto it like a terrier!”

• Remember your community, invested in the same work you are invested in. Reach out if you are feeling down. Of Poetry keeps me in touch with other writers, and it is so good for my heart to connect and hear from other writers re: how they are navigating this absolutely tricky landscape of poetry, the arts, writing, and the real scarcity for the humanities at present.

• Tell someone else how much you love them, today. How you appreciate them. Make this a regular practice! I stopped and told neighbor this week how inspiring his running had been to me, during quarantine, when my mental health was at an all-time low. To close with W.S. Merwin: “we are saying thank you / thank you we are saying and waving / dark though it is.”

Thank you for your writing, and being in the world. I hope you find what you need today—I hope you go out looking for it.

Han