Here’s the twenty-seventh poem that I posted here on my blog. When I read the poem I remember writing it, taking the photo, repairing those pet bed holes.

My writing life is evolving, even as it is not evolving here. I can see several places in this poem where I would make changes, especially at the end. I like the line “Remember when the bell tolls to secure your own dreams, shadows, and memories.” I like the enjambment. I like that the bell ties back to the doorbell ringing, how that is one of the reasons our dog rips holes in the beds.

And yet the ending misses for me. There is an emotional moment and insight to be had, but this one is just not quite there.

I remember how I wrote these early blog poems, and even the later ones. I wrote a draft on my computer, edited it, then posted it. I might have spent a third of the time it took to make the post just taking the picture and editing that.

The site evolved as it went into its second and third year. I started to make offer commentary on the poems. I took more time to edit them. I began to think differently about what I thought poems could be, what I thought they could do.

Even with my MFA from National University I still feel like I am just starting to be a poet. I’ve written some four hundred poems now, maybe five hundred, poems that I recognize as poems.

In January though I had a breakthrough — I found myself wanting to be published in professional journals. I knew that would mean sharing my work on this site would have to change.

I stopped writing poems for the site. At some point in my second year of the blog, I realized that I could not use any of these poems for submission to literary journals and magazines. All of them will accept only poems that have not been published in any form.

So I started to write and not post.

I recall the first week after that decision and realizing I had written three poems in five days, then six poems in ten days, and now, two months later, I have twenty-nine poems that I am actively submitting to journals and literary reviews.

This process is interesting and engaging. I find myself coming back to my table in our sunroom to edit at all times of the day whereas with the blog I put in an hour or so for a post.

I’m spending three to five hours on each poem as well. Sometimes less, sometimes more when they just don’t seem to click in.

My routine has evolved as well. I get up early, take the dogs out, make coffee and fill my Poet Projects mug, then write.

I start each morning out with a five minute write in my journal. I next work on a sudoku puzzle. I use the gravity timer my son gave me to keep myself on schedule.

Then I read poetry, making up my books, making notes in the margins, sometimes copying a poem into my journal, wanting to feel what it is like to write that poem out. What the pace feels like. See how long I can hold a line in my head.

Then I write, always with a Blacking pencil. My daughter gave me a box of twelve for my birthday last year. Most of them are down to nubs.

I can write faster when I start on the computer. But I write different. I do not get the same results.

When I handwrite these poems I can look at them and see how they came to be. There are words written on the side margins. There are crosscuts. There are tiny words written with little ^ signs between other words.

The word that best describes the state I enter is flow. I lose track of time. I sometimes flip the gravity timer on the thirty minutes side. It seems to go off seconds later. My coffee gets cold. I forget to finish my bagel most days.

This is what I want writing to be. How I want it to feel. I spend more time on my poems and develop a different relationship with them. I evaluate them to see if they reach “submissable” status.

As of today I have submitted to eighteen literary journals.

I joked with my daughter-in-law’s (to be) family last weekend that there is usually a small fee to submit poems to a journal. Sometimes you get paid. I submitted to one journal for $3 a couple of weeks ago that pays $5 per poem accepted.

If they accept all of the four poems I sent them that’s twenty dollars! Minus the $3 of course, so seventeen!

I’ll tell you what though, when I get that first acceptance email, I won’t be excited about the money.

But I guarantee I’ll be excited.