Category: Writing Advice

The Assembly Line Has Lost Its Teeth: 2024 Accomplishments & 2025 Plans

by donnywinter, posted in Announcements, Uncategorized, Writing Advice

My office is clean, organized, and I just poured myself a cup of tea. That means its time to do what many others are currently doing: reflect on goals and aspirations for 2025. I remain steadfast in my avoidance of labeling them “resolutions,” as to me, they create a lot of pressure with minimal flexiblity. Instead, I prefer to refer to these goals and aspirations.

To begin, I’d be remiss if I didn’t reflect on 2024. Technically, as a writer, I have not put out a full body of work since my chapbook of poems, Casting Seeds (Alien Buddha Press, 2022) three years ago. It feels like a lifetime and throughout most of 2023, I felt immense guilt for not churning out more work after three back-to-back releases since 2020. I needed some rest and 2024 became my year of resoluteness: I discovered I measured my output based on the other writers in my life, which aggravated that guilt I was feeling. I learned to embrace taking downtime between projects because what we do in the liminal spaces of output matters. With much discomfort at first, I began to celebrate the small accomplishments bit-by-bit, then, discovered that I was actually accomplishing pretty notable things that I was downplaying. After all, western society always convinces us to downplay our own momentum, does it not? So, I’d like to celebrate some of my 2024 accomplishments on both writing and media fronts:

AN EXTENDED PLAY OF MUSIC & POETRY – URGENT FIRE (WITH BROTHERWELL)

As a poet (and former musician), I never dreamed I’d have the opportunity to combine my poetry with music. I’m grateful the universe coaxed Brotherwell and I to cross paths. The past few years, we worked together on songs here and there, but to have the chance to work on an entire album with a concept, I never believed it’d happen until this past year. Back in January 2024, we released Urgent Fire, an extended play of four spoken word songs examining current events, mental health, and so much more. There’s much more from us to come! (Will discuss later)

WORK ON THE GODZILLA: 70th ANNIVERSARY ANTHOLOGY

Similar to my thrill about my work on music, having the chance to write for an official Godzilla comic story was not on my bingo-card. I’ve discussed it at length in interviews and on my podcast Growing Up With Godzilla; however, when my friend Matt Frank approached me to write poetry for a character in his story, “In the Shadow of a God,” I eagerly accepted. Not only did it help me learn about the comicbook writing world but it built a friendship with someone I respect considerably. Fast-forward throughout the year, it led to me having the opportunity to speak at G-FEST 2024 on the Kaiju Writer’s Panel, a co-signing session, and led to a number of guest appearance opportunities on some podcasts, including but not limited to: United Kaiju Podcast, Kaiju Conversation LIVE, Collect All Monsters, Tomes of Evil, and SKREEONK! As a writer and lifelong Godzilla fan, 2024 marked a major milestone for me in this regard.

CONCLUDING OUR PODCAST “RESTITCHING THE TAPESTRY“

A major part of my life since 2020 was our podcast Restitching the Tapestry. Ari Whipple, my friend of 20 years, joined forces with me to discuss current events, pop culture, social justic, and art regularly on Thursday evenings. After 5 seasons and 180 episodes, we decided to conclude the show. It was an emotional end; however, looking back on all we’ve accomplished, I’m incredibly proud. We covered a lot of ground, had revelations, shared poetry, cried together, laughted together… and so much more. If anything, I’m most grateful for the friendship I’ve cultivated with Ari, and I’m happy viewers will always be able to watch (or listen) to our massive project. If you’d like to listen to Restitching the Tapestry on YouTube, click the image above. Otherwise, it can be found on streaming services.

COMPLETING SEASON 3 OF MY PODCAST “GROWING UP WITH GODZILLA“

I’d be remiss to not mention the completion of season 3 of my Godzilla podcast, Growing Up With Godzilla! The show has started to take off, to the extent where attendees at G-FEST 2024 ACKNOWLEDGED it. 2025 will mark the show’s 4th season starting in February.

MAJOR POETRY READINGS: THE QUEER CONFESSIONAL & CASTING SEEDS

I had two major poetry readings throughout 2024: THE QUEER CONFESSIONAL during Pride Month and CASTING SEEDS in late summer. Both of them were a huge success. Special thank you to Lolobees Lounge in Bay City, MI and the Roethke Museum in Saginaw, MI for hosting. If you’d like to watch either reading, you can find them on my poetry YouTube channel via the links above.

Here are some other accomplishments I’d like to list:

  • Getting 11 poems published
  • My poem “The Symphony of Sullen Warnings” placing first runner-up in Wingless Dreamer’s Petals and Pines 2024 poetry contest
  • My book Feats of Alchemy was listed as a Favorite Book of 2024 on Walden’s Poetry
  • Starting and sustaining a successful newsletter for PFLAG Great Lakes Bay Region, a local LGBTQ+ organization
  • Becoming a board member on Friends of Roethke, a local organization charged with protecting the legacy of Theodore Roethke
  • Facilitating a partnership with Friends of Roethke, distributing my Oct/POEM/ber Poetry Challenge to a wider audience
  • Guest appearing on a local podcast, Saginaw Valley Spoken Word Podcast, to discuss my career as a queer poet
  • Being invited as a guest speaker at Delta College for an Author’s Spotlight
  • Guest appearing for 3 episodes on the Star Trek podcast, IDIC – Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations
  • Helping launch a literary magazine for Delta College called 1961
  • Resumed the podcast series “Universal Journeys” with my dear friend Brenda Bates.
  • Participated in an author’s reception facilitated by Bookmarks in Midland, MI
  • Guest appeared at Great Lakes Bay Pride with Leopard Print Books

Looking back on this list accomplishments in 2024, my immediate insecurity is: how will I catch lightning in a bottle again? One of my major goals this year is to ignore that voice – because it creates a pressure and fear of failure. Instead, I’m trying to affirm myself by saying: our accomplishments vary and take different shapes depending on where we are in life. In 2025, I may accomplish one thing as opposed to a dozen and ultimately, that’s completely okay. This capitalistic assembly line we’re on inbeds this deep conditioning that we must constantly need to churn out content and accomplishments. I’ve found that when I fall prey to that, fear-based ambition short-circuits actual output. 2025 will be about continuing to unlearn that conditioning and replacing these fear-based habits with grace-granting ones.

Despite my TedTalk in the prior paragraph, I don’t want my being cognizant of fear-based ambition to negate my excitement for what’s to come. As always, a new year brings new goals and aspirations. Here is my 2025 list:

  1. GET MARRIED: I’m getting married this year in November! I’m pretty stoked about this! Anyway, I’d be ridiculous not to list this first!
  2. READ MORE: Since working as a teacher involves a lot of reading, I find myself depleted when it comes to liesurely reading after coming home from work. In 2025, I’d like to carve out more time for casual reading. In fact, my friend Ari (who I mentioned before) has been sharing some thoughtful tricks about low-stress reading that have empowered me. I plan to start a reading journal, read at least 1 book a month, and actually use my Kindle to improve my access to reading material.
  3. FINALIZE AND SEND OUT MY CHAPBOOK: Yes, I’m nearly done writing a chapbook of poems! I don’t want to share too many details, but I’m finishing up some final poems and organizing. I’ll be sending it to my editors some time in the next month or two. Then, it’s going out to publishers!
  4. FINISH MY NEXT FULL-LENGTH POEM COLLECTION: I’m about 75% through completing my next full-length book of poems. I doubt it will be released this year but that’s progress, right?
  5. BEGIN WORK ON A FICTION SHORT-STORY COLLECTION: This is probably an unexpected one, but yes, I am slowly getting back into writing fiction. In fact, I’m hoping this short-story collection will lead to a full-length novel series. It’s ambitious (oh the irony considering my ambition tirade earlier); however, we writers dream big don’t we?
  6. FINISH ANOTHER EP WITH BROTHERWELL: We are beginning work on the next segment of what will be a full-length album of poetry and music.
  7. SUBMIT (AND HOPEFULLY GET ACCEPTED) A GODZILLA COMIC BOOK PITCH: Throughout late 2024, I’ve worked on sending out Godzilla comic pitches to IDW Publishing. I haven’t had any bites yet, but I’m not giving up. I have a lot of stories in me, so, one of my goals is to score my own Godzilla story in comic book form. I don’t care if it is a limited series or one-off, I’m just excited to stretch myself to other genres outside of poetry.
  8. WRITE A BLOG POST PER MONTH: I honestly should use my website blog more!
  9. WORK ON PROMOTING WORK MORE: Marketing is always this writer’s worst enemy – it is quite time consuming!

I honestly don’t know if I’ll be able to accomplish this list throughout 2025; however, I’m excited to forge forward and do my very best. As we navigate this year, I wish both writers and readers love and creative energy. Let’s keep doing what we love because we owe ourselves this enrichment. Happy New Year!

XoXo

Donny Winter

How I Learned to Take Downtime Between Writing Projects

by donnywinter, posted in Writing Advice

There was a point in time when I firmly believed I’d never attain any sort of success as a writer. Of course, I was pleasantly surprised when my career took off in mid-2020 with the release of my first poem collection, Carbon Footprint. The success of the book and the sheer amount of content I generated throughout the pandemic allowed for the successes of my next two books, Feats of Alchemy (2021) and Casting Seeds (2022) to take shape. After that whirlwind three years of book releases, readings, workshops, and marketing, I realized that I needed a year to recharge, which was actually something I felt ashamed about [at first].

Part of that shame stemmed from the fear of not continuing to strike while the iron was hot. I had spent so many years cultivating a following that the pressure of letting people down made me think that I’d fade into obscurity again (something a lot of LGBTQ+ writers fear considering our niche topic areas and erasure trauma). Despite these worries, I knew I needed to mentally recharge. So, I made the decision to take 2023 as my year off.

Let me make one thing clear, despite taking the year off, I was still writing. I worked on some poetic music projects, wrote individual poems, wrote poetry for a comic book. I was still being productive, it just took a different shape beyond that of assembling a book. Periodically, I would do a reading or an interview where someone would ask, “what’s next, Donny?” Sometimes they’d add, “writer’s take downtime, what’s that look like? I didn’t know that was a thing.” I didn’t either until I made the decision to take a break. As a result, I began to make a number of discoveries about my identity as a writer.

Unlearning Expectations about Output Frequency

    I’ve recently told people in interviews and workshops that: “we all can’t have the impressive creative output of Taylor Swift.” I think many of us aspire to have that level of creative output, and I fancied myself one of those people until I realized that it simply wasn’t sustainable for me. I began watching other writers develop work and release collection after collection, which I believed was something I had to do. The discovery I made was that that’s simply not how I work. I had to unpack my own creative processes – some people are creative in consistent stints through out each year. Not me, I have random (and unpredictable) spurts of creative output. I’m sure much of this is attributed to my mental health and my job as a college professor. Throughout the year, there are variables tapping energy from that creative cistern. This is typically why I’m at my most creative throughout the summer (and sometimes October since that’s when my poetry challenge happens). In the end, I learned that my output does not have to match the outputs of other writers.

    Create Organically, Not Forcefully

    Early on in my year off, I felt the need to produce more due to the established pressure mentioned. As a result, I began to try to force myself to write, which made me feel resentful of the craft. I made myself stop because my mind was telling me, “Donny, you deserve this break. The quality of your work is suffering.” So, I put the pen down and learned that to create organically, the rejuvenation period matters because it uplifts the quality of my work versus attempting to churn something out by force.

    Navigating Burnout

    Midway through my year off, I discovered that the main villain in my story was burnout. I didn’t take into consideration that three successful books over the course of three back-to-back years would tax me, creativitly speaking. Being new to the publication world back in 2020, I didn’t realize the level of marketing I needed to do to sustain any sort of success. I knew I was social media savvy; however, the level of consistency required seemed daunting. On top of the marketing, publically performing at workshops and readings, facilitating open mics, while balancing an already performative full-time job made me realize how depleted I felt. That burnout began impacting my mental health in a way I couldn’t quite articulate at the time. At this point, I began realizing that this downtime was doing something more for me; it was crucial rest for my mind.

    I’m Not T-Swift, but I Do Have Eras

    Granting myself the grace to take a year off from continuous output taught me one other important thing: the spaces of downtime in between eras actually matter. Like musicians organizing album eras, I began thinking of my poem collections in terms of “eras” as well. Carbon Footprint had its own unique era, the same with Feats of Alchemy and Casting Seeds. I began to relax another pressure I had subliminally kept internally: “how do I one-up myself next time?” This downtime reiterated to me that success isn’t one-upping former peaks, it’s about sustaining one’s craft and legacy through the enrichment this work promotes.

    Books Aren’t the End-All, Be-All

    One of the things I’m grateful for during this year of downtime has been the versatility I’ve developed as a writer. Unique opportunities presented themselves throughout 2023 – working on an album of song-poems with brotherwell and having the opportunity to write poems for a Godzilla comic celebrating the character’s 70th anniversary. The discovery that my poetry can find presence in multiple forms of media helped me appreciate not only the versatility of the artform itself but the transferability of my abilities. Had I not taken this downtime, I would have never made these discoveries.

    Overall, looking back on this year in low-power-mode has made me more excited about my eras to come. I’ve been hard at work on my third full-length collection of poems, the comic book I worked on is about to meet the world, and the music project with brotherwell is ongoing. The shame in taking a break no longer exists because it helped me realize that my horizons are brighter and longer than I ever could have imagined. So, take that break if needed. It does wonders for the creative spark.

    xoxo

    Donny