Reaching Out: Day 4 🌿 “The Poet's Daughter”
A One Week Project Where I Reach Out To You - My Readers
🎨 Welcome
About my “Reaching Out” Project:
I’ve taken a week-long break from social media (Instagram & Facebook). I’d like to write here every day this week instead - and share 7 ideas (1 per day) for what I’m considering / sketching out / mapping for my next creative project.
The very act of sharing our art and creative ideas is so full of hope and vulnerability and courage…I could use an extra dose of those things right now.
I’d love to know your ideas - about my ideas - for future creative projects. Read more about the project:
Thank you for being here to read / respond - whatever feels best to you. From one creative spirit to another - I’m sending love to you. Keep going. 🌿
Good journey,
Idea #4: The Poet’s Daughter
Growing Up Off-Grid with America’s Bardic Poet
A nonfiction / memoir / almost biography / autobiography of my childhood and my relationship with my father, Joseph S. Plum.
My dad has a unique gift. He has hours of poetry in his head. He composes poems for groups of people / on stage/ in healing ceremonies around the country.
He lives in a cabin in a forest in rural Iowa (there are some forests in Iowa) without modern amenities like electricity.
He and my mother raised me and my brothers this same way on an isolated hill in rural Iowa.
Self-sustaining / ecology / environmental / divinity in nature / new age / mystic
poetry / genius & madness / philosophy / father-daughter / rewilding
Dad has 9 books of poetry - all transcribed / edited / published by me under Dreaming Deer Press. Available on Amazon the books are:
Dad’s also an accomplished artist and I’m working on a book of his artwork combined with lines of his poetry now.
I wrote a draft of “The Poet’s Daughter” in graduate school. Later, I had an agent and an opportunity to publish. I decided not to publish. That was almost 20 years ago now. I don’t regret it, but I do think about this decision sometimes.
The foundation is there. I changed it from a series of short vignettes to nonfiction essays. I have photos that help me write. I use sections of Dad’s poems in each essay.
I want to add in research / science / neurodiversity / memory
This book has put me solidly on the floor in total grief and devastation more than once. I tucked it in a drawer when my first son was born. It’s been in a drawer ever since.
I use The Glass Castle, The Professor and the Madman, Little Miss Sunshine, and Into the Wild as my comparisons - if these stories were somehow combined.
I started writing American Bardic Poet here on Substack recently - October 2023 - to see how it would feel to start writing about Dad and his poetry again. And also to support and encourage my Dad, who I love very much and who has had some major health issues lately.
Maybe this is a project I could work on in short bursts - short writing retreats - a couple of days at a time?
If I had access to a writing group - perhaps this would be a good manuscript for a group workshop. Online group workshop - where / how / recommendations?
I’ve invested deeply in this manuscript already. Multiple manuscript versions in multiple forms. So many files and pages of notes. It will take some significant “practical doing” to sort it all out and get started writing a new version.
I’d love to hear your ideas. Please share your thoughts with me in the comments.
🦋 New Cappadocia Book
The first Autism Brothers Book - Cappadocia - is now available on Amazon. Purchase here.
👩🏻💻 Social Media
The encouragement of my online community here on Substack has been so heartfelt for me. Thank you.
Please help me reach out by sharing this newsletter with someone you think may be interested.
❤️🔥
Another interesting project. Perhaps you can combine it all into a memoir, or since you have a workable draft about your father, start there. As far as a writing group, they are worth joining for the support and guidance. I once belonged to the ones offered by NaNoWriMo that I used during the month I was working on a draft manuscript for NaNoWriMo https://nanowrimo.org/
This is an interesting project, too. As with the book about your mother, you have a lot of interesting stories to tell!