There’s nothing like the excitement of having your first book of poetry published. After years of thinking about it and knowing it was a dream of mine, to leave my legacy behind. I finally accomplished just that! I asked myself the question why didn’t I do this before? The answer was simple, it just wasn’t my time yet. I’ve been writing for years now since I was about twelve years old. I kept every single poem I ever wrote. And as the years went by my poetry got better and better. And I found that reading others’ poetry really helped.
Don’t be afraid to try something new!
The first step is having enough poems written to put a book together. Fifty poems do nicely for this. If you have more than fifty, then you have the challenging task of picking out the ones you want to use in your first book and what theme you want to go with. For example, will it be a love poetry book with only love poems or about nature, spiritual, or a variety like I chose? Then you must decide what order you want to put them in, this is for your table of contents page. You’ll need an About the Author page that gives a little information about yourself and if you wish a Dedication page. I dedicated my book in loving memory to my parents who have passed!
You even take part in what you want for your book cover and of course, you need to pick a title. It is especially important to pick a title that is catchy as the first thing the reader will see is your book cover and its title. You must create some interest with just this alone for them to want to see what is inside. I chose my title Where Poets Dream for my first book from a poem I wrote called Where Poets Dream and placed that poem first in my book.
The more poems you post online the more exposure you will get but remember to mix it up and put some poems in your book that no one has ever read.
It was suggested to me to alternate poems with some short and then long to keep the reader from losing interest. That was a grueling task for me as I write a lot of long poems.
You must believe in yourself!
When my mother was in the hospital, I brought my poetry up to the hospital and my aunt would read them to her. She was quite pleased with this and asked for more to be read. That was when I realized my mother really liked my poetry. And she was proud of me. My father and I had a talk one day after my mom had passed and said, I should author a book of poems. That’s when I realized he liked my poems and was proud of me. That meant the world to me. Knowing they were in my ballpark made all the difference. I started thinking seriously about that book. Dad passed shortly after that conversation and that was when I started to plan to put my poetry books together.
I got excited about my poetry again!
Several members of my family are also gifted with writing poetry, and I hope my books encourage them to reach out for their dreams as well as all of you! I’ll bet a lot of you poets out there are sitting on a gold mine of poems. Like I am, I have written over five hundred of them. Well, if you’re like me then maybe it’s your time to author that book of poetry. At first, I doubted if my poetry was good enough to put in a book. But I found with posting on the internet I got a lot of likes and people were enjoying my poems. And I enjoyed reading theirs. Which gave me even more confidence in my poetry. So, what I’m saying here is don’t sell yourself short. You’re a lot better than you think. There’s nothing quite like having your poems in print.
But as with all dreams we need to put them into action to achieve them! Sure, there were times when I’d have a dry spell and the ink didn’t flow from my pen. But during those times I continued to read. And when the ink flowed, I wrote! All the time waiting for this time in my life to come. I shared my poetry with family and friends, to begin with. Even gave them out as Christmas gifts framed and made special for each person. Then came the internet. Wow, a lot of sites to post poems on. And I did it all over the place. Just recently I found my internet home at BizCatalyst 360°. As a Featured Contributor. My poetry is on YouTube now as well as narrated by Alan Johnson from the Trending Poets group on Facebook. And I write quarterly for The Wildfire Publications Magazine LLT.
You can make those dreams come true!
For me, it is about leaving my legacy behind. A book to last years after I’ve left this earth. I hope to see you all in print soon.
Congratulations my friend Eva Marie on publishing your first poetry book. It is like a new baby is born with all the associated joy.
Hi I have 5 books now. I was just sharing how it feels and some of the process. But I do remember when I held my first book and it was wonderful.
Thanks so much Dennis Pitocco publishing my artivle