I fell down the rabbit hole.

I recently celebrated six months as a published author, and I already have the first manuscript for my next project, which is a chapbook of poetry centering on my adoption story, simplicity, and my love for books and American poetry. I'm still wondering if this is real, considering it took me twelve years to write The Quiet Edge of Memory. But I owe my progress to a rabbit hole I found, and thankfully, I followed my gut and jumped in.

I've been revisiting a lot of the literature I read during my first two years of college. I have a newfound love for Henry David Thoreau's Walden, which I read twice in three weeks. I'm officially a fan of Walt Whitman. John Steinbeck's "The Chrysanthemums" left an ache in my heart that will be there until I die. And, of course, I can never have too much Emily Dickinson.

I find these works comforting for a very personal reason. I didn't have the best time in high school English. I thought writing five paragraph essays were confining. I would interpret literature differently, but my teachers weren't the most supportive when it came to writing outside the lines.

Then I went to college and had a professor who wrote on my first essay, "You're a great writer!" She's the one who told me to take risks, and it was in her American lit class where I read Thoreau, Whitman, and became endlessly fascinated with Dickinson. Finally, an English teacher believed in me, and her encouragement was the seeds for the writer I am today.

Thinking about my early college days led me down the most glorious rabbit hole. Last week, I unearthed all the poetry I'd written during that time and discovered a treasure trove of material about literature and my creative self. My wording and phrases were clunky, but my study of American literature at that time awakened the poet in me, and I will honor that segment of my life with this chapbook. With some tough love line editing, I can make changes to these poems that will match my writing voice today that also preserves the messages I voiced years ago.

This was originally going to be a longer collection of the poetry I had planned to write over the span of one year, but I'm resorting to a chapbook. I'm not the most compact fiction writer (I mean, my YA book is over 100,000 words), but I do write compact poetry, so for me, a strong poetry collection is a short one. I can only write so many verses about being severed from my birthmother and how Thoreau's writings have gifted me a deeper appreciation for nature and solitude.

So, I thought my next publication would be fiction, but it's a poetry chapbook. A working title and the cover design is begging to come out, but I'll release that in the near future. There's also a short story about a girl on an NJ Transit train and a dystopian novel brewing in my mind, but for now, I'm writing whatever ideas come to mind in my writer's notebook. I'm also going to take a few weeks (or days or hours) away from my poetry and revisit it with fresh eyes when I'm ready.

I'm still shocked about how far I've gone in my current WIP but remember: the writing life is a wild ride. I'm holding on and letting it take me wherever my creativity leads me.