What are you working on?
Right now I have two projects going, in very different stages. The first called Music Before We Were Bodies, and is a personal, almost confessional exploration of my experience as a stutterer and how that has affected my approach to writing. A little sliver of prose from that project can be found here: http://ottawapoetry.blogspot.com/2020/03/on-writing-170-michael-sikkema.html
This project is hybrid, includes verse and prose and is proving very difficult to write. Trauma is at the heart of it and it gets written in fits and starts and then sat aside for a while. While it’s certainly not individual standalone pieces, I don’t know yet if it’s a chapbook or a book length project, or more like a hybrid essay. I’m going to play along and see where it takes me. To be honest, it might not go anywhere.
The other project is also hybrid and plays with elements of video games, interactive storytelling, choose your own adventure books, police procedural stuff, horror tropes, and sci fi elements. It’s called Choose Your Fighter, and it actually lets you do that. It’s much further along than Music Before We Were Bodies, but is still in a seedling stage. I have a lot of notes and ideas, and some first threads written out. I’m designing the project so it’s clear what I will be writing next and that feels good. It’s still exploratory but has direction. I will have a brand new baby in about three weeks, so writing time will disappear somewhat. Writing it in threads and understanding that it’s a long term project, and can be done episodes at a time makes it less overwhelming.
The manuscript allows a reader to choose a POV and to shift between them. I guess if it were a film, it’d fit into the psychotronic category, and I’d like for the end result to feel like reading is game playing, with an emphasis on play.
This one might not turn out how I have planned, but I’m confident it will turn into something.
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