Melissa Studdard : part four

How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with?

I’m part of an accountability group called The Grind. It’s wonderful because it’s all about relentlessly producing something every day. We don’t workshop each other’s poems, and we rarely comment. It works well for me because when I’ve been in groups in the past that involve workshopping and commenting, I’ve become exhausted halfway through the month and barely made it to the end. Now that I’m in The Grind, which I choose to do or not do on a month-to-month basis, I spend eight months out of the year writing a minimum of either one new poem or one new substantial revision per day, and I spend the other four months of the year organizing manuscripts, submitting work, reading voraciously, and doing other writings. So, basically, I do two months on and one month off—that’s the pattern.