On New Year's Eve 2005, I included on my list of resolutions, "Start blogging!" I didn't quite achieve that goal in 2006, although I did post a couple of author blog entries at Amazon.com. I thought about starting a private blog, but that never materialized, either. Then we market editors learned that F&W Publications would be creating blogs related to our market books (I edit Poet's Market), so I decided to wait to see what transpired.

I'm glad I did wait, because the unexpected development is that I get to co-blog with Robert Brewer, who not only edits Writer's Market, Writer's Market Deluxe, and WritersMarket.com, but is a published poet himself. Between the two of us, we bring an interesting mix of backgrounds, perspectives, experience, and generational viewpoints to Poetic Asides.

Here, briefly, is my "bio": As I said, I edit Poet's Market for Writer's Digest Books (I'll be starting production on my ninth edition soon). I've been writing and publishing poetry for over 30 years, although less over the past 10 years or so (the reasons for which I'll be addressing in future posts). I've had two chapbooks published: Rites and Observances (Finishing Line Press) and How Time Got Away (Pudding House Publications). And I'm totally disgusted with myself for my lack of poetic output. I don't write enough. I'm hoping to do better--and to submit more poems to journals. For now, though, I'm blogging from a deep sense of inadequacy. Perhaps you can relate.

I'm a big fan of blogs, and one of the things I like best about them is the sense of immediacy and almost rawness. So I'm not going to plan content ahead of time too much or struggle to polish every post to the nth degree. I will strive to be interesting (I hope--accepting that "interesting" is a relative term).

So, on behalf of one half of the blogging team of Poetic Asides, I bid you welcome!

--Nancy