A little over two years ago, just days before I started my senior year of college, I published my first book The Sweetest Kind of Poison on a whim. I'd been sharing the poetry from that collection on Instagram for a few months, and I'd received lots of great feedback and requests for the full collection. So I thought, what the heck? Sounds like a fun project. Maybe a handful of people will read it. No biggie.
Now we're four days away from my third book's release, and in just two years' time, I've gone from a full-time student to a full-time editor and author, and those "fun projects" of creating books has become a big part of my job. This wasn't the plan when I published that first book. This certainly wasn't the plan when I went off to college. This career path wasn't even on my radar. But it's an even better fit for me than I ever could have predicted.
My latest book, Poems for the End of the World, was also a "just for fun" project I decided to write for NaNoWriMo in 2019. I hadn't really been writing poetry since the release of The Sweetest Kind of Poison in August of 2018, and to be honest, I wasn't sure if I ever would again. I was thinking maybe The Sweetest Kind of Poison was a one-time thing. Readers who loved the first collection had been asking about a second one for over a year, but I hadn't given it much of a second thought. I didn't know if I had anything left to write about.
So 2019 NaNoWriMo turned into an experiment. Could I still write poetry? Did I even like writing poetry? The first collection was centered around a single experience--how would I even put together a collection about multiple different things instead of a single theme? So, Poems for the End of the World turned out to be about just that--the not knowing. The stumbling-through-life, figuring-it-out-as-you-go phase that more people go through than we realize. And, surprisingly, the collection turned into my favorite thing I've ever written.
So if I've learned anything from these books, it's to chase the "just for fun" moments. To embrace the not knowing. To trust yourself and your instincts, even when no one else gets it (because trust me, when I first started down this career path, pretty much no one understood.)
Poems for the End of the World is coming out October 1, 2020, and I'm so, so excited to share this collection with you. In the meantime, my first collection The Sweetest Kind of Poison is on sale for $0.99 for a limited time to celebrate the new release.
The largest of shout outs to my earliest readers, some dating all the way back to random snippets posted on my Instagram. I don't know if I ever would've pursued this path without that small push of support at the very beginning. I'm more grateful for you than you'll ever know.
xx Katie