Sonnet 601 finally arrives, after a 3-month hiatus!
I stopped writing in December 2021, but only to turn my poetry into books. 500 of my previous 600 sonnets been have rigorously edited and formatted into four books, out of a series of five, 125 sonnets in each. That leaves me with 25 more sonnets to write, to complete the fifth: 5 x 125 = 625. This, then, may be a short return - I will need to create the fifth book as soon as I have 25 more poems. Actually, 24, after the one above.
It takes less time than you might imagine to ‘do’ each book. Most of the previous three months were spent designing the layout and the covers, and writing software to create the print-ready PDF files. I quickly realised that as a computer programmer (40+ years, man and boy!) I could be so much more precise with my own code than I could ever be while using Adobe’s publishing tools. I don’t need a complex, cumbersome, general purpose piece of software. I need a small utility to compile my poems into five separate books, all with exactly the same layout. Needed. I have it. I wrote it.
Beyond these five books, I have no firm plans, but the lure of ‘one more book’ to get me to 750 sonnets will probably prove to be too much to resist.
Books 1-4 are entirely complete. I have printed samples (wonderfully crafted) of the first three, and I’m waiting on the fourth, ordered today. My software creates PDF and eBook versions simultaneously, so those are already available, but not to you, not yet. I may upload some samples - covers, most likely - but it’s not a priority for me right now.
I won’t be going back to the poems uploaded on this site to add the changes to every sonnet. As the saying goes, ain’t nobody got time for that! But I will be adding punctuation to the line endings from now on. No, I didn’t think I needed it. Yes, I needed it. Everything in the books is properly punctuated. There are other changes too - some changes to titles, sometimes the odd word which didn’t quite work, and one or two substantial rewrites to poems which I didn’t think were up to my own high standard. Barring any minor tweaks and typos, the book versions are my best work. So far.
Today I return to the writing I have started to miss.
It begins.
