Math Conference

I finished a rough draft earlier this week. Although I've been writing on a regular basis and finally finalized my manuscript (Spongia Solis, which means "sun spots" I think) I haven't finished a lot of new drafts over the past 8 months: four to be exact. It hasn't been due to a lack of effort. I have been writing consistently but have been composing new poems very, very slowly.

The poem I finished was another "emperor" poem. I've been writing an "emperor" poem here and there since July 2006. I've been focusing more intensely on them recently since finishing the nearly 6 year grueling process of organizing and revising Spongia Solis. Essentially their based on the life of the Chinese Yongle Emperor (i.e., Zhu Di) during the Ming Dynasty. I've been using several non-fiction books as well as translated Ming poetry as helpful source texts.

The poems aren't necessarily historically accurate (so you couldn't really call them 100% historical poems). Their fun poems to write. I've been trying to focus primarily on the "emperor" poems because I'd like to write 9-12 good ones for my next manuscript (Lonely sits the city), which is an entirely separate topic altogether.

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Megan spent most of the morning and early afternoon at a math conference at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She can count up to three hours towards her 90 hours of practicum this semester if she attends. She's got two semesters left and one semester of student teaching (she's an elementary education major).

After the math conference we went out to eat for our monthly family dinner out. We went to McCoy's Public House, which is both an awesome restaurant and an outstanding brewery. I did not have a beer because it was 2 pm and I don't typically drink in the afternoon and I don't usually drink beer during our family dinner out. But McCoy's has the best IPA and you can get beer to go via 30 oz flip-top bottles which I didn't take advantage of today but will soon. Perhaps I'll lug some along to AWP.