I’ve been looking forward to writing this post for three weeks now and ironically enough, sickness hit me right around the time I started working on it. As I am writing this, I am in recovery, still struggling to breathe and my brain wants me back in bed, watching Netflix so please, bear with me.
I have some happy, almost bewildering news – which I’ve recently started sharing with more and more people but the more I do, the less I believe this is really happening. I am actually putting out a poetry book. A book written by me. I will publish a book of my literary creations. Nope, still can’t believe it.
The purpose of this post is to tell you a bit about it, in the hopes that you might be interested to get it and support my creative endeavours. I also want to share with you the processes that led to the publication of this book, including writing, editing and the actual publishing. And of course, I want to dish a bit on the inspiration behind it and how a couple scattered poems I wrote earlier this year have turned into the lyrical story that is Poems Gone Nuclear. Yeah, this is the actual title of the book.
Poems Gone Nuclear is not only my poetry debut, but also my first self-published work. Entirely written, put together and edited by me – if you do decide to give it a chance and buy it, rest assured that it is my personal, hands-on work that you are supporting. It will be available on Amazon worldwide, in both paperback and e-book edition, and it will be out on Tuesday, the 16th of October. Now, I have no control over the actual publication, printing and distribution of the book, despite it being self-published: if issues do occur – but God forbid they don’t – there is only so much I can do about the book getting to the readers. One thing I can promise, though, is that I will try my very best, with the influence and control I have, to have the book up on the 16th, if not earlier than that. I will also have the Amazon link up on all of my socials, and on the blog as well once the book is out.
As you’ve probably already guessed by now, there will be no pre-order option for Poems Gone Nuclear. I found it to be a bit unnecessary, especially because it’s my first published book and I haven’t expected a considerable number of pre-orders to be made. Also, due to the work schedule that directed the process of creating the book, I found that I would not have an appropriate time window to allow pre-orders to be made. So if you decide to buy the book, once the listing is up on Amazon, you should get it delivered according to the delivery settings you’ve selected at purchase.
I imagine that by this point, you might be wondering: why self-publish? Did nobody really want to publish your poetry? There were a few good reasons behind my decision and even two months after starting on this journey, I still feel that I made the right choice. I haven’t done poetry ‘professionally’ for a very long time: I participated in my first poetry competition in January of this year, and started regularly putting up my work online shortly after that. I got to the point where I believe that my work is worth reading, but I don’t think I’ve found my true creative voice yet. I experiment a lot in my writing, and Poems Gone Nuclear is an experimental collection itself: are these the best texts I’ve ever written or will ever write? Probably not. Do I want to put it out and get a reaction out of a potential future audience? Yes. I felt more comfortable working on this piece of writing by myself, so that’s what I did. I’m nervous about what the outcomes could be, but I am also so stoked about doing my own thing with this book. It is my way of putting my foot in the door. I am sure that after this chapter of my creative career, I will chase down all the publishing companies and send my work their way until they get sick and tired of it.
I also found self-publishing to be a very fascinating and insightful, yet very demanding process. I’m grateful for having done it because it taught me so much and it tested my work ethic and discipline, but it wasn’t easy either. It required a lot of patience and looking at things from so many angles, so many of which I’ve never even considered before, and some of which I felt a bit too young to mull over. At this point in time, a lot of it is ready and I have a couple other obstacles to jump over, but I have faith that it will all be fine.
For the record, I used Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing to publish Poems Gone Nuclear. It is a free, quick, very user-friendly platform to get your writing out there no matter what genre you’d classify your work under, and I was very happy with its layout, multitude of options and customer service. I would absolutely love to share more about what working with KDP was like, so if you’re interested in self-publishing yourself, I can write a post about it in the near future.
(cover designed using KDP Cover Creator)
So, what is Poems Gone Nuclear about? It is a metaphorical story told in poems written on a wide array of topics, including, but not limited to love and heartbreak, friendship, mental health, coming of age and society. My goal with this book was to share the direction my life’s taken in the last couple of years: moving out from home and to a different country to pursue university, finding friends and my significant other and gaining contact with so many new concepts and ideas, but also reflecting on my past and how it’s taken me where I am and shaped me into the person I am today. Some pieces are spot-on talking about one of these topics or another, but the gist of the book is a bit different: Poems Gone Nuclear tells a story about cheating. An unnamed protagonist, deeply tied to their safe space and a relationship that makes them unfulfilled and unappreciated, who’s decided to turn it around, break the rules and run off with somebody else, to places they’ve never been to before. That kind of thing.
I found cheating to be a very interesting angle to use to explore these topics that dominated my life for two years now and gained my creative interest. Whether we like it or not, cheating is a huge thing for all of us: we see it all around us, in our real lives or in art and culture, we are afraid of it happening to us and destroying our relationships, and some of us are even tempted to engage with it ourselves. And it’s crazy how, despite the huge role it plays in making and breaking relationships, we are still adamant to stay silent about it and act as though it’s not happening to so many of us to some degree. Without going into too much detail, I am very happy that I’ve never had contact with cheating in a personal way, but I saw it around me, I had people come to me to talk about it, and I registered so many themes and motifs going under this conceptual umbrella – and I wanted to talk about them all. Call them out, show several different perspectives, point out the sense of adventure and the shame and the sense of liberation and the sorrow, all at once.
More than anything, I wanted it to be a metaphorical representation for how I’ve often felt while coming of age and growing into the person that I am today. A traitor for leaving a place that made me unhappy and didn’t appreciate me enough to begin with. Wrong because I wanted to be myself, rather than follow the crowd. A cheater for doing things my way. In the foreword opening the book, I say that Poems Gone Nuclear is, more than anything, a conversation and I don’t lie there. But because we are in a rather informal setting here, I can say that Poems Gone Nuclear is also a huge middle finger in the face of those things and people who even remotely tried to make me feel as though I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t just uproot and leave and arrive somewhere I could be myself unapologetically.
Okay, so I hope that made sense.
With Poems Gone Nuclear, it was important for me that people realised that there is a distinction between me, the person and me, the author. Although I share a lot of feelings and thoughts and concepts that meant something for me at some point in this book, I’ve never aimed to tell my life story, get very personal or get very opinionated. This book is completely separate from my personal moral set of beliefs and values, and to be honest with you, moral judgement was exactly what I didn’t want to do with Poems Gone Nuclear. Never wanted to be the judge or play the devil’s advocate, all I wanted to do was to tell a story, put some feelings on paper, encourage a conversation. I would also lie if I said that I didn’t want the book to be controversial: in my candid opinion, this is just part of making art. If you don’t go all the way, then you might as well not go at all. I also felt as though self-publishing gave me the freedom to take the creative direction I wanted, and present my message and my story unfiltered.
As far as the style of poetry that I adopt is concerned, I am sort of doing my own thing. Compared to my previous pieces, for this book I have settled for a rather classic format, although I do choose musicality over structure. Going to be honest with you, I am not an educated writer. I couldn’t care less for the rules of lyrical formatting and I like going wherever I feel the need to go, specific for the piece that I want to write. But, I would describe my style as light, even playful at times and I can’t begin to say how happy I am with how the writing turned out, so believe me, you don’t want to miss out.
Okay, what other cheeky facts can I share with you?
The book is divided into two parts, and poems are listed in the chronological order of the story. Most of them were written this year, but a couple are actually a few good years’ old! The first poem to have made the book is no. 8, and I wrote it in February of this year, whereas the oldest one was written in the early summer of 2016. The newest was literally written last month.
Although those of you who know me might’ve already suspected it, Poems Gone Nuclear is not a reference to Fallout, my favourite games series and coincidentally, one of the best games series ever made. In fact, the title is inspired by the name I go under on Tumblr, where I post poetry weekly: Nils Gone Nuclear. The name itself was inspired by my belief that poetry is a passionate, almost explosive way of sharing one’s most profound thoughts and feelings. But there is a cheeky Fallout reference within the book, if you care to find it.
Also, the book has an acknowledgements section. If you’ve been particularly nice to me in the last couple of years, you might’ve made it.
For the time remaining until the 16th of October, I will regularly post social media updates and such over on Instagram, Twitter and on my Tumblr poetry blog. Until then, if you wish to read bits and pieces from the book head on over to my poetry blog, Nils Gone Nuclear, where I have listed seven teasers, under the ‘Blog Megalist’ page.
I want to finish this post by reiterating my gratitude towards everybody who’s helped me or supported me, one way to another, in my journey of publishing the book. I also want to thank those of you who come here to read the blog for basically giving me the courage to go further with writing, here and for my book and for everything else I’m preparing in the meanwhile. These last few months we’ve spent together were the best and I am so happy to have you in my little corner of the internet.
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Photo sources: cover designed using KDP Cover Creator.