Found my Writers’ Group drafts from 2003 to 2007

Today I found my missing writing from Vito’s Writers’ Group. The packet was hidden in among my CPITS conference notes and poems (for years!). A fluke, really. I just about given up on ever fleshing out the early 2000s posts on my blog when I stumbled across several pieces from 2003 in the back of my CPITS binder, and as I flipped through the binder for the third time seeing if I could clean one or two more pieces, I found all the writing that had gone AWOL from 2003 (only a few pages) through 2007 stuffed in a magenta folder with Steve Kowitt poems on top. No wonder I couldn’t find them, they were hiding out in not so plain sight. There may be more missing pages, but at least it feels like I can finally flesh out all the lean years with the exception of 2003. But 47 posts is doable. I would’ve preferred 52 posts but you never know. For the past few days, I have been combing through old clippings and writing, scanning and uploading them to the blog. Since it’s been such an enormous amount of time since I began this project, sometimes I double post, and then have to delete my work. Who can keep track of nearly 5000 posts anyway?

By right, the year 2007 should also have been included on that scant post list. I began this blog on Aug 20, 2008, and randomly backfilled 2007 with myriad poems, letters, essays, etc. But then I had to deconstruct it when I ran out of room for all my old poems filed by month (I didn’t know that I could backpost to 1970) so there was very little new writing from 2007, about 30 posts in all with less than a dozen poems (ditto that in 2008) because I hadn’t yet started blogging even though I made the site in January of 2007—and that’s with adding all the long lost Writers’ Group entries. There are now 88 posts, but about 40 of them are not from 2007! I decided to leave the letters all in one place, parked in the February 2007 slot, though they date back to the 1980s. At least for now.

• When This Blog Really Began—Aug 2008
• LITERRATA or Veritas and the art of Memoir
• My old poems from the 1980s-90s

*2006 was 12, now 21 (to do. I found my MIA Writers’ Group folder, in w/ CPITS)

*2005 was 10, now 22 (to do. need to add Writers’ Group)

*2004 was 33, now 66 (added Writers’ Group. MIA Florida journals! found 2 emails)

*2003 was 35, now 47 (I found 5 writers group posts buried in my CPITS folder)