A Budding Poet.

After having the great honor to meet Misses Heidi S. Cuda in person this weekend, I also got to meet a rare gem, her young poet and I got to thinking having authored many poems myself on some friendly advice.

Don’t try to sell a few poems or a single poem. Instead concentrate on building an ‘anthology’ of many poems, that is a collection and here is a structured way to consider going about it.

First, figure out categories you want to author of poems. Some examples might be the seasons, or morning, or flowers, perhaps things like a poem for a great day.

Once you have organized several categories, start by writing just one poem a day, each day. It sounds like a lot, but actually it doesn’t take much to do. Remember there are many forms of poetry too. Not all poetry is rhyming as many think. A perfect example is a gift card like for example a Birthday Card, or erhmmm, a Mothers Day Card as all of our moms are always the very best. You will notice some rhyme, but many do not.

In a years time you will be able to organize the 365 poems you have into anthologies. Best to sell several anthologies, honest. So, for example you have an anthology of ‘Morning Poems’

It does add up over time and as you maintain your persistence at it daily, you can look back at the work and realize you have achieved much more than other young and budding artists as yourself.

Is the Copyright Office failing to register conservative leaning authors?

I read elsewhere on the net recently of  several conservative artists who claim it takes almost a year to get their online certificate of registration. In my case it is the typical slow Washington offices taking a very slow 6 months. I remember way back in 1978 when I first registered a title with them by mail it took about that long. These days, the Library of Congress has what they call the ECO system or “Electronic Copyright Online” option. It initially seemed faster when they first started it as I was a tester of it with my work. The copyright went right through and within about 45 days I received by mail a copyright certificate. Then it started to slow down as the months went by. I honestly believe this is what has really happened. It’s been my understanding these days that a usual copyright of material through ECO takes about 3 to 6 months if the submission was better. If there are issues, it could take a year.

According to my correspondence with the Copyright Office, they said the copyright is when it is officially submitted to them, so even if you have submitted something, it is protected when the initial submission and registration are performed online. There is a benefit to electronically filing over mailing a hard copy of the literary works. That instant file time is noted, so rest assured, the Obama Administration or anyone else has not yet weaponized this against their political foes. Whether it stays that way will remain to be seen, and when that day comes, you will most likely see artwork die in this country.

The U.S. Copyright office is located at this link http://www.copyright.gov/

To Register through the ECO system go here. http://www.copyright.gov/eco/

If you want to search titles, authors and the records in the copyright office, you can go here… http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First

Remember, if a title or artist doesn’t show, it could be either that they did not register their work with the government or if new work it might be pending which case it would not show up.