Word Raccoon and I are doing taxes. Writerly taxes.
We do not particularly enjoy this, but we know it is necessary. I have a method. Word Raccoon, meanwhile, insists on buying books behind my back and believes we ought to get deductions for squirrel food. I told her I really don’t think the IRS will go for that.
Ah, yes, the yearly gathering of expenses. Every January I start a note in my phone labeled with the year, and as writerly expenses come along, I add them. When I remember.
Office supplies. Memberships. Software. The Authors Guild.
Just like any other small enterprise, I suppose. You have to keep track of subscriptions, travel, and those borderline things you’re not sure you want the hassle of claiming. Being conservative always feels safer.
There’s the Amazon account to check, to see what books Word Raccoon did indeed order.
There’s the mental inventory:
Website fees.
Podcast fees.
Microsoft Word.
Submissions.
Supplies.
And of course the bank account to scour, in case something slipped through the cracks.
What I didn’t expect this year was that my expenses would tell a story.
Looking through the list, I realized how much my writing life has shifted.
There were far fewer tech and course expenses this year. Fewer subscriptions. Fewer attempts to systematize or professionalize myself into some imagined efficiency.
But there were so many poetry submission fees. Contest entries. Journal submissions. Lines and lines of them.
No one likes the fees. But in years of yore, when I was sending out short stories and the like, you had to print the story, put it in an envelope, include a SASE. Nowadays the submission fees pretty much pay for themselves in the hassle they save by allowing you to submit online.
And there’s the bonus of helping journals and contests stay alive, able to cover their expenses and pay writers.
So I’m not complaining about the fees.
I’m just noticing.
And I’m noticing, based on tracking them, what I’ve been writing that I’m submitting.
Poems.
So many poems.
I didn’t set out to reorganize my writing life in 2025. I started writing poems in April because something in me needed a place to go. There were things I didn’t know how to carry any longer in prose.
Poetry turned out to be a smaller door that opened into a larger room.
Soul saving with a side of admin: now there’s a whole record-keeping system where none existed before.
Submission trackers.
Draft folders.
Reading lists.
Journals I follow.
Contests I know by name.
Deadlines that appear on the horizon like weather.
A year ago? None of this.
And now the proof of it is sitting in a column of numbers.
Lines of submission fees.
Small charges that look almost insignificant until you see them gathered together, evidence of a whole new life forming in quiet increments. (Let’s not talk about the total!)
What astonishes and tickles me is that the place this transformation shows up undeniably is my taxes.
In my taxes.
Word Raccoon finds this hilarious, of course. She is convinced the IRS should issue creative-progress reports along with refunds. IDK about that, WR.
Poetry brought Word Raccoon to me, gave me a voice to say the unsayable. Freed me of the “shoulds” and so many, many, “shouldn’ts.”
Poetry gave me a place to put pain and joy and ordinary days that might otherwise have passed without being marked. It gave me a way to process things I didn’t know what to do with. It gave me new work and new excitement.
New craft tools to play with.
And apparently it gave me new deductions.
This reminds me of looking through censuses for ancestors and finding something unexpected, like they were an artist when you thought they were a teacher.
The most extraordinary things in a common bureaucratic document.
But there it is.
A quiet record of the year poetry moved in and rearranged the furniture.
Word Raccoon wants to say something funny or dramatic here, but I’m putting my finger on her lips, just for now.
Just for now.
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