Jonathan Byrd

You've Changed Jonathan Byrd

You've Changed is a collection of poetry that was born over seven years of working on a novel. I may work on the novel for another seven years or another seventy.

A song can be held in the mind whole as you work on it. Only so much can happen in a song, or at least only so much can be said about it. To be fair, each word carries more weight. Still, a novelist is obligated to come up with a minimum of forty thousand words that can grip the modern attention span for at least an afternoon. Paul McCartney's "Blackbird" has thirty-four words and is done before you can plunge your French press.

To maintain a sense of wonder and play in this highly-disciplined writing environment, I created exercises for myself. I would remove time. I would introduce two characters from different books. I would tell a modern story using only words from Genesis. Mostly they were weird little monsters I shared with my friends on the internet. But some were very moving. Some made me cry or laugh out loud. Some still do, even just now proofreading the latest version. Somehow my heart got into it.

This is the magic of art. I show up and do things every day. Suddenly one day my hand says something my heart has been trying to say for years. It feels as if a cog has moved inside me. As if my internal machinery has wheeled forward another inch in its specific mission, a mission that is maddeningly hidden from me inside the ink of a thousand hotel pens.

You've Changed is a seven-year journey of inches. I didn't even know I was making a book and now you may be holding it. Please take your time with it. It's magic after all