Rejection is a fly you have to wave aside continually until
you die. You can take it as a tragedy or you can take it as...a fly.
diane tucker
(-- from a discusson on the League of Canadian Poets' list
serve. Diane gave me permission to quote this.)
Showing posts with label Sending. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sending. Show all posts
Friday, August 21, 2009
Sunday, April 08, 2007
OUT OF CIRCULATION
Last week I got two more "returns" from revues to which I had circulated work -- check here for a nomenclature I came up with to replace those stinging, tail-between-the-legs terms, submission and rejection -- and found I now have practically nothing out there: one set of poems sent to one tardy review, and a couple of contests.
Time, this Easter weekend, to resurrect myself -- at least as far as poem circulation is concerned.
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours organizing my return slips and letters into alpha-order in a binder for easy reference, with acceptances under a separate category. I've found Excell spreadsheets too time-consuming, and am using this simple system: simply mentioning names of the poems sent in the cover letter, printing out an extra copy for myself and sticking it in a binder. That way I have all the information about names of editors, poems sent, etc. Is there a simpler system, a better spreadsheet that works for you?
My record over the last two years or so: 45 returns, 10 acceptances (14 poems in total), a finalist for a major contest. On the return slips, I have 9 positive handwritten comments.
Not too discouraging, but I'm very slow at this stuff. My batting average may be quite good (.182, by my calculations, apparently not bad in the Literary League), but I just don't get to bat enough. I lag, procrastinate, spend a long time mulling on what to send where, lose focus, make all kinds of absurd mistakes. It's a task for which I have to make special efforts to psych myself up. For years, I sent out nothing -- demoralized by the process, the editors, the reviews, everything. But if, like most writers, I feel underpublished and underappreciated, I have only myself to blame.
Kelly Russell Agodon wrote a recent post about her over-thinking of submissions. I like the advice a friend of hers gave: send three you think the review will love, and one you think they'll hate. Chances are they'll take the latter. Kelly, by the way, just won a prize.
Time, this Easter weekend, to resurrect myself -- at least as far as poem circulation is concerned.
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours organizing my return slips and letters into alpha-order in a binder for easy reference, with acceptances under a separate category. I've found Excell spreadsheets too time-consuming, and am using this simple system: simply mentioning names of the poems sent in the cover letter, printing out an extra copy for myself and sticking it in a binder. That way I have all the information about names of editors, poems sent, etc. Is there a simpler system, a better spreadsheet that works for you?
My record over the last two years or so: 45 returns, 10 acceptances (14 poems in total), a finalist for a major contest. On the return slips, I have 9 positive handwritten comments.
Not too discouraging, but I'm very slow at this stuff. My batting average may be quite good (.182, by my calculations, apparently not bad in the Literary League), but I just don't get to bat enough. I lag, procrastinate, spend a long time mulling on what to send where, lose focus, make all kinds of absurd mistakes. It's a task for which I have to make special efforts to psych myself up. For years, I sent out nothing -- demoralized by the process, the editors, the reviews, everything. But if, like most writers, I feel underpublished and underappreciated, I have only myself to blame.
Kelly Russell Agodon wrote a recent post about her over-thinking of submissions. I like the advice a friend of hers gave: send three you think the review will love, and one you think they'll hate. Chances are they'll take the latter. Kelly, by the way, just won a prize.
Monday, October 03, 2005
NOMENCLATURE
After considering the foregoing discussions, here's my personal nomenclature for that wonderful/dreadful process of submission: submission in general will be called circulation; individual submissions assertions, rejections returns, and submissions of work turned back recirculations. In other words, I have lots of poems for circulation; some have been returned, and need to be recirculated. I have to work on an assertion now. Sounds good? À bientôt!
Thursday, March 03, 2005
COPYWRITE COPY MIGHT....
My friend & fellow poet Daniel Laxer wrote me and Aimee Davidson to say,
I was just skimming your respective blogs, and I couldn't help but wonder, do you not worry that the work you put up on your blogs will get stolen? I mean, there's some good stuff there. And I'd thought about putting my poems up on the net. But I don't want to see them published elsewhere under someone else's name. Doesn't that thought worry you?
My reply:
Hi Dan,
The complete poems I post on my blog (on Sky of Ink, Jonah) have already been published elsewhere. Of course, these poems can now be easily lifted and/or altered in some way and republished under someone else's name, but the same thing could also be done to poems published in any of a number of online journals... so they are about as protected as that.
I don't put unpublished poems on my blog, but only a little due to the concern you mention. The main reason is that once they're on the blog they're eminently Googlable, and any review considering publishing one of them could simply type in a few words from the poem, and quickly find it. Most literary reviews, for all their limited readership & distribution, want to be THE FIRST IN THE UNIVERSE to publish any given poem. Since I still seek the validation of being published by said reviews, I figure it's better to be safe than sorry.
At the same time I sometimes wonder about my self-imposed gag order. Especially when tempted to put up a recent poem, talk about the writing of it, etc. How many readers, after all, does my blog get? (From what I see, the hit total is impressive, but the readership, a worthy few...) Does printing here constitute publishing? Do harried review editors even have the time to BOTHER googling to find a poem in a blog? All open questions. I see people like Aimee putting drafts of poems for feedback and the immediate pleasure of reaching out to someone out there in the cosmos, and I can't help feeling, what the hell? Why not?
Someday, who knows, I may change my tack.
Poetry in this culture remains an exercise in obscurity. It will never generate the glitz or $$$ that make copyright infringement sexy. That obscurity, I'd say, is its greatest protection.
I was just skimming your respective blogs, and I couldn't help but wonder, do you not worry that the work you put up on your blogs will get stolen? I mean, there's some good stuff there. And I'd thought about putting my poems up on the net. But I don't want to see them published elsewhere under someone else's name. Doesn't that thought worry you?
My reply:
Hi Dan,
The complete poems I post on my blog (on Sky of Ink, Jonah) have already been published elsewhere. Of course, these poems can now be easily lifted and/or altered in some way and republished under someone else's name, but the same thing could also be done to poems published in any of a number of online journals... so they are about as protected as that.
I don't put unpublished poems on my blog, but only a little due to the concern you mention. The main reason is that once they're on the blog they're eminently Googlable, and any review considering publishing one of them could simply type in a few words from the poem, and quickly find it. Most literary reviews, for all their limited readership & distribution, want to be THE FIRST IN THE UNIVERSE to publish any given poem. Since I still seek the validation of being published by said reviews, I figure it's better to be safe than sorry.
At the same time I sometimes wonder about my self-imposed gag order. Especially when tempted to put up a recent poem, talk about the writing of it, etc. How many readers, after all, does my blog get? (From what I see, the hit total is impressive, but the readership, a worthy few...) Does printing here constitute publishing? Do harried review editors even have the time to BOTHER googling to find a poem in a blog? All open questions. I see people like Aimee putting drafts of poems for feedback and the immediate pleasure of reaching out to someone out there in the cosmos, and I can't help feeling, what the hell? Why not?
Someday, who knows, I may change my tack.
Poetry in this culture remains an exercise in obscurity. It will never generate the glitz or $$$ that make copyright infringement sexy. That obscurity, I'd say, is its greatest protection.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
REVISING/SUBMITTING
This week, have been going through unpublished work, revising. Cutting out excess. Tightening. Changing words. Finding redundancies that previously seemed integral. Always the struggle of sound and sense: what may sound good causes us to overlook whether it makes sense, or can be read in unintended, detracting senses… Or on a more subtle level, one poem began well, even ended well, giving a sense of formal completion -- but somewhere along the way evaded the point, bifurcating into a clever word game (successful, perhaps, as a wordgame, but word game nevertheless) rather than drawing upon and developing the central feeling that brought out those strongest beginning lines. Emerging from all this: a greater sense of solidity, as the words - every word - is sharpened and considered… but when is the poem ever truly solid? There have been plenty of occasions of delusion along the way. The language is a palette of a million colours, and the colours of the poem can be changed instantly. (Much easier than say on a canvas…) That's the difficulty … but also the beauty & delight….
All this of course occasioned by the desire to send more work out, even a sense of pressure, as it's already mid-October, and I have very little out there…. and finding in the last few months that almost everything recent I planned to send has been marked with changes, strikeouts, etc. (a lot more than even I had realized). So it's really not ready. Ostensible reasons may be visibility, a growing list of credentials, etc. But in the meantime, sending out has at least one benefit: I am guaranteeing myself at least one more attentive reader … namely, myself.
All this of course occasioned by the desire to send more work out, even a sense of pressure, as it's already mid-October, and I have very little out there…. and finding in the last few months that almost everything recent I planned to send has been marked with changes, strikeouts, etc. (a lot more than even I had realized). So it's really not ready. Ostensible reasons may be visibility, a growing list of credentials, etc. But in the meantime, sending out has at least one benefit: I am guaranteeing myself at least one more attentive reader … namely, myself.
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