Tag Archives: acceptances

Back to Writing Matters

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I’ve now made lunch (pea soup and a sandwich using sliced Polish sausage I meant to use during the week) and had a lie down. It turned out to be a restorative nap of just over an hour, after which I answered comments. Thank you for your good wishes. I will pass them o to Julia too.

Now it is time to get down to writing about writing.

Last month’s planned output was not huge, and I managed to do most of it. I was feeling a little rough towards the end and did allow one deadline to slip by. I also failed to look for more things to do. Obviously I’m a little disappointed in myself for slacking off, but I still managed six submissions. One is a competition entry, which will most likely disappear without trace. Two have already been accepted, which was good news to a man stuck in hospital. Three others are in the grip of an editorial committee. I’m expecting poor results there because it’s a new arrangement and because when things change I usually do worse than under the previous system. It’s just how things are.

Anyway, it will be two from six, even if the worst happens, and when I was beginning that would have seemed like a fine result.

I’ve also been asked for permission to quote a poem of mine as a prompt in part of a series of articles someone is doing. That feels quite good.

In June I have eleven submissions to make.  I already have one acceptance because I was asked to let someone roll a poem forward. I’m always happy to do that. It feels good and it saves time later. I had better get on with some work next week.

That is the first time such a thing has happened, and in a second new first, one of the members of the  Peterborough Military History Group has asked to reprint something I wrote for the group in another local publication.

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe a man with fine facial hair is reading a book . . .

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Some Thoughts on Acceptances and Happiness

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Lowestoft

I had a strange acceptance last night. It’s for the autumn. Sometimes it happens – an editor likes two poems, only has room for one, so saves if for later. It’s a little annoying that they only use one at a time, but nice to know it’s good enough to keep for later. I also had a fresh acceptance.

As I’ve said before, it’s tricky counting what is a “submission”. If you count every group of poems I’ve sent off, I have made 10 submissions. Five of them were to one magazine, but they are to individual editors in different forms. The other five sets were sent to three magazines where decisions seem to made jointly, so is that three or five submissions? Anyway, whatever happens, I have had five acceptances, and cannot get more than 5 rejections so I’m going to be 50/50 for the month, at least.

Dolphin – Sutton on Sea

In fact, I am going to make a decision. Different editors and different forms – that’s a submission. Different forms to a single editor or group of editors – that’s one submission.  So I made eight submissions last month and so far have had five acceptances and two rejections, having just one submission waiting for an answer. It reduces my submissions counting towards the 100 a year target, but it makes my percentages look better. Swings and roundabouts.

The two that rejected me have never accepted anything from me in the past, so I wasn’t expecting much. The magazine that hasn’t replied yet is one I’ve never submitted to before so I’m waiting with bated breath . . .

Today I have to start submitting for next month. And so it goes on . . .

I’m feeling quite buoyant today. Maybe it’s the spring. Maybe it’s the acceptances. The answer, I feel, is to keep writing.

Today’s photos are more from the same lot I used yesterday – July 2018.

Plaques on the hand rail – Southwold

The Sons of Apathy

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I did 300 words on a mythical motorcycle gang earlier today, based on this one. We would, I decided pass our time hanging round on electric mobility scooters annoying teenagers and lecturing the police on how young they look when chastised for geriatric anti-social behaviour. Then I started to wonder if I really could start such a group and go round raising funds for local charities. I often have such ideas. They usually come to nothing, and this will be one of those doomed ideas. I no longer have the energy to do such things. Blame LA, it was one of her comments that started my train of thought. Anyway, by the time I’d finished, I realised I had better things to write about. That really sums me up doesn’t it? I was going to write about “The Sons of Apathy” but I couldn’t be bothered.

Meanwhile, I had the provisional acceptance confirmed (after a discussion of the correct spelling of Breughel). That’s the correct one for all the family apart from Pieter Breugel the Elder, who dropped the “h” in 1559. As this was the man I was writing about, it meant I was wrong, or even worse, sloppy with my research.

The eighth and final editor replied today. I have been trying to get one of my haibun into his magazine since I started writing haibun. It’s probably six or seven years – time flies. I wrote to him to make up the numbers and didn’t expect much, but he has finally accepted one! Not only that, it is one that has been submitted to something like five other editors. Admittedly it’s been tightened up over the years, but it just goes to show the value of persistence and the way that different editors view submissions. So, the final figures for January – nine submissions, eight acceptances. It’s a good start but it’s obviously too good to last.

Finally, we had long-tailed tits in the garden this afternoon and as the light faded the parakeets flew over to their roost in the country park. One day, I hope, one will drop in for a snack.

 

 

The Cormorant Tree

Catching Up

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I think my last report was nine submissions, one rejection and one acceptance. It’s now one rejection, four acceptances and one where I have made the alterations the editor asked for, so, with luck, that should be another acceptance. Not a bad start to the year. It just goes to show there’s a very narrow psychological line between success and failure. One patronising rejection was, I admit, enough to make me rethink my writing life. A few acceptances by editors I like restored some balance, and the one today was the icing on the cake. It was from an editor with a prolific high quality output and an acceptance from him always feels like a validation.

Yesterday I used my new slow cooker to produce a vegetable stew. It’s new to me, given by one of our old neighbours. We used to have one, and used it quite a lot until it melted. We were always short of space in the old kitchen and I used to stand it on the hob. This worked well until the day that Julia, thinking of other things, turned the hob on without noticing the slow cooker standing there.

I doubt I’ll use it to produce vegetable stew again as it’s just as easy to do it in a pan on the hob, The pan/hob method is quicker, doesn’t need preparing in advance and only needs cooking for thirty minutes, not 4-6 hours. I will, however, try some other recipes, as I know I liked using it before. My memory is just too bad to recall any of the recipes, apart from pulled pork. But as I always found pulled pork to be disappointing, I doubt I’ll try that again. Somehow, the idea is always better than the reality.

There seem to be plenty of other slow cooker stew recipes so a few weeks of experimentation seem called for. I still have gingerbread men to make. Julia bought me a kit and the ingredients for Christmas, but we had, as usual, so many biscuits given us, that we have only just finished them.  I also want to make peppermint creams for Valentine’s Day, and am already telling Julia that a handmade present is worth so much more than one bought from a shop. She seems suspicious . . .

So much to do – so many excuses!

Photos are more of the squirrelbatics – we added spice to the seed. It put the squirrels off for almost two days. Not enough? Not strong enough? Or are they just not as bothered as the internet suggests?

I’m going to have my own feeder built by an agricultural engi9neer, I think. If I just hang the feeders a few inches further away that should do the trick.

A Remarkable Run

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I mean, of course, a run in the sense of a sequence. Regular readers, I presume, knew it didn’t mean moving at a speed above walking. It would be remarkable, I admit, but not prudent or likely. I am a man more fitted for ambling than running.

The run I refer to is acceptances. In September I sent off six submissions and in October, two. In an ideal world I would have four chances to submit each month, but in the real world submissions aren’t so evenly spread. I have just had the eighth acceptance. Despite my worries about whether the bubble is about to burst, I’m quite pleased with that, and despite the dangers of immodesty, I’d like to share it. Half the pleasure of having things go well is the ability to tell people.

Having shared it, I won’t labour the point as I have to get writing again – I am, as I always say only as good as the next lot.

Today in the shop has also been remarkable. We seen two customers return, who had not been seen since lockdown. Yes, it has taken that long to recover, and we have had a new, young customer for the second week in a row. It’s always been hard to attract new collectors to the hobby, so this is a good sign. Whether they last is another matter, as there are always plenty of distractions.

In the afternoon we had a run of sales on eBay, including three good medallions to three different customers. It’s strange how these things go – we had only just been discussing the fact that we hadn’t sold a decent medallion for quite a while. The trick is to keep putting something new on, which attracts attention. Unfortunately, it’s difficult motivating yourself to put new stuff on when none of the similar old stuff is selling.

The psychology of eBay is a fascinating subject – both the psychology of the buyers, and of the sellers. I watched a programme on IKEA last week and discovered that there are academics who devote all their time to the study of retail. Who would have guessed that the study of shopping could be a career choice?

 

 

 

 

Smugness, Success and the Art of the Humblebrag

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Warning – this post may contain smugness and inappropriate levels of self-satisfaction. I have also invented a new (to me ) form of humblebrag –

Do you realise how much time it takes emailing editors to thank them for accepting your work? I’ve had to do it three times in the last three days and it’s hard finding time to actually write the poems.

That’s. of course, an exaggeration, as i’d be happy to spend all day thanking editors, and in truth it only took about ten minutes in total. I tend, like editors to have a fairly standard reply, because after “thank you” there isn’t much to say.

The story is that I have spent the last few days hammering away at the keyboard. I did this because I am lazy and disorganised and only work when under threat of a deadline. Even then, the “work” of writing poetry doesn’t compare to cleaning out a chicken she in November, or cutting lawns in the middle of summer. Anyway, I managed six submissions in the last  four days (they were written but not finished.

One had an acceptance within 24 hours. I have already written about that. This morning I had an email to tell me someone had accepted three poems from yesterday’s submissions (which is a high level of editor industry and well beyond the call of duty. This evening I switched the computer on and found two more had been accepted. That had taken several days, which is still stunningly speedy considering editors also have day jobs and get piles of poetry sent to them.

Obviously, I’m happy and grateful, and, as you may have noticed before, success is a double edged sword, as I start to worry about repeating it. However, it goes deeper than that. It’s 12 months since I had cellulitis and the associated sepsis, and about eleven since I had Covid. It has taken all that time for me to get going again and to feel I am back up to standard.