Tag Archives: balance

Done!

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A while ago I wrote I wanted to make “submissions to 9 different editors at five magazines, plus three possible competition entries.”

Well, I didn’t bother with the competition entries.  I just ran out of time and inspiration. And one of the magazines caught me out – it has a cut-off date of 25th and I let it pass because I wasn’t concentrating. I also forgot an auction in the same period. Sometimes a brain cannot hold all the infromation you need.

However, I have sent off nine submissions to the nine editors at five magazines. This suggests my original maths was wrong, but that’s the least of my worries.

So far I have had one result – a request to restructure a tanka prose. I can do that. I assume that the next two weeks will hold some mixed news – one of the editors always turns me down and I suspect I will be rejected by several others, as two submissions were written only minutes before I sent them off. This is not the way to write good poetry, but it is the way to meet targets. This month I intend writing everything I need at least two weeks before I need it so I can polish it.

I have ignored Julia and my WP reading over the last week or so, and need to catch up with both. Even as I type, she is cutting fruit for our breakfast. Time, I think, to stop typing for rest of the day and spend time on my Christmas present – a jigsaw of garden birds.

This evening I will start the rewrite and will also try to write a poem about doing jigsaws. In the life of a poet, nothing goes to waste. Then I will tell you the latest squirrel news . . .

Bad start to the week

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It’s been a bad start to the week. For one thing, I was confined to bed for most of yesterday with a bad case of man flu and self-pity. I resorted to viewing soup as food, so you can guess how bad this was. As a result I started Monday morning with a bad back from too much time on a mattress that really needs replacing.

At the centre we found three things.

One, broken paper chains and other evidence of something happening at the weekend. As usual, we get left to tidy up. Julia soon had half the group standing on chairs with sellotape to mend the chains as the other half stood by to catch falling bodies.

Two, a card from one of the group thanking us for the time they have spent here. At that point the man flu made my eyes a bit watery, but it soon passed.

Three, an email from Australia calling me  “very unprofessional and disrespectful of both copyright and intellectual property rights”. That cheered me up, I love a good fight. I had to check the meaning of intellectual property rights as I wasn’t sure where they differ from copyright. In this context I’m not sure they do, so the depravity of my crime was immediately reduced by half.

So – “unprofessional and disrespectful”? I have other traits too, and the reply I framed in my mind certainly showcased my talent for “rudeness” and “sarcasm”.

You see, one of the group has copied an article from the web. They have typed it out, not used cut and paste, and they have worked hard on it. I’m not sure how it got on our website, but I don’t think they even realise that there is such a thing as copyright.

We’re a team and if you cut one of us, we all bleed, so I didn’t hold back.

Then I thought, this person (I’ll say “person” so I don’t upset anyone with my language) probably doesn’t realise that they are being rude, and certainly don’t know that they are abusing a person with learning difficulties, so is it fair for me to give them a hard time?

Having recovered my manners and sense of balance, I’m now feeling better about the day. It’s not been a good start, but there’s a silver lining to every cloud, even an insulting antipodean cloud. As I’ve often told my kids, you shouldn’t let the rudeness of others dictate the way you behave.

I am now going to write a polite reply telling them to contact the farmer. You see, it’s possible to be irritating even when you’re being polite.

Part II of the day’s doings, with pictures, will appear later.