Tag Archives: deadlines

Like Writing, but Slower.

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Sorry, I’ve been suffering from writers’ block recently, and haven’t written either the blog or anything useful to submit to magazines. As regular readers will know, I don’t actually believe in being blocked. It is, in my view, lack of practice, laziness and poor organisation. That is certainly the case for me at the moment. Defining it as I do doesn’t necessarily make it easier to cope with,it just puts the blame where it belongs instead of blaming it on a mystery condition.

Yesterday I decided to tackle it by becoming more organised. I have sent two submissions off for this month and have two more ready (one just needs some tinkering). There are three days until the end of the month. It is going to be tight.

On counting the submissions required, I was surprised to find there were 13, not eleven as I had thought. Take four away and you have 9 left. Three a day is not good.

Edward VII visits Cardiff Docks (Obverse)

Edward VII visits Cardiff Docks (Reverse)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, I also found that several were for ordinary poetry, which I don’t write very often, and a couple were for journals that I’m not that bothered about. I’d put them all down but have no qualms about missing them out. That meant I only had eight to do, four of them are done or near enough done and one is just two poems. That more or less leaves three to do – one a day. I can do this.

Of course, that leads on to the old question of when a poem is finished. Is it ever finished or do you, sometimes, just have to say it is time to send it out? And also to procrastination. There is, I feel, a link between the time I have left and the interest I feel in reading trash on the internet. A week – I read about politics. Five days – I read about Harry and Meghan. Three days and I will read anything to avoid work, including those appalling click bait articles that start off sounding interesting and peter out into being totally useless have you have clicked 20 or 30 times. I really don’t know why I do it.

Oh dear, I have just realised I hardly have any time to do the medallion talk . . .

Time for a severe internal pep talk and some work. That, for me, has been the last three days.

Piece of Masonic and Preston Guild interest – though it my just mark 50 years and 1922 might be a coincidence (1922 being a Guild Year).

Day 30

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In terms of creativity and industry things haven’t worked out that well. In other ways it has been  a pleasant and relaxing day. This qualifies it as a tick in the “good day” column of the celestial ledger, and I am now bringing it to a close with a smile on my face.

Normally I like to approach a deadline with plenty of material already written and refined. My deadline is 31st January which is tomorrow (for the next 22 minutes, when it will become “today”.

Fortunately, last time I had a rejection all the ten haiku had been written a few days before submission so I was able to look at them again and make improvements (I know I ought to give time for them to mature, but it always seems like I don’t have enough). I’m hoping that one will be acceptable this time round.

Submitting to editors is an art and not a science. What works with one editor doesn’t necessarily work with another and many of my poems have been accepted after two or three rejections. The best example I have is my haibun about Philip Larkin. I’ll add it at the bottom of post if I can find it. That haibun went out four times and came back four times. I tinkered a little each time to tighten it up, but didn’t change it too much. The fourth time it came back I sent it out again the next day and had it accepted in two days. Which goes to show that you can never tell what is around the corner. I have seen interviews where established writers have sent out poems a lot more than that. I don’t have that sort of confidence. After three or four failures I usually retire them.

However, I’ve been trawling through them today, looking for pieces that are good enough to send out. I’ve found three, polished them, and sent them out and am now looking for three more. After that I just need to write ten tanka in the next 23 hours and I’m laughing.

There are several more deadlines that I decided to ignore. One journal has been rejecting me constantly since a change of editor, for instance, and another is fond of heavy-handed editing. I’m going to give them a miss this month and catch them next time they come round.

In fact, I’d better get back to work – ten tanka won’t write themselves.

Later, far too much later on a work night, I have all three of the next batch of haibun assembled, and I realised I forgot the Larkin piece. I will search it out tomorrow.

 

Time Passing

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I realised on Sunday evening, as I sat by the fire watching TV, that it was the first time in about a month that I have not noticed any pain. It’s very relaxing. I now need to make sure, as much as I can, that this continues. I can’t do much about  the weather but I can make sure I lose some weight, do my hand exercises and order the pills in plenty of time.

That was about all I did during the afternoon, as the promise of the morning faded. We had stir-fried vegetables for tea and watched Miss Marple. After that I read a few more blogs and went to bed. Life is less fun since I had to start working Mondays again.

It became even less fun when I actually arrived at work after dropping Julia off. We had one parcel of 14 items to send to Australia and one of eight items to send to Canada. IN addition there were invoices, queries, offers and fourteen other parcels to send. At one point, I started to swell up like the Incredible Hulk. I couldn’t find several of the bits I wanted, things have been moved since the last time I looked at them and time was pressing. Just as I was about to ask for help in locating several of the pieces, a customer came in without an appointment. It would be unprofessional of me to offer an opinion of either his parentage or the lonely existence suffered by his two brain cells, but if it were an international event he really could bore for England.

I have  a deadline looming in six days, and nothing fit to send. Another is lurking behind that one and then there are a couple of extras I have slotted in. There are more in May.

Have you noticed that the year is nearly a third over and, having been on hold for lockdown, I have done nothing that I had planned outside writing. Writing is OK, and I enjoy it, but I really did want to get more work done around the house and garden.

Oh dear, Spring has only just started and I am in a panic about time passing. Strangely, I can calm my fears by playing games on the computer, this feeling better whilst, in fact, making the problem worse. Life is strange.

We had pizza and salad for tea tonight – reasonably easy to prepare as we bought the pizzas ready made and just added a few fresh veg. It was made even pleasanter for me because Julia prepared it. I am a lucky man.

A Dying Fall

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Life is a bit dull at the moment. It’s like my normal life but with added tedium and a dash of boredom thrown in. Of course, if it were exciting it would probably be worse. Excitement, in the form of boundary disputes, car breakdowns and pandemics, is not good either. I know I should be grateful for the monotony, but when the most exciting event of the week is watching Sharpe on TV, there is something wrong.

I really need to do more writing, send more submissions out and start playing editor roulette again. There’s nothing quite like a rejection letter for rousing the passions as yet one more philistine fails to appreciate your endeavours. Ans similarly, there’s nothing quite so worrying as an acceptance, meaning ta the whole world is about to laugh at you when they see your work and realise it’s rubbish.

Currently I don’t have too much out, just two competition entries, one lot of haibun and an article. The competition entries are doomed, they always are. The haibun are currently under consideration and the article is, I think, doomed. There’s going to be very little in the way of excitement coming from there.

There isn’t much coming up in the next month in the way of deadlines, though the month after that is going to be busy.  I am preparing my material for March and April, but I am, unfortunately, not the most industrious of men unless I have a deadline coming up.

I was reading an essay by a writer of haiku recently, in which he notes that most of his haiku have been in progress for about a year by the time he gets round to finishing them. He is quite clearly a patient and focussed man. I, of course, am not, and should probably go back to writing clerihews.

Ambitious PM Boris Johnson
had trouble keeping his pants on.
Thanks to Dominic Cummings
he now looks a bit of a muggins

Publish!

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I’ve been struggling today. It’s not that I’m short of subjects, but they are either not suitable, need more work or need photographs. (I have many of the photos I need, but can’t get the card reader to work).

It’s the same with time – I had a list of jobs to do and I’ve been behaving like a startled rabbit. The result is that I made more mess than I started with. Julia  brought back three wooden boxes from her friendly fruit stall, so we now also have more clutter than when we started.

In the end I decided that I’m the only one that demands daily posts so why make my own life a misery with deadlines?

In the end, at 11.59, I pressed the button, loaded the post and then carried on editing.

Am I the only one who does this, making a rod for my own back?

Please tell me I’m not…