So far this year I have had 16 acceptances. One came this morning and prompted this post. That’s from 30 submissions, so it’s a touch over 50%. I have done better in past years, but this year, as I have said, I have tried harder and sent submissions to people who habitually turn me down. It’s character forming.

I’ve been scouring the internet looking for more places to submit and have found a few, but run into three problems.

One is that some only accept postal submissions and I no longer like sending them. Paper does actually, as the expression goes, grow on trees, but I feel it’s better to use emails for both convenience and carbon footprint.

Two is that the editors of these harder to find journals can be quite aggressive, which is probably a reason why they are not so well supported. In general I find editors of Japanese style magazines are nicer and more helpful than those of mainstream poetry journals, but if they aren’t, why should I bother with them?

And three – when I relaunched my poetry writing I decided to aim for the best magazines. I did. I got rejected. I am still rejected. But when I did get in it was worth doing and quite exciting to find myself in a journal with people I’d actually heard of. Better to be rejected by a quality journal than be accepted by one of lower quality.  And better to aspire to meet the quality threshold of a better journal.

My Orange Parker Pen

There is another reason, I just remembered. Some magazines want to be paid to include my work. With some, it’s voluntary – I can access a quicker decision by paying, but with one they actually want you to pay for inclusion.

Few magazines have ever paid. I can live with that. I can live with taking out subscriptions for magazines. That seems fair. It’s a hobby and hobbies cost money. But to pay for inclusion? I don’t think I’ll bother tank you.

Poetry – creatively stacked but a touch light on stock