Tag Archives: poetry submissions

One Man and his Menu

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That’s the title I thought of yesterday as I blogged. It’s proof, if proof is needed, for the fact that I can get very pleased about small things, and that once you start having ideas, you have more. That’s the Theory of Creativity – you start and you keep going. Stop and your creativity stops. It’s like those sharks that have to keep swimming.

I also have an idea for the next title. Unfortunately, as I wrote that, I forgot it. That happens a lot.

Yesterday (which is only just an hour away – I’m typing in the early hours) I had beans, tomatoes and mushrooms for breakfast, which lifted me to 21. We didn’t have lunch until 4pm. It was a McDonalds. I had a wrap and claim lettuce as my 22nd plant. In the evening we didn’t feel hungry, so ate the corned beef as sandwiches rather than in hash. I had some tinned pineapple and yoghurt afterwards, upping my intake to 23 plant-based items. Small steps, but not particularly difficult. In this case I do wonder if I’d have been better missing out the pineapple, and the calories. It could be that I’m using the target to make excuses for eating more.

Meanwhile, I am still waiting for the results of several of last month’s submissions. I submitted eight and have had three answers – two acceptances and a rejection. Four of them will probably reply in the next week. It’s just two magazines, but different forms of poetry and different editors. They have all changed recently and are less willing than the previous editors to accept my work. It could be a blood bath. It’s a strange thing – but this reluctance seems to be a regular feature of editorial changes. I suspect I have managed to become old-fashioned, despite being a relative newcomer. It feels a bit like I’m writing for a different generation. I may have mentioned that before.

It’s my age, you know . . .

Repeating Old Mistakes

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And suddenly, as I checked the date to fill in a form last night, I found that there are only four days left until the end of the month. I have nine possible sets of submissions to make, and none actually finalised. After a marathon session this morning I managed to get two sets near enough done. I’ll get another couple done tonight and things will seem to look a little brighter. However, it’s a long way from the scenario of being ready in advance, which I imagined when I got the least lost sent off.

The previous few days had been spent writing articles for Facebook and newsletters, intending to metaphorically clear my desk before getting to work on the poetry submissions. By the time I’d sorted out a couple of technical hitches and spent a couple of days in Nottingham and relaxed a bit, I found I’d actually lost a week.

If I cut out all the extra writing, I doubt I’d be much better off as I’m the sort of person who doesn’t do something until they are forced to. Some call it working under pressure, some call it being lazy. It’s much the same. Having honed my procrastination skills for the last 60 years, I’m unlikely to develop a sense of urgency, or a passion for efficiency, in retirement.

In fact, I’m so committed to procrastinating I just drifted off and read an article about how to make myself more productive. I’m pretty sure it hasn’t worked.

Wood Pigeon

 

Day 210

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Last night I spent several hours improving a tanka prose poem with a restructure and a new tanka. I then unedited a small part where the original was better than the re-write. All in all, it felt good.

Finally I decided on a destination and started to get it ready to send. For some reason, alarm bells started to ring. I checked the last submission I had made to the intended magazine and found I’d submitted the old version last time. I’m never sure of the advisability of sending new versions to old editors (if you see what I mean).

Then I had a look at the magazine. I hadn’t just submitted the old version, I’d had it accepted.

My Orange Parker Pen

Coming so soon after the incident where I seem to have bought from eBay in my sleep I really feel I need to get a grip. A new filing system is called for, and that should be achievable. Apart from the problem with filing, I have the additional problem that some haibun have multiple versions and several different titles. A new brain would be good too, but I think that might be beyond me. I must eat more fish.

I’m thinking that with just four submissions this month I may call it a day and not try any of the other seven I have listed. It’s a poor result when compared to the plan, but it’s still four submissions, which is a reasonable amount.

I just spent the last two hours looking at odds and ends – there really is nothing that I feel like sending. I am going to spend August organising things (not many submissions planned) and in September I’m hoping I will be ahead of myself once more.

I always used to plan things so that I could submit at the beginning of the window rather than the end. I always think, rightly or wrongly, that if I get in first the next submission has to be better than mine to replace me in the editor’s mental shortlist. If I submit at the end, I have to be better than the others. And there is always the chance, as has happened several times, that there will be a  last minute email glitch.

A colourful shed

Day 181

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It’s late and I’m struggling for inspiration. In a day that started with so many good intentions, and ended with none of them implemented, this one will hardly be noticed. I meant to write the post as soon as I got home but didn’t, and I meant to avoid eBay, but I didn’t. The two things may be linked.

The programme for the Numismatic Society is out and I am down for a talk next spring – it seems I’ll be interpreting the 20th Century through medallions. That wasn’t the title I had in mind, and seems rather a grand claim. I am going to have to start preparing now, as the standard keeps getting higher every year.

Last month was poor for poetry submissions – just one submission in the end. I lost momentum and slacked off a bit too much. In July I have a chance of 14 submissions. I won’t be able to manage all 14, but I’m hoping to have a far better go than I managed this month. I did look at some other poetry magazines, with the intention of  submitting but in the end did nothing about that either. The plan is still to submit the best work I can to the best magazines.

When I first started writing poetry I selected magazines at the bottom of the pile. It secured me some confidence and some publication, but it doesn’t feel as good as getting in decent magazines.

Now I just need ten words to push me over the line. Done it!

 

Day 116

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Time, I think, to set some ambitious targets. Also, I think, time to keep quiet about it so that it doesn’t come back to bite me.

One target I can reveal is my plan to submit more. I’ve been getting slack and let a few chances slide by. You can call it resting, or preparation  (which I do) but after a while it becomes the norm, and that isn’t what I want.

What I want to do is get back to the old system,  where I had work waiting for the submission window to open. I always feel it is easier to be accepted if you submit early. My theory is that the later you submit the better you have to be to displace the work already submitted. I suppose it depends how editors work, but it seems logical.

It also seems logical that if you submit earlier you don’t have to worry so much about people submitting work with similar themes. Better, at the moment, to be the first poem submitted on the subject of war rather than the tenth or twentieth. Not that I’m thinking of submitting one anyway, as it’s likely to be a crowded field.

The shop owner went to a popular local fish and chip shop to eat last night. He hasn’t had fish and chips for a while and was surprised by the price. They haven’t been a cheap meal for years now, really, and prices of pub meals have come down considerably.

As I pointed out, at least they are relatively unprocessed and cooked fresh, whereas cheap pub food is likely to be full of additives and come out of a frozen packet. Another case of how things have changed over the years.

Day 94

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Failed Haiku is out. Actually it’s been out a few days but I only just got round to looking at it. I have three senryu on page 84. I just looked and realised you can just type 84 in the box at the beginning. There really is a lot I never knew about computers.

The figures for this year are Submissions 14, Acceptances 6, Pending 5, Refused 2, Lost in Cyberspace 1.I’m reasonably happy with that, though it has to be said that I have let three or four chances to submit slide by, and they are invariably the places I find harder to get into. This tends to make the figures favour me.

I really have to get back to the target of 100 submissions and get well out of my comfort zone. It makes me try harder and and puts rejection into context. However, I’ve covered this before.

The rest of the day followed well worn channels. We generally don’t get many calls or customers on a Monday, as we always used to be closed. That was a tradition from the days when the owner did coin fairs on Sundays. I generally worked on Mondays when i was doing fairs because I had regular markets to do or a shop to open (we were opposite an auctioneer that held Monday sales, so we had plenty of trade customers on a Monday).

My slow days were Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. I used to go to auctions or other shops in mid-week. Unfortunately so did a lot of other shops so I ended up visiting a lot of closed shops. It was, I suppose, one of the many flaws in my business plan.

Silver Britannia coin

Rejection!

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The title isn’t quite accurate, but headlines often aren’t. However, there is an element of truth in it, as you will see if you persist.

Despite me rushing to finish last night’s post by midnight, my days don’t really run from midnight to midnight and I often work an hour or so into the night while it is quiet. This is particularly the case at weekends when I can get up later to compensate.

As an example, I did some decluttering this morning then set my alarm to give myself just over an hour at the computer before warming up the soup for lunch. Julia decided this would be a good time to start work on reorganising the kitchen so my writing efforts are now accompanied by the clatter of various kitchen implements (mainly noisy ones) as she composes a symphony for baking trays and raised voices.

I did think of inserting a witty quote on marriage here, but couldn’t find one. I suspect all the wittiest quotes are written by people who aren’t married. The ones who are married just nod and keep their heads down, which is why they are still married.

I’m playing WP Roulette here – if she reads this I’m in trouble. If not I will live to moan another day.

That’s why I work into the early hours.

And that was why, about half an hour after posting I decided to look at one of the magazines that had some submissions from me five weeks ago. I was surprised, and a little put out, to find that they had published the next issue. I don’t mind rejection too much, because it’s part of writing, but I don’t really like being ignored.

Anyway, it is what it is. I read a few of the haibun and decided to see when the next submission window opened. While I did that I noticed a note saying that if you don’t get an acknowledgement within in two days you should get in touch. It was a lot longer than two days, but I double checked, found I definitely hadn’t had one and decided to take action.

Two Cyclists

As recommended in many articles on writing I dropped the the editor a short polite note to check if they had received anything from me and checking the best way to submit next time round.

The marvels of email and the time difference between the UK and USA meant I had a reply within half an hour. It seems the automated submission form is suspected of discarding a number of submissions and is now out of favour.

Ah well!

When it comes down to it I checked the two pieces I’d submitted and decided they weren’t all that good anyway. Internet oblivion is probably the best place for them. Anyway, even if they had been brilliant you can’t turn back time, despite Cher’s singing and the services of a good plastic surgeon.

As time goes on I’m finding that I have more and more sympathy for editors. It can’t be easy at the best of times, particularly when you see the number of submissions some of them get, and when the technology turns against you it must be hellish.

It’s a big day tomorrow – three submission windows open and I have submissions prepared for each one.

The game’s afoot, as Holmes said, though when I check the quote I find that Henry V said it first. Tricky things, quotes.

 

 

2020

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I said a while ago that I was going to cut back on blogging and with this being the 2,020th post I’ve made, which matches nicely with the year, this is as good a time as any.

I can’t keep up with the reading and commenting, for one thing, and it seems rude to ignore people when they are kind enough to pop along and have a look at the blog. If I cut down on blogging, I can spend more time of reading and commenting.

More selfishly, I want more time for other writing projects, and I want more time for reading books. In fact I just want more time. Some nights I can write the blog in twenty minutes, as you may have noticed from some of the titles. Other times I take several hours and a number of false starts. Some days the number of words you see is near enough the number that I wrote. On the bad days the 350 words you read may be the distillation of seven or eight hundred I actually wrote. On other days I have sometimes written as many as two or three part posts before getting into my stride. Some of those discarded posts may become full grown posts in time, but many don’t. I’ve just been through my drafts and removed 12 posts which would never have amounted to anything.

Teasel in the garden
Teasel in the garden

My intention at the moment is to write blog posts on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. I’ll see how that goes. My standards or organisation, as you may have noticed, are such that this may end up as any combination of days as I miss deadlines and sleep my evenings away. However, roughly three times a week I will post.

Friday night will be a report on my week, Sunday will be the usual ragbag and Wednesday will be the new day for posts on Collectibles. Probably.

I sent two lots of Haibun off to magazines last night. Having decided to start writing again I thought I might as well get stuck in. I finished fourteen haibun this week – six based on old ones that were hanging around, six based on notes in my notebooks and two just came to me as I was copying out the others.

I have copied them out, rewritten, trimmed, tightened and tinkered, and, finally, selected five to send off. They have gone. I’m now looking to see if I have another three fit to send. The trouble is that after all the work, some of them just seem dull and lifeless. I might have over-worked them, or I may initially have been blind to their faults.

This afternoon I started work on some school attendance medals for eBay, and when I got home I took some pictures of a bee on a teasel – holding the teasel still with one hand and using the camera with the other. I got one reasonable photo out of twenty attempts.  Teasel without bees is an easier subject. I now know why we have teasel in the front garden, Julia says they are growing where she put some seed heads down when bringing them back from the Mencap Garden for a flower arrangement. I might have known she’d be at the bottom of it.

London School Attendance Medals 1890s

London School Attendance Medals 1890s