Tag Archives: recycling

The Mystery of Editors and Some Thoughts on Writer’s Block

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I had my first acceptance from the July submissions on Monday. It was a tanka that had actually been rejected in June, but after a quick check I decided that it was ready to go again. It was part of a group of nine that had been returned after the tenth was accepted, so I only needed to write one to make the submission up to ten.

It’s one of the age-old questions writers have. I send out ten poems, one is accepted, does that mean the other nine are not good enough?

Sometimes I’ve had an editor ask if they can hold one over for the next edition. I always say yes to that – it saves me work and I assume it saves them work too. If it wasn’t for editors there wouldn’t be any magazines. And if there were no editors and magazines there would be no competition for publication. That’s why I mainly only blog poems that have been published – it means that someone who knows more about it than I do has decided that it merits space.

I’ve also had editors select two or three poems (very, very rarely) and a couple of times they have told me the rest weren’t bad, just not what they wanted for the moment, and I could submit them again at the next submission window. This is very rare – remember we are talking about something in the region of 400 submissions and this sort of thing has happened a handful of times.

Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

It all tends to indicate that several of the ten are publishable, and that they can all be recycled. That’s why I like editors who give quick decisions. If they reject something in the first few weeks, I can use them for another submissions and don’t need to write as much.

This may be a bad attitude, and more akin to the approach of a worker on a production line than an artist but this month I’ve just had an article on collectables published in a magazine, plus four Facebook articles for the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire and a couple of longer articles for the Peterborough Military History Group. If I waited for aesthetics and inspiration to align I’d struggle. Dawn comes, I drag myself from bed, I make tea, then I start writing. I hate mornings. I like tea and I like writing. I have no time for Writer’s Block and curlicues. And I’m more likely to suffer from dehydration than a shortage of words. I have no time for the introspection in the article behind the link. It’s very interesting, and more than slightly familiar, but I can’t afford to let such thoughts take root.

Photo by Roman Koval on Pexels.com

The Theft of the English Language

10 Replies

Written yesterday – posted after I woke up and checked it for typos, boring bits and casual racism. The bit about American spelling needed a bit of alteration in regard to that last one.

If people re stupid enough, or desperate enough, to climb into recycling bin, they probably won’t take much notice of this sticker.

“That’s ironic.” said Julia, as I rescued a book from the bag we were emptying into a book bin in the car park at Sainsbury’s. It was a book on the subject of clearing your desk. Mine, in case you aren’t aware, is six inches deep in piles of rammel, and is going to be a big job when the decluttering process finally works its way round here.

I would take a picture to show you, but my battery just ran out and the spares are concealed in the piles of stuff on my desk. I suppose that is ironic too.

So is my rescue of another book – How to Win Friends and Influence People. It turns out that I have four copies (two of my own and two inherited from my father). Four copies of a book about making friends. I’m not sure that if you remove my WP friends, that I actually have four friends. I’m not good at keeping in touch.

We gave the charity shops a rest today and took clothes and six bags of books to the bins in the supermarket car park. The book bin is nearly always full and to get all the books in, I had to put my arm all the way in and push them down the sides. That worked well until I released the hatch at the wrong moment. The “wrong moment” in this case being while I still had half a hand in the bin. For such a simple thing, just a pivoted chute, it makes a very efficient nipper of fingers. Fortunately, there was no serious damage, though the fingers were a bit sore for the rest of the afternoon.

I’ve just flicked through the book I rescued. It turns out to be more about office politics and procedure than about decluttering. It will be back in the bag tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, something very unsettling happened. I was ordering something off the internet nd it had a space for “Language”. It was showing “English” with an American flag next to it, so I opened it up to look for “English” with a Union Jack. There wasn’t one. I’m seriously concerned that the Americans are launching an attack on not only the language, but ownership of the language. First WP changed its spellchecking, then my email account (which is provided by British Telecom) did the same then Pizza Hut. I was writing them a stiffly worded protest about the quality of their pizza bases when I noticed the spellchecker was going mad. So I wrote them another complaint bout the use of American spellings on UK websites. English spellings of English words are under attack all over the place at the moment, and now it seems to have been annexed by the USA.

Use it by all means, alter it, let it grow, perhaps learn to spell it properly, but don’t try to claim ownership. Next thing we know we will all be getting a note from Microsoft telling us that it will now cost us £9.99 month to use English on our computers.

Finally, as I close down and go to bed, I would like to report a victory over the Dunelm ordering system. I ordered the footstools (as I have decided to call them – see previous post for details of my ottomans/ottomen dilemma) and they will be delivered on Thursday. So will the bed, the mattresses nd the microwave. However, it’s a slightly Pyrrhic victory, as it’s coming by a different courier to the rest of the Dunelm order and they won’t give me a delivery time. Despite my best efforts it’s looking like I may be in for a whole day of useless waiting.

Stop Press: Just had an email from Currys – the microwave is on its way. I’m hoping they get the details right, because it is ordered for delivery tomorrow afternoon.

Ah well!

My Theory of Timing Submissions

10 Replies

REsettling the plough

As it turned out, yesterday’s grand plan ground to a halt. With just sixteen days until the end of the month I need to start looking at haibun and tanka prose. I have, as usual, plenty of prose sections, but finding the right words for the haiku and tanka can be tricky. I have just about got enough for four submissions but |I need to get on with it as the final few short lines can end up taking a long time.

Just as I thought it was all coming back the hard facts indicate that I don’t have enough poems, and the ones I have, aren’t far enough advanced. There was a time when I used to have all my submissions queued up at the end of a month, waiting like caged greyhounds to hit the ground running as the new month My theory was that if I was borderline but got in first, the later poems would have to be better than me to displace me and just being equally good would not be enough. Better, I thought, to be the first poem about getting old than the second, third or fourth. Poets are notorious for churning over the same few subjects, so if you can’t be original, or best, try being first.

Detail of the mouse

Now, as my energy declines, I find it hard enough just to scrape a few poems together by the end of the month. There is an advantage to this – the decisions seem to be faster and you have the rejects back in time to use them again in a timely manner. Using this system I have sometimes had a decision within hours, and the poems have been out again in a similar time span. I once had a poem that was rejected, submitted elsewhere and accepted within a space of days.

However, as things stand, I need twelve poems of usable quality. Time moves on, and those twelve are now my priority. The great recycling project will have to wait. editors often remark on the number of submissions they receive, but it’s also true that there are more editors out there than I can submit to. I just can’t write fast enough. October is a month with no haibun submissions planned, so the recycling can start then, as can the production of the next batch of haibun.

Two sizes of wheatsheaf loaf

Pictures are from September 2016 this time.

Happy Christmas

31 Replies

I surfaced rather than rose on Christmas morning, having spent the evening before grazing on finger food, our traditional start to the Christmas season.

Number One Son was already pottering around then kitchen and the smell of cooking sausages provided an extra inducement to get dressed and go downstairs. I use “dressed” in a fairly loose sense – I’m wearing double flannelette and a dressing gown in various colours and patterns. Coordination never was my forte.

I’m not sure when “double denim” became a thing, or why they call a denim jacket with jeans a “Canadian Tuxedo” but for the modern day miser-chic look, double flannelette has no equal. Team up your checked pyjamas and nightshirt (note the layering effect to keep out the cold – we haven’t switched the heating on yet – with a nice striped dressing gown and you are well on the way to dressing like me. I’m sure I have some paisley somewhere but for now am accessorising with black fingerless gloves and a woolly hat.

If you happen to write a life-style blog and you are cringing at my fashion tips, good. It’s about time we chose our outfits based on warmth, practicality and what we have in the wardrobe. As a planet we throw a lot of clothes away, and 5hey are hard to recycle. The easy way is to buy fewer clothes and wear them for longer. Forget fashion and don’t throw anything away until you can see daylight through it. This is my serious thought for the day.

This article is an interesting read. I particularly like the idea of compostable clothing. in the past I have composted cotton underwear and leather/cotton gardening gloves. Unfortunately a lot of stuff is mixed fibres. I once composted socks and they left a fine mesh behind – the synthetic portion of the wool mixture.

Anyway, have a great holiday, despite me preaching about recycling. This year I cut down on waste by refusing to wrap anything I was giving. Julia went mad. Apparently this isn’t in the spirit of Christmas. But it did save me a lot of time and I didn’t have to buy wrapping paper.

Posted in Haste – Forgot the Title

15 Replies

I spent several hours in the country today, as you may have seen, recharging my batteries and taking photographs. They aren’t great photos, but I managed to come up with some writing inspiration, do some shopping and clear up some odds and ends.

One of the things I did was to visit a local supermarket to check on the recycling situation. The paper and cardboard bins are fenced off and the book bin has been tipped on it’s front to stop people using it. The clothing bin now has a notice on it saying that it is now ready to take donations. I’m not sure why the recycling industry came to a halt during lockdown, and I’m definitely confused by the fact that it remains in such a shambolic state.

Bee on Honeysuckle

Our recycling bin at home, which is collected fortnightly, is sufficient for our ordinary recycling needs. We do, however, need something for clothing and textiles, and the books are building up.

Something I noticed today was that roadside litter bins are full, and rubbish is spilling on the floor. Again, I cannot see why lockdown is preventing these bins from being emptied.

Field of Wheat – nearly ready

My quest for wildlife to photograph, was not particularly successful and the photos are an ordinary sort of selection, though one or two will be useful writing prompts.

I managed to get some general shots of the countryside, a few flowers and berries and a bee. I would have liked to have stopped for a shot of a barley field, but the verge I needed to park was already taken by a group of joggers who had parked and were warming up for their run. Apart from that, there just wasn’t much to photograph.

Fly on the Road

A Simple Sunday

20 Replies

The story of my Sunday would, if told, merely be a repeat of the old lamentation about a married man’s time not being his own, You’ve heard it before, so consider yourself told.

The added twist today was that we needed a clothing recycling bin.The situation over much of the UK is, I believe, that there is no room in the existing bins, and many bags of clothes have been left next to the bins to gather rain and look a mess.

Our bin of choice used to be the one for Police Aid Convoys at TESCO. This was because we found TESCO easy rather than because we have any desire to clothe the children of the Balkans or obey the instructions the police plaster on their bins. Some people just like giving orders.

They removed the bins about a year ago. I am not sure why.

Our other bin of choice was the Salvation Army Bin at Hall Street Car Park. That isn’t there any more as it had become a mess with the amount of stuff being thrown near the bins. There is a tendency amongst some people to think that if a bin is there to take old clothes you can also throw old cardboard, glass and builders’ rubble there too.

So we tried the one outside the local undertaker. Not the ideal spot, if you think about it sensitively, but we thought it was worth a shot. It wasn’t. The bin was full.

That left us with Plan B – head for Bread and Lard Island, the epicentre of mindfulness and associated gubbins in Nottingham.

So, off we went. I’d passed the bins at ASDA on Tuesday when looking for a key cutter. They had seemed pretty clear, with nothing thrown on the floor, so there was a chance that there would be some space.

There wasn’t.

There was no mess on the floor but each of the four bins were full to the brim. I was beginning to think that you can see why so much clothing is thrown away in landfill every year.

Photo by Alex Fu on Pexels.com

Our main recycling day is Sunday, when we are both off, and of course, most charity shops are shut on Sundays. The bins are important, but they are often rammed full and we have been known to return home with our recycling to try another day.

I would like to point out that I am aghast at the waste of clothes and the fact that people only wear them for an average of 2.2 years. I wear mine until I grow out of them (which is another story) or until they wear out. I have a number of clothes, as I noted when going through them, that have lasted considerably longer than that. Some of my underwear goes back to before the kids were born. It’s a bit threadbare now but I’m not going to be showing it to anyone but Julia (and possibly A&E staff) why do I need smart boxers? Same goes for shirts – my favourites tend to get worn a lot and after about seven years they fall apart. I don’t mind worn collars but when the bottoms of the pockets wear out or the fronts wear until they are see-through you need to get rid. My everyday trousers are currently all about four years old – I know because I changed styles a few years ago when Cotton Traders started to skimp on sizes.

Anyway, we finally ended up in a car park with four clothing bins – two for Police Aid Convoys and two for Scope. I like Scope because they often have people with disabilities working in the charity shops – putting their money where their mouth is. Our local Mencap shop, in contrast, is quite unwelcoming. We do take our stuff there from loyalty to Julia’s work, but they are always very sniffy. I’m not sure our junk meets the high standards of the shop manager.

Two of the bins actually had room in them, though I managed to jam one of them with my first bag. The last remaining bin did take the rest of the bags, though I had to keep putting my arm in and moving bags – the bins are not well designed.

So in the end, all was well, though the recyclers really need to up their game if they want my help.

The next farce will involve books. I have to get rid of several hundred but the woman at the Oxfam bookshop on Tuesday was refusing to accept donations.

Photo by Janko Ferlic on Pexels.com

Parenting, Porridge and Pessimism

18 Replies

We had a lie in until just after eight and got ready without having to rush to a deadline, then, in case the luxury of the moment should spoil us, we had porridge. Without sugar.

If porridge had a family tree it wouldn’t be far from wallpaper paste on the chart, probably a second cousin, but it’s good for me. It’s full of dietary fibre, it’s economical and it helps build stoicism.

I will spare you the next few lines, but let’s say that they weren’t cheerful and the spirit of optimism has taken a holiday too. All I have left to look forward to is five and a half years of work before I retire and embark on life with some very poor pension arrangements. Stoicism is going to come in very useful.

I know I’m getting old as I’m entering the penultimate stage of parenthood. I’ve pushed them around in a pram, worried about their health, maturity, education and careers. I’m now worrying that I won’t be able to leave them anything when I die. That only leaves the final stage, where they have to worry about my health and push me around in a wheelchair. I only hope my brain lives long enough for me to appreciate the irony.

Julia has gone to town to renew her bus card. I have sorted out my car insurance details, moved stuff round to give access to the electricians, and taken waste paper out. With all the pizza menus, seed catalogues and generally useless waste I reckon I’ve just dumped a good couple of pounds of waste paper in the recycling bin.

According to the 2011 census figures there are 126,131 households in Nottingham so that’s over 252,262 pounds of waste, and that’s accumulated in just a couple of months so the annual figure will be 1,513,572 lbs of waste paper. That’s 686 metric tonnes of paper that need never have been produced.

I just looked Nottingham City Council up to see if they had figures that I could compare and they don’t. They do, however, tell me that they give out 160,000 single-use recycling bags last year. They are for people in flats. They are taking steps to end this, but it seems that it’s taken a long time to get round to it.

Apart from seeing the seals, as mentioned yesterday, I don’t have many plans for the next week. I’d better think of something fast, as worrying about death, children and recycling isn’t what I had in mind when I booked a week off.

I may give some thought to feeding ducks. What people don’t realise when they talk about “feeding ducks” is that there are people out there who will quite happily tip out a pack of white bread and then, after five minutes of laughter, will walk off leaving bread floating on the water and cluttering up the shore. The result – apart from a nutritionally dodgy meal for ducks – rats and festering bread.

Mallard x Pintail Arnot Hill Park

Armot Hill Park – ducks

Rejection, Rejection, Rejection…

12 Replies

No, it’s not a semantic device, the title is, so far, an accurate representation of the week so far.

With two more submissions still waiting for replies, it could get worse yet.

On the back of last week’s rejection, I had another yesterday. I then rewrote things, as suggested, and resubmitted them (I had the afternoon free because Julia is on jury duty). The rewrites were rejected.

Then today I had another batch returned.This is an new record for efficient editing – it took approximately 36 hours from sending the poems to getting a rejection.

Four rejections, Three in a week. It’s not doing much for my figures, but it’s not doing me any harm either. I’ve been doing quite well and maybe it’s time for a bit of introspection.

Something has happened over the last year and I find myself strangely serene in the face of adversity.

The first thing, I think, is to remember that it’s my work that’s being rejected, not me.

The second thing is to remember that it’s just words. Nobody died in the making of that poem, no trees were felled and nobody was force fed on salad. There will be plenty more words to work with tomorrow and even if the supply dries up, I must have half a million of them floating round in my blog by now so I could always reuse some of them.

Third – editors are human, and like all of us they have thoughts on what is a good poem. Their view is always going to prevail because it’s their magazine. If you want to be the one calling the shots, either become exceedingly good as a poet, or start your own magazine.

Fourth – in my case, based on past experience, I thought that this time I would target the top magazines and see how I measured up. Some of these magazines publish 1% of the poems they get sent every year. It’s hardly surprising that there’s a lot of rejection flying about. I’d rather be rejected by one of the better magazines than be accepted by something with lower standards. Though, obviously, I’d rather be published than rejected.

Five – every cloud has a silver lining. After thinking I was short of decent poems I now find I have quite a lot of spare ones floating about. Within the next week they will be back on offer, using my recycling strategy. I also have an idea for an article on coping with rejection.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

10 Replies

The morning passed fairly quickly, though I’m breaking in new shoes and my bunion was twinging a bit. Julia has treated me to a set of shoe stretchers and they have a special attachment for the bunion area so I’m expecting the problem will be solved tonight.

Because of that I went home when we finished at lunchtime and did a few chores, after removing my shoes. I would have liked to have seen my friends on the other side of town but you can’t really walk into a jeweller and slip your shoes off.

I then set to on the new poetry system I’m developing. I now make files up, named for the relevant magazine and submission date. I then have something to aim at when using the computer, instead of relying on memory and scraps of paper. After I send one tonight I will have four submissions out. This is the most I’ve ever had out at one time, and the next two lots are due to go out in October. As yet, I have nothing good enough to go out, which is very worrying. I don’t like it when that happens.

It’s my fault. I’m just submitting at a higher rate than I can write. It takes me seven to ten minutes to write the prose portion of a haibun when everything is going well. Unfortunately it then takes weeks to hone it and write the haiku. In a few weeks I’m sure I’ll have caught up a bit and everything will be back in balance.

In two to four weeks, I’m guessing, I will start getting things rejected and they can be sent out again.

Generally you are asked for three haibun in a submission, and as a principle most magazines will only accept one as they are short of space and want to give everyone a fair go. I can usually place at least one of the rejects, sometimes both, within a few months. Of the three that were rejected last week, two are already out again and the third piece which accompanies them has been out twice before already. Yes, they’ve all been tightened up but they are all essentially the same pieces.

Recycling, that’s the key.

They are all good pieces, they just weren’t fully finished when I sent them out. That’s what happens when you rush things.

Sometimes, when it’s clear that nobody wants it, I’ll admit defeat. The post Murder Your Darlings was one of my defeats. After four attempts I killed one of my favourites by publishing it myself. Editors don’t like previously published work.

However, what I didn’t tell you at the time was that I’d picked over the corpse and turned it into a poem. It will be submitted with a group of poems later tonight.

Reduce (the work), reuse (resubmit) and recycle (use the bits for something else) – it works in writing just thye same as everything else.

Let’s see what happens next.

I’ll mention no names, but thirty years ago I used to know a man who wrote military history books, and, by the time he’d done three, I started to see a pattern as the research from the previous book formed a good portion of the next one. I reckon he wrote nine books from the research he’d done on the first three, This is smart work and good use of resources.

It is also a contrast with a University professor I know. He’s written five books and they are all more or less the same. That, I feel, is lazy, even by my standards.

Finally, the recycled photographs. The gulls from Llandudno Pier feature in one of the resubmitted haibun, which gives me an excuse to reuse some of them.

Herring Gull at Llandudno

Larcenous Larus at Llandudno

Gull – lurking in Llandudno

Outline of a Day

15 Replies

Got up.

Panicked.

Took Julia to work early.

Discussed setting Julia’s watch to the correct time.

Went home.

I then searched for the washing machine change, packed the washing and went to do the washing. I expect, due to a touch of dramatic foreshadowing there, that you had guessed that.

Planned next week’s menu.

Read.

Gave a lady change. I don’t normally do this, as I believe you should organise your own life, not expect me to do it, but she asked nicely.

Went round the duck pond. Reflected in a pensive and poetic manner.