Tag Archives: rejection

Time and Motion and Veggieburgers

18 Replies

Today, I decided to keep a check on my time. One entry in the diary is ten minutes for sorting out my phone, which went black and refused to open up or restart. It seemed like a lifetime but it was only about ten minutes. Unfortunately I couldn’t time it, as that was how I was timing things, and I couldn’t tell when the writing ended and the wrestling with technology began.

I’ve had two unwelcome emails since last writing. One is a rejection. It wasn’t unexpected, and it was nicely put (and basically bounced right off my carefully cultivated shell of resilience) but it was still not welcome.

The other is from a woman asking if her email has got through. How do you handle that? I don’t know her, I don’t recognise the name and a quick Google search turned up nobody that seems likely to have sent it. I would have searched Facebook, which seems to be the best source of unknown women wanting to make contact but couldn’t see how to search . Probably best not to try.

So I blocked it. Then I unblocked it, because it might be genuine. As I read the message “Please let me know if this comes through!” I decided that anyone who really wanted to get in touch would have added some sort of explanation, and as I dithered, I decided that I don’t want to get in touch with someone who would use an exclamation mark there. It just isn’t necessary.

I could run through endless possibilities, but I just think a mystery woman emailing out of the blue definitely requires blocking. I’d like to hand out a lecture on the etiquette of making contact over the internet, but that would answer her question. I’m not sure what shows up if you are blocked.

Ah well, I was making veggie burgers for tonight’s tea before I decided to blog, so I’d better get back. I was leaving the mixture to stand before gauging how wet it is, so I need to start forming it into recognisable burgers. and have no more excuse for sitting round typing. This time I will brush them with oil, the spray technique I used last time was not a success.

When I was younger I imagined life would have slightly more to offer than this . . .

And more photos – sorry about the repetition.


Would Larkin call it Quiche?

9 Replies

Swings and Roundabouts, what goes around comes around, as one door closes another door opens . . .

Hot on the heels of my last rejection comes an acceptance. Not only an acceptance, but an acceptance for two tanka prose. Any double acceptance is a red letter day, as I said recently. This one was particularly good, as I had only sent two.

This is when I noticed something strange. The three that had been rejected a couple of days ago, looked poor when they were returned. The two that were accepted looked good when I re-read them. When I sent them off, they all seemed to be much the same level. It looks like I evaluate my work in relation to what happens when it is judged by an editor.

I must guard against this effect when viewing my work.

Here is a haibun that was rejected many times (four, I think) but accepted within hours by the final editor. It changed a few times over its life but the final version was not, as I recall, changed from the version that had been rejected by the previous editor.

Hidden Worlds

He wears a grey gaberdine and rides a bicycle from church to church. In his head he composes poems about sex and tombs. On YouTube he flickers in black and white, like a newsreel from the 1950s. Smiles are clearly still on ration.

Larkin used more bad language than you normally expect from a librarian. This becomes understandable when you find that he started his day with half a bottle of sherry.

monochrome photo
my parents younger than me
1963

Inspired by the life of Philip Larkin

(Published in Failed Haiku – February 2021)

I added the footnote because I had just been rejected by an editor for being obscure( it was a poem about a visit to Adlestrop). The editor who accepted it, did not use the footnote. You might want to read this, if you aren’t familiar with Larkin. I selected 1963 partly because of the poem and partly because of the sound. It wasn’t an easy decision because the rhyme counts against it in Japanese style poetry.

Meanwhile here are some pictures of my latest quiches, complete with ready made pastry cases. When I was a boy quiches were called flans and my mother used to make “egg and bacon pie”, which has been replaced by Quiche Lorraine. Haven’t we changed over the years? Change and improvement, that old thing.

The top picture is what happened to the leftover egg from the quiches. We just ate it for breakfast. The other pictures are quiches with a definite yellow cast to the photo and a couple of pics of the great biscuit disaster. I only had two cutters – the little man and a glass from the cupboard.

There is a lot of spinach in the flans, though you can’t really see it. We’ve also had it in curry this week. It’s going to mess my INR results up but I ordered a 500g bag with the groceries, which is a lot more spinach than it sounds when you actually have to use it. Green vegetables contain Vitamin K, which is the antidote for Warfarin so if you eat more, the INR goes down. You are supposed to eat the same things each week to stop the INR moving. So the choice is this – die of a blood clot, die of boredom, get scurvy. Discuss.

A Day of Non-Achievement

11 Replies

Another day and a rejection. It wasn’t unexpected, because I haven’t been struggling for the last few months. Normally I would not have sent much out this month, but having set myself targets for submissions, and needing to show some self-discipline, I wrote and submitted anyway. In some ways it was a bad idea, but based on past experience I can’t afford to let the momentum fade.

Believe it or not, there was a time when I used to have all my submissions ready for the beginning of the month. I seemed to have so much time in those days. The theory was that if I submitted first, all the subsequent submissions had to do two things – one is that they had to be good enough for publication, but the second was that they had to be good enough to replace the submissions I’d already submitted. This works if editors look at submissions as they come in, but it doesn’t if they wait until the end of the submission period before looking.

There used to be a lot of blogs and internet articles about the science of submissions at one time. I couldn’t find any tonight. There were a few about how to submit (spelling, manners, timeliness, stick to the submissions guidelines etc) but none of the sort I wanted – the ones that used to treat it as pseudo-science and work out ways of increasing your chances by trickery and mind control.

Pictures are from Julia and my sister – they went round the Shaun the Sheep exhibition in Peterborough yesterday. More about that tomorrow. I now have a home made quiche to eat and a wife to talk to. She hasn’t seen much of me today as I have been messing about on the keyboard and achieving very little.

Ah well, time to go. I will add a few photos and talk about them in the next post.

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

14 Replies

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

 

A Lost Week!

7 Replies

Golden key (actually silver-gilt, used by Sir Arthur Blake KBE at the opening of the Nottingham savings Bank branch on St Ann’s Well Road, Nottingham, November 23, 1926

I just looked at the date on my last post and received a shock. I knew it had been a while, but was amazed to find it was a whole seven days. So, what have I been doing?

Not much.

From the point of view of colour rendition this shows I stll have a lot to learn. Taken only seconds apart under the same light

I have become addicted to writing articles about junk. I have now done four for the research page of the Peterborough Military History Group, a couple more for the newsletter and nineteen posts for the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire Facebook page. I’m never sure if these really count as “acceptances” as they are short and they are submitted to people I know.  On the other hand, poems are short too. I became obsessed with “The Golden Key” as I started writing it. I’ve had it about 30 years and never really got on with it, so it was about time. I can’t set a link directly to it but it’s currently at the top if yo use the link above.

Even better if you can leave a “Like”. It’s part of my crusade to strike back against traditional coins. There’s a place for kings and stuff in numismatics, but for every King there are thousands of commoners and they all have stories too.

Sir Arthur Blake KBE JP – a photograph taken later in life – courtesy of the national portrait gallery.

Talking about acceptances – I had a rejection this morning. It means that my record for April is 100% rejections. Not one single acceptance. It’s a strange month, as there was only one journal open for submissions, and that was only open until 15th April, which is why I can tell you, by the 24th, that I have a 100% rejection record. I’m sure I’ll get over it.

That’s it for now. I will have some cracking photos for you over the next few days as we have been going through some old boxes. However, for now,

 

One Door Opens as Another Door Closes

15 Replies

I’ve just being going through my spam box. I am expecting an email which hasn’t arrived, and was checking it hadn’t been rejected in error. It hadn’t. It’s a depressing place – I have won several prizes in competitions I haven’t entered, have numerous parcels needing to be collected, have to step in to stop various things being cancelled and have had to ignore several requests for sexual favours from women with exotic names.

Julia says they are all actually likely to be from sweaty men working in distant call centres, including the ones from the “women”. It’s a relief  in a way – I really don’t need a car care kit or an electric drill, or a mystery package, and my days of exotic women are definitely in the past. Apart from being married, I’m entering that phase of my life where Pointless and a nice cup of tea hold more attractions than erotic adventures. Anyway, as I may have mentioned, getting my trousers on and off is something of a trial these days.

It’s going to be a tough month. Having done my  submissions I sat back and reflected on the likely success rate as many of them had been out before and some of them were rushed.  One was going to an editor who has never accepted a haibun off me in six years. Derrick asked why I sent things to him. It’s a good question. There are several answers to this. One is that rejection keeps my feet on the ground. I have had some very successful runs of acceptances, but it’s always good to remember that it’s nor assured. A second is that you need constant rejections to stay immune from their demoralising effects. And third is the need to have targets – I’ve set 100 submissions as this year’s target, and I have minor targets like wearing down certain editors who constantly reject me.

I have already had one reply, as I mentioned, asking for a few alterations to one piece. I have now had a second reply rejecting a second lot. It’s one of “those” rejections, he ones that seem helpful but close with the comment that you should read XYZ for more pointers. I’ve had several like that over the years and always wonder why they think I haven’t read XYZ, particularly when it’s been a fixture on the website for the last five years.

Anyway, it was good news in a way. After slightly polishing two of them I am now in a position to submit all three rejected pieces to another magazine this month. It’s a system that has worked before. It’s important to remember that a rejection is only a sign of one editor’s opinion and other editors may have different opinions.

My Orange Parker Pen

Far Too Relaxed

8 Replies

Nuthatch at Rufford Abbey

I’ve been relaxing so much that I seem to have forgotten how to blog. However, i’m back now and intending to get more disciplined. Strange isn’t it, that I became erratic when I didn’t have regular internet access, and now that I have proper access I have remained erratic? There’s something about human nature wrapped up in that. Or maybe just something about my capacity for procrastination.

One of the things I was going to do was make a submission for December. I still have time, so I probably will. I also have some pieces to submit, though several of them are returns from last month. Last month’s single submission was returned unaccepted. That’s yet another way of saying it was rejected.

It’s no big deal, things get rejected all the time. If I didn’t get rejected there would be no point in submitting anything. It keeps me sharp(ish) and makes me happier about the acceptances.

Blue tits on feeder

However, I’m not particularly impressed by the extended response of the editor. It’s nice of him to take time to give me advice, but when that advice is to read a book (which I have already read three times) and to look in a magazine for further tips (a magazine where I have actually been published 5 times this year) I can’t help thinking that I should send him a note telling that I have read his advice with interest but it isn’t quite right for me at this particular time . . .

However, I won’t. Editors are busy people and he may not appreciate my sense of humour.

Incidentally, this year’s figures so far are – 20 acceptances, 7 rejections. This compares with 27 and 10 for 2023, which I thought was a poor year.  I have had whooping cough, been in hospital and moved house this year (and written 23 short pieces for the Numismatic Society) so I won’t be too hard on myself, but it’s definitely time to get a grip and start working harder. If you don’t keep pushing yourself it’s very easy just to wake up one day and realise you have stopped writing poetry. I know, because I did it once before.

Pictures are birds on feeders.

Long Tailed Tit

 

The Promised Second Post of the Day

14 Replies

Several years ago I was a member of the Poetry Society. The poetry in The Poetry Review was a bit highbrow for me, and I’m not very sociable so the constant emails from the local group were a bit irritating. This was particularly so as they circulated my email address to every other member of the group, which resulted in some spam. It wasn’t a massive problem but I could have done without it.

Eventually, after disappearing without trace when I entered the National Competition (members got a second entry free), I sent some submissions to the magazine. Well, you have to try, don’t you? I was rejected. I didn’t mind that, I’ve been rejected plenty of times. I did slightly mind the tone of the rejection, though I’ve been rejected in a patronising manner more than once. I’m sure it will happen again, particularity in a field where many practitioners have two or three degrees.

What I did mind was the suggestion, contained in a link, that I might like to make use of the Poetry Society’s  editing service. I can’t remember how much it used to cost, but it wasn’t the cost that annoyed me – it was the inappropriate nature of rejecting poems and then trying to sell the services of the society.

Much the same thing happened today. A magazine that turned me down a few weeks ago has just written. I can, it seems, send them £3 and they will send me the title of the poem they were interested in. And next month, if I send another £12 they will tell me why it was better than my other poems, give me their thoughts on it and, possibly, advice on developing it. They left the £12 until the end.

It may well be that I need to take advice, but it’s the manner in which it’s offered. Plus, to be honest, I have had some good advice on haibun from various editors, who have done it all free of charge. Some of them are very successful and have multiple collections published, so it’s good advice.

And that’s what I want to moan about.

Sorry if it seems ungracious to editors, but after one from a haibun magazine spent several emails on suggesting improvements (two major and several smaller ones) the other one suggesting that I should pay £3 just to find out which was their preferred poem, followed by £12 more for a few thoughts, hit a raw nerve.

I know they have costs to cover. I’m in three societies, have subscriptions to five magazine regularly buy single issues of others and buy about half a dozen poetry books a year, so I’m trying to spread a little money around. However, I’m sure that haibun magazines have just the same costs as the ones trying to charge for advice.

My Orange Parker Pen

Poetry and Vegetables

11 Replies

Despite the arrival of British Summer Time, and the consequent loss of an hour, I woke feeling ready to work, and although I did waste time surfing the web and watching TV, and “resting my eyes”, I have knocked a fair amount of poetry into shape and have sent off four submissions.

I had another rejection yesterday. It was good because it was quick, and because if I intend to be serious about aiming for 100 rejections a year I need more of them. The rejected poems, with a few minor changes, are already out with someone else. They will probably be rejected but it doesn’t matter as I need the numbers, and the second submission needed little work. I feel that each time I edit a work, even if it’s only one word, I am learning how to write better.

I’m sure that I have more than this to write but I can’t remember it. In truth the stuff I forget generally isn’t that important, and would make dull reading if I wrote it all down.

We are starting to list the plants we eat in a week – one recommendation is that you should aim for 30 a week. It’s good to have a variety and I have found that shopping online encourages me to buy the same stuff each week – it’s easier to order and easier to plan the menus.

Brace yourself for a boring list.

Mushrooms. Tea. Yes, tea counts. We eat 50/50 bread so it doesn’t really count, though wholemeal would. Julia says that although brown sauce does contain spices (which do count) she is fairly sure it doesn’t count. Nor does the cereal content in black pudding. Ah well, two isn’t a bad start.

We had coffee, which counts, and green tea with mint, which is debatable. Then we had lettuce, rocket, celery, spring onions, green olives, cucumber and tomatoes.

I’m excluding chocolate because it’s full of sugar, and white flour because it’s processed, so I can’t count the crust of the quiche. Ah well . . .

That’s 10, It’s not a bad start. Only 20 more to go.Looking at the list, it shouldn’t be too hard, though it’s a case of remembering to use them. I meant to add nuts and peppers to the salad tonight, but I forgot by the end of the preparation. It’s a bit like the times I forget I’m not supposed to eat fried potatoes – they just seem to slide down. My bad memory is a cause of many of my problems.

Orange Parker Pen – a shameless attempt to get review samples.

More Ups and Downs

9 Replies

The rate of improvement in my hands has slowed down today – one is almost cured but the other is still hanging on. Tonight is my night for more anti-arthritis drugs so I’m hoping this will help. If not I may hve to ring the specialist next week and see if they can help.

On the poetry front I had another rejection today, but it was from someone I expected to reject it, so it wasn’t a surprise. I am going to mount a concentrated effort to wear him down over the next year.

The shop was quiet all morning, then picked up for the last hour. In the end it was a successful week, but it can be quite wearing on the nerves to wait until the last hour of the last day of the week to achieve this. Someone rang and made an appointment for next week, telling me that he’d avoided Saturday as we were probably too busy. I laughed.

Yes, I read a lot of low-brow books…

As a result of today’s refusal, I now have three more haibun to send out. I will prod them round a bit to (possibly) improve them and that means I don’t need to write anything else to make this month’s submissions.

I’m feeling a bit like our garden plum tree this month. If you don’t prune properly and thin out the fruit you end up with a tree that only fruits in alternate years, known as a biennial bearer. I’m much the same. I submitted so much last month that I don’t feel like writing at the moment. It’s a pattern I need to address. Part of it is down to my hands, but a lot of it is due to the amount I submitted last month.

This month’s submissions are now all taken care of and I need to start on the poems for March. It’s a reasonably light month, as is April so I’m hoping to relax a bit and build up a depth of material. At one time I was organised enough to send my submissions in the first few days of the month, instead of the last few. The disadvantage is that you wait longer for a reply, but the advantage is that you are generally more relaxed and make better quality submissions.

Soon we will have a new garden