Tag Archives: rejection

The Cheaper Man

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Robert Bridges – a pointless Pointless answer. Nice beard, shame about the poetry.

I spent a strange night, in which I participated in an Australian reality TV show (which proved very disappointing and badly organised). I then went home, where I appeared to live in a version of our current bungalow, but in a network of cupboards instead of rooms, hiding from visitors. I do try to hide from visitors as much as possible, as I’m not very sociable and most of them want money, but I don’t live in cupboards. The walls in modern houses are not wide enough to accommodate passageways and cupboards anyway, so it was a very impractical dream.

This week I have had two acceptances and a strange refusal. The two acceptances were from editors who sometimes reject my work, so that was good. The rejection was from a members’ anthology, which traditionally accepts something from every member. This was, I admit, a bit of a surprise.

Looking at the numbers for this year I will end up with about the same number of acceptances as last year and about twice as many rejections. It’s all part of my process of pushing boundaries and toughening up in my responses to rejection.

Philip Larkin – Looks like Eric Morecambe, had a few faults, turned down the chance to be Poet Laureate

I’m also trying to stop rattling on about rejections and such stuff as it’s of limited interest to most people. However, my poetry-based general knowledge did get me a couple of pointless answers on Pointless recently. It was about Poets Laureate. I got two pointless answers. My third answer (Day-Lewis) didn’t count because they wanted ones who had been in office ten years or more and he dies after just four years. The father and son team who answered, didn’t get any. Amongst others, they selected Philip Larkin (who turned the offer down) and Simon Armitage. These days they are only nominated for 10 years so Armitage, who is still in post, failed on the 10 year point. I can’t remember who else they nominated, it may have been Hughes, but he scored points and you need to be pointless to win the money.

Simon Armitage – seems a decent bloke but clearly disconnects when sitting in a barber’s chair

I tell you this because the son had been accepted by Oxford University. I love being able to answer questions that defeat Oxbridge students. They are generally better than me on subjects like Chinese cities, quantum physics and classical music but I love to find chinks in their armour. I am a natural descendent of the archers of Agincourt, bringing down the flower of French chivalry on a muddy field before seeing them off with with a precisely placed dagger.

For a poetic version try Kipling’s Arithmetic on the Frontier. I have added the link so you don’t need to search through a load of clutter about handbags. Handbags. What is the world coming to?

No proposition Euclid wrote
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar’s downward blow.
Strike hard who cares—shoot straight who can—
The odds are on the cheaper man.

Kipling – first British Nobel Prize winner (1907), turned down a knighthood and the offer to be Poet Laureate. Not always politically correct but wrote some great poetry, even if it hasn’t all aged gracefully.

 

The Days Pass

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It is now six days since my last post. They slip by so, easily in my days spent sitting by fans sipping cold water and eating ice cream. That’s not my entire day, of course, Julia is rationing me to one ice cream a day. It is for the best. I’ve been out a few times but returned to shade and fans as soon as possible. We have had a builder  in doing more jobs that should have been done years ago. We still have jobs that need doing too. It never ends . . .

Several notable people have died in this period, including a politician who seems to have been murdered and a TV presenter who was my age when he died. I could, I suppose, offer some commentary on the events but all I would be doing would be voicing an opinion based on what I have seen of them on TV. They both seemed OK and I’m sorry they died sooner than they, and their families would have wanted. These days I tend to think of people in relation to our ages – one was 11 years older than me, one was my age. Any sadness I may feel at their passing would be heavily intertwined with thoughts on my life expectancy.

I also try to avoid the modern curse of thinking I know people after reading Wikipedia, an obituary and a scattering of internet gossip.

I see one of our national football team has just referred to him and his team mates putting in a “hard shift”. Shifts tend to be eight hours long, depressing, tedious and poorly paid. It’s not how I would describe the life of a professional footballer.

I just checked up on my views to see if I was being fair and accurate. It seems they start their training  days “early” and “often around 7:30 or 8am”. I can’t help feeling that this says as much about the life of a journalist as it does about the life of a footballer, as most of the working world doesn’t see this as early. Nor do we start the day with a light breakfast of low fat and high protein ingredients. Employers generally expect you to have eaten before you arrive.

However, like members of the Royal Family, footballers are easy targets, as they are so divorced from the realities of life. I will, therefore, desist, though I will link to the doings of the Royals. Prince Harry, in his campaign against the press, seems to have come unstuck this week and he and his celebrity mates failed to carry any of their points in the recent court case. Yes, I admit that it must be irritating to have the press pursuing you, but you can’t have press coverage when it suits you and turn it off when it doesn’t. Anyway, none of the people that joined him in the case were particulalrly interesting, so either way, it’s no interest to me, apart from a variety of public figures being told to grow up.

I’m very conflicted with this case. Yes, I’m glad the celebrities lost, but I don’t really like the press winning, and I certainly don’t like the idea of the lawyers making money from it. In the world of cosmic balance it feels like we all lost a little bit this week.

In poetry terms I have had either one (or two) acceptances (I’m not quite sure when I last reported on this) and a rejection. I’m about to start submitting, as there are some things I need to get in before the 15th. I meant to do them last week but I just ignored them and sat in front of a fan. That, I think, is where I began, so it’s now time to go.

For Want of a Keyboard . . .

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Yet another post that was started one day then ignored until the next . . .

I sent a poetry submission off last night. This morning, just nine hours later, I had a swift rejection. One of the problems was that I’d said, in the covering letter, that I had used AI. What I meant to say was that I had not used AI. Editors like you to say that these days. I can’t really blame this on my age or tiredness as I wasn’t tired and am the same age, to within a few days, to when I sent off several properly worded submissions. Unfortunately, as my fingers dance over the clapped out keys of my keyboard, they seem to miss things out. Sometimes a letter, sometimes a pair of letters, sometimes an entire short word. When it’s a complete word I often wonder if it’s my brain or the typing, or the keyboard which should take the blame. I’ve decided to invest £12 in  a new keyboard and find out.

Unfortunately, he then followed up by telling me the poetry was “safe” and gave the feeling that I was “ticking boxes”. Whether this view was informed by his unfortunate belief that I had used AI, or it really is so bland, I don’t really know.

I suggested that I could maybe make the poetry more “raw” as requested by making the old man in the cafe swear a bit more, mention his PTSD in verse two and add a fith verse that shows him vaulting across table to disembowel an annoying child with a plastic butter knife.

Julia said she wasn’t quite sure it was the right thing to suggest as it might be seen as sarcasm rather than a serious attempt to regain my artistic integrity.

That’s what she meant anyway.  What she actually said was “No. Don’t.”

So I wrote, explained the typos and told him I would take his comments on board.

I won’t, as they are all decent poems, but it doesn’t pay to upset editors.

Photos are from yesterday when a nestful of blue tit fledglings descended on the feeders. Current RSPB advice is that we shouldn’t feed birds in summer as it spreads disease. However, we wash the feeders regularly and are feeding several families of fledglings – blue tits, great tits and starlings. It’s difficult to know what to do for the best.

Of course, the pictures never come out as well as they could do, as the birds are all greyish instead of blue, white and yellow and I never manage to get more than three in one shot.

Some Thoughts on Poetry and Particularly Tanka

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Julia’s latest vase (she gave the last one away as a present) with silk fritilleries.

I’ve just been replying to two emails from editors. One was comparatively simple, a quick note of thanks for an acceptance. I had an automatic reply by return, telling me that they weren’t taking submissions at the moment – an impersonal response to my attempt at being polite. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised – some magazines are like that.

The other was more complicated. It was a rejection with some suggested links to articles which would help me improve. It’s the sort of response that always invites being categorised as condescending.

I read the first one and it told me that most western definitions of haiku were too restrictive. This explains why editors annoy me by publishing haiku that fall outside the published definitions. Maybe they should take down the definitions hey often display, or display a current one. Same goes for the people who are often quoted on the subject – if your definition is outdated, have the courtesy to indicate this or update it.

As for the haibun article, it quoted a number of haibun. One of the haiku wasn’t a haiku by any definition and the rest all reiterated the subject material, which you aren’t supposed to do. I can’t help feeling that if I’d have submitted any of them, they would have been turned down, not used as examples. I just wrote and thanked them for the feedback and said they provided food for thought.

Email is not the forum to exchange views over something like that, as it could be construed as argumentative and although I have issues with things, I don’t want to start an argument with someone who is trying to help.

This is the one she gave away as a present.

That’s the nice thing about tanka – fewer rules, more freedom, and fewer people writing about them.

 

Thoughts on Editors

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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

How to Write a Tanka Prose

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Buzzard pursued by crow

This an answer to a query raised in the comments, but it’s something for everyone to read. Have a go, you might like it.

First, read this. Then abandon thoughts of haiku and haibun for a moment.

If I were starting again I would start with tanka prose. These are like haibun in that they contain prose and a poem, but they are more relaxed.

The trouble lies with the poem. A tanka is a small poem (5-7-5-7-7) according to general wisdom. This isn’t true. That syllable count should be the maximum. You can write fewer syllables.

Some editors like to preserve the short-long-short-long-long layout, others don’t mind as long as it has five lines. It’s just a poem and can include poetic effects, though probably not rhyme. As such, it is free from all the baggage that comes with haiku, and all the conflicting views of editors.

Little Egret at Aldeburgh

You can find tanka and tanka prose in Contemporary Haibun Online, Quail Eggs and Cattails. These are all available online. They are also easy to submit to if you want to have a go at being published.

Rather than listen to me, just read tanka and then practice. If I write ten tanka (which can take between twenty minutes and a week) you can be sure that at least one will tail off without being finished, and a couple will clearly be rubbish that can’t be helped by editing. Even after editing it’s likely that only two or three will be good enough to retain. That’s normal. Just keep writing and eventually you will get there. Don’t take notice of your internal editor until you have written a batch, or you will never actually finish a poem.

Eventually you will have enough to send off. Do it. You won’t be published unless you make submissions.

I send out a batch, one is probably accepted, the rest come back. I add another and send them out again. Usually one of the rejects will be picked at this point. I sometimes send things out three four times before I get fed up with them. By that time I usually have replacements written.

Little Egret – Blacktoft Sands

Next – tanka prose. They are like a haibun but with a tanka rather than a haiku. There is some discussion whether a haibun should be in haiku-like language (ie terse and often slightly stilted). You don’t have that with tanka prose, just write what you like. If you can write a blog post you can write a prose section for a tanka prose.

Then write the tanka to go with it. Some people claim to write the haiku/tanka first then write the prose section. I can’t do that. I write the prose and then write a suitable tanka.

Here are some comments I had recently.

“I think the haiku are not nearly as successful as the prose in your haibun.”

“After a careful review of your poem, I regret that I have had to pass it on.”

“Unfortunately, your work did not quite fit the shape that the issue ended up taking.”

“I’m afraid I don’t get this piece. Is it me or is its meaning or intention too obscure?”

The lesson from those comments is that not every submission ends in success and it’s all par of the process.

Heron

So, to summarise – read, write, submit, expect rejection, read, write, submit . . .

Eventually it will work out, but expect some rejections to begin with. At the start the rejections can seem depressing, overpowering and inevitable. Eventually you will get an acceptance, then another, and it will gradually build up . . .

There’s a lot of other stuff tha goes into writing a good tanka prose, and eventually I might learn some of it, but for the moment I find that the best way to work is to write plenty, submit a lot, shrug off rejection and recycle the rejects.

The recycling is key to my writing – it saves effort, and when a reject is accepted it proves that editing is a matter of opinions and rejected work is not always bad work. And above all, it’s about hard work and  persistence rather than that ephemeral thing we call talent

Good luck.

Cormorant, Lowestoft, Suffolk

A Tale of Two Results

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My Orange Parker Pen

I have just had another poem accepted, a haiku. It is 8 words long and scarcely seems long enough to be a poem but i is, and you wouldn’t believe how hard they are to write. I don’t normally have haiku accepted, and I sometimes have them mentioned as the reason for rejecting haibun, so I am quite pleased with this. Perhaps I’m starting to get the hang of this, though I’ve thought that before and been wrong.

A little later, I had a rejection. My poetry does not “fit the shape of the issue”.  All sorts of replies spring to mind. I could offer to write round poems perhaps . . .

In the end, I won’t. There’s no real etiquette for thanking someone for turning down your poetry for years on end that doesn’t risk being seen as sarcastic. Anyway, rejection rarely bothers me these days and in this case I sent my submissions expecting a rejection so it’s attracting my attention only because I need something to write about. Submitting to this particular periodical is actually more like an inoculation than a submission: I do it to ensure I keep my level of immunity topped up.

I have a submission window closing on the 15th, which is quite soon. It’s for haiku and I am going to polish up the rejects from this month and send them out again. Obviously, looking at them a second time will reveal a few with faults, but over half, maybe with the odd tweak, will be going out again. As I’ve said before, it’s surprising how many make it after two or three attempts.

Julia went to Nottingham by train earlier this week and passed this sign on he way. It commemorates Mallard’s world speed record.

The Blog of an Old Friend Pops Up to Torture Me

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Healthy Breakfast

I’m now on an 8 Day Streak according to WP. It’s always tempting to see how far I can extend it, but it also doesn’t really mean much and I am tempted to break it deliberately. Yes, I’m feeling iconoclastic, and much better.

Apart from the last post, what did I do today? Well, I published before I had all the bits and pieces added, so had to add tags and photos after the event. Not that the photos were much good – just a a dull bronze medal from several angles.

I had an email turning down a haiku submission, but that’s par for the course. I only send them to show willing and to ensure I stay tough in the face of repeated rejection. They were good enough to be polished and used again, so that’s all for the good.

It was a two injection night, so those are still stinging as I write this. They aren’t bad, but sometimes they are painless, so this is not quite as good as it could be. However, it’s a long way from the days when I used to have ten pills that upset my stomach and an injection fro something like a stirrup pump tipped with a six inch nail. In other words, things are going well, but I do love a good moan. It’s the sorry of modern life – things are really quite good for those of us who have a roof and four walls, the trick is appreciating it.

Sunday fades, the sound of snoring is heard and night passes. It is now Monday morning and I am up and eager. I had a welcome arrival in my WP today – a post from a man who appreciates breakfast. He also used to be part of the Bread Group on the farm.

Proper Breakfast

So there you have it, a Monday morning blog containing a bit of dislocated Sunday and Sunday and a touch of Monday morning. I’m hungry now, and thinking about potatoes for breakfast (an idea my new focus on weight control quickly quashed) and soda bread (ditto). I may well do soda bread later, but it will be to go with the ratatouille for tea, not just because I’m peckish.

If my new plans for weight control go well there’s a possibility that I may merely be overweight by the end of the year. Who can tell? At the moment I have the desire for a full English, I have the ingredients for half of one (ran out of bacon and black pudding over the weekend) and the sort of calorie target that will allow me to have five flakes of cereal and a sniff of the toaster. It’s going to be a long, hard year.

McDonald’s Breakfast – my downfall

One Door Closes and Another Door Opens

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More of a wish list than an actual “How to” selection of gardening books

Last night I slept fitfully and slept in late. Julia went to Stamford with my sister this afternoon and I went back to bed again, waking some time after they got home. Julia claims I spoke to her when she stuck her head round the bedroom drawer but I did not remember.

After the quizzes on TV I started typing and reading and generally frittering my remaining hours away. I have just looked up to check how long I have to do this post before midnight and found that three quarters of an hour have dissolved as I answered comments and checked some photos. It is actually 18 minutes past midnight so I have failed to post on Monday despite all my talk of good intentions.

The editor I was emailing last night has decided not to use the poem, which is fair enough. It’s my job to write things that are publishable and she has plenty to do without me taking her time up. I did suggest an edit that involved removing the first six lines and going with the rest, but this didn’t appear to be acceptable. It’s a shame, as i like being published, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. As I said in my cheery note thanking her for her decision – after a quick edit it will be part of my February submissions. One door closes etc . . .

Books, books, books . . .

Eight minutes gone, 233 words written. It’s funny how I can write faster when I’m relaxed. Given the time pressure of a deadline I start to choke. This is probably a lesson I could apply to poetry. It always used to seem easier in the early days, when my target was to submit on the first day of the submission window rather than the last.

At the moment, I have enough returned poems to make up two submissions for February already. The target is nine for this month. I have  a few others in mind but they are for a magazine that has never yet taken one of my pieces. Sometimes, particularly when I am listing possible  targets, I list magazines that I regard as “hostile” to make sure I keep testing myself. Other times, particularly when I am feeling lazy, or am at the end of the month, I drop them from the list.

It’s a bit like the verse forms that I don’t do. A number of journals take what they call linked forms, which are haiku or tanka, or both, made into a longer poem. Often they are done by people writing in partnership, though it’s possible for them to be done by a single writer. I keep thinking of expanding my range, but it all takes time and effort and enthusiasm, and I’m not feeling that I have much to spare.

Books by Paul Hollywood

I have 88 submission targets for this year., ten more than last year, but I have to be as good this year as i was last year.  And that’s where the pressure starts . . .

Humans are strange creatures. Even when things are going along nicely I have to add extra layers to the general worries. Quite apart from the normal am I good enough? and when will the bubble burst? worries, I have to add to them by setting targets.

Finally, talking of pressure and deadlines, do you remember me joking about how much time I had before my presentation at the Numismatic Society – 12 months, 11 months, plenty of time to start in the New Year . . .

Well it’s 2 months and 10 days away and I still only have a few vague ideas about what I’m doing. I was planning on writing a rough script today but seem to have slept through it instead. Time, I think, for a sense of urgency to appear, ready for next month’s panic.

Yes, I read a lot of low-brow books…

Time and Motion and Veggieburgers

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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.