Tag Archives: rejections

Another day, Another Rejection

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I’ve had better starts to the morning. Depending on which system I decide to employ I have either started with a rejection (making it 2 all for the month) or have had two reelections, making it 3-2. It’s one rejection note from one editor regarding submissions of two forms of work. It’s also from a magazine that has never accepted anything from me despite a number of attempts. If I call it one submission/rejection it makes the figures look better. If I call it two, it makes it easier to reach the figure of 100 submissions. Tricky.

This one didn’t free much up, because the two submissions only contained half a dozen pieces. However, the previous one released fifteen pieces. Now that I have let them sit a few days I will look through them, make any changes I spot and send them straight off again. I need to submit 15 haiku for the 15th of the month and another 25 by the end. This gives me the material for 15th and the newly written ones will do for the later requirements.

I am getting back into0 the flow of it. As I may have said, this months submissions include two magazines that have never accepted anything from me and one I have never submitted to before, so the rejections aren’t a surprise. Nor are they accompanied by condescending advice, which, as you know, always annoys me.

As part of the process of getting back into submitting more, I read the comments by a writer who had judged a competition for a magazine I was thinking of submitting to. They had a list of things which, in their opinion, automatically put people out of the running. Looking through the magazine later, I saw several published poems which included these supposedly fatal flaws. Can you work it out? I can’t. That’s another reason why I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it. Nobody can really define what makes a good haiku so what’s the point of overthinking it? The only thing that annoys me about it, is the people who declare certain things to be fact, when they are clearly opinion.

Anyway, Julia has just returned from her morning run and it is time for me to make breakfast, so I will leave now and feed her. She already has my day planned (it seems to feature a lot of “tidying” so I want to keep her as happy as possible. Happy wife, happy life, as they say.

Oh dear, just published without adding photos.

Catching Up

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I think my last report was nine submissions, one rejection and one acceptance. It’s now one rejection, four acceptances and one where I have made the alterations the editor asked for, so, with luck, that should be another acceptance. Not a bad start to the year. It just goes to show there’s a very narrow psychological line between success and failure. One patronising rejection was, I admit, enough to make me rethink my writing life. A few acceptances by editors I like restored some balance, and the one today was the icing on the cake. It was from an editor with a prolific high quality output and an acceptance from him always feels like a validation.

Yesterday I used my new slow cooker to produce a vegetable stew. It’s new to me, given by one of our old neighbours. We used to have one, and used it quite a lot until it melted. We were always short of space in the old kitchen and I used to stand it on the hob. This worked well until the day that Julia, thinking of other things, turned the hob on without noticing the slow cooker standing there.

I doubt I’ll use it to produce vegetable stew again as it’s just as easy to do it in a pan on the hob, The pan/hob method is quicker, doesn’t need preparing in advance and only needs cooking for thirty minutes, not 4-6 hours. I will, however, try some other recipes, as I know I liked using it before. My memory is just too bad to recall any of the recipes, apart from pulled pork. But as I always found pulled pork to be disappointing, I doubt I’ll try that again. Somehow, the idea is always better than the reality.

There seem to be plenty of other slow cooker stew recipes so a few weeks of experimentation seem called for. I still have gingerbread men to make. Julia bought me a kit and the ingredients for Christmas, but we had, as usual, so many biscuits given us, that we have only just finished them.  I also want to make peppermint creams for Valentine’s Day, and am already telling Julia that a handmade present is worth so much more than one bought from a shop. She seems suspicious . . .

So much to do – so many excuses!

Photos are more of the squirrelbatics – we added spice to the seed. It put the squirrels off for almost two days. Not enough? Not strong enough? Or are they just not as bothered as the internet suggests?

I’m going to have my own feeder built by an agricultural engi9neer, I think. If I just hang the feeders a few inches further away that should do the trick.

100 Rejections?

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They are getting through the vaccinations round here – people in their mid-50s are now being called in. In Nottinghamshire we are being given our second dates at the time of booking the first one. My sister, in Cambridgeshire, and a friend in Oxfordshire, are still waiting for their second dates weeks after the initial vaccinations.

Julia’s weekly test went in the post this morning as part of our “new normal” and we are hoping for the traditional clar result tomorrow morning. The current streamlined testing system is very impressive.

Lat night I read an article on writing that put forward a new way of looking at things. I may have mentioned that I try to take the view that more submissions will mean more acceptances. I may even have mentioned that when I was a salesman looking for one sale in ten visits, I used to look on the nine blanks as nine steps towards the next sale.

The article says that you should aim for 100 rejections a year. That way you can be more relaxed and the acceptances will follow.  This is in line with my thinking, though actively seeking 100 rejections is one step beyond my current plans. As an example they describe an experiment performed with a ceramics course. Half the course were told that they would be graded on a single piece of work, which should be perfect.  The other half were told they would be judged on the total weight of pottery produced. (I’m not sure if this is true or not, but it makes a good story so stick with it).

At the end of the year the group that produced the best quality pots was the group that had been told to produce quantity – they made more pots, they improved with practice and they stayed relaxed. By the end of the year they were producing better pots than he members of the group who had ben told to make one perfect pot. Members of that group were so hung up on producing one perfect piece they simply couldn’t produce to the best of their ability.

It’s certainly something to think about, though I’m not sure if I could write enough to gather 100 rejections.