Tag Archives: submission

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.

Oh dear, forgot the title . . .

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Sorry, forgot to put a title on Sunday. Just noticed on Tuesday . . .

The second Sunday post, as I left a lot out of the first one.

It’s been quite warm today and I have been more comfortable, though still not very productive. I have failed to find a Christmas present for Julia and I have bought too much stuff on eBay for myself.

Yesterday Julia bought me a new phone case because the current one I have seems to make it easy for me to forget my phone and leave it on the desk at work. I bought one with a pattern reminiscent of The Great Wave off Kanagawa. I thought it would be easier to spot than my old plain black one. It doesn’t. It works like some form of camouflage. Fra from seeing the black block and realising it is my phone, it seems to break up the outline. Even in good lighting at home I sometimes miss it.

I will try to remember to take pictures tomorrow.

She ordered it yesterday and it arrived this morning.  Even I can’t complain about that level of service.n It’s orange and black. You don’t seem to be able to get high-vis on phone covers so this is the next best thing. So far it seems to be working.

I had a rejection letter today, which neatly rounds up ll the current submissions. I haven’t yet started sending out the December submissions. I really do need to get some work done.

And so, as i often do, I drift off to look t suitable material for submissions and end up, n hour later, realising I hve a post to finish.

Thoughts of Spring

The Second Shot

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I wrote a 350 word post earlier. It was about the GP surgery not having my blood test paperwork sorted despite me organising it three days ago. Then it went on to discuss the pharmacy and the lie they told me about texting me when my prescription was ready this afternoon. I feel you’ve heard the same complaints before so after ridding myself of the burden, I consigned it to WP limbo and decided to move on. I moved as far as the cooker, then as far as my seat in front of the TV. There I stayed for a while. I am now back writing a new post, and hoping that it’s going to be more interesting than the previous list of complaints.

It is ten months since I started taking poetry writing more seriously and in that time I have made 39 submissions. It’s going to be a bit of a slog raising that to a hundred a year, because I already feel that I spend a lot of time writing. I’m in the middle of a good patch at the moment – plenty of successful attempts with an even spread of rejection to keep my feet on the ground.

When I get a cluster of rejections I always start to think I’ll never be accepted again, and when I have  a good run of acceptances I worry that it can’t last forever. It is also the case that after a run of acceptances the next rejection hits harder. The mind of a writer is a strange thing.

I need two sets of submissions in the next couple of weeks – one to a magazine where I have had some minor success and one where I have had no success at all since a change of editor. I had a look through my list of pending/unfinished/work in progress and decided that there is very little there of any merit. I need a surge of enthusiasm and a flash of inspiration to set me going again.