Waiting for the Rejection Letter
Ah, the fun of submitting poetry to journals… Write, revise, revise, revise, edit, revise, and then submit. For a long time, I haven’t submitted, but this year I decided to send more writing out. Right now, I have one pending... I can see it in my Submittable account marked as “Received”.
The last set of poems I sent in moved along slowly in the system—almost a year as “Received” and then months as “Under Review” before being rejected. Such is the life of a poet.
The reason I decided to submit more is to get me back in the habit of writing and revising. What I do for the blog are just quick exercises essentially to keep me writing. These are rough and more throw away… My ultimate goal is to get a chapbook prepared for submission somewhere.
Of course, I can write for myself and never try to get published. That is a legitimate approach and one that some famous artists have done. Emily Dickinson published about 10 poems out of her more than 1500 pieces. Crazy to think about considering her novel approach revolutionized writing.
In photography there is Vivian Maier… Her photos weren’t discovered until after her death. She was a bit of hoarder and stored them, newspapers, and other things in a storage space. Just before she died, she failed to pay rent and her stuff was auctioned off. It is quite an interesting body of work, some of it stunning and a lot of it…. no so much (isn’t that true for all of us?).
Now, I’m not saying that my work is even close to being some undiscovered gems. And I understand why different people don’t share their creative work, but I think we should at least try, especially on non-social media platforms: journals, art galleries, different contests… This is something I’m working on doing, less procrastination and self-doubt, and more submitting.
What do you think? Is it necessary or even important for poets, writers, photographers, etc. to work on having their words published? And while you’re thinking about it, click the links above to find out more about both Dickinson and Maier and their amazing work that stayed hidden from the world.