How to Avoid Rejection Slips
Posted: October 8th, 2004, 7:20 am
I decided I wanted to submit my poetry to some literary magazines. So first I went to the book store and purchased the most recent addition of 'The Poet's Market'. I took out 3 highlighters from my desk drawer - a yellow one, a blue one, and a green one. I decided I would highlight in yellow the publications which had submission criteria most closely related to my style of writing. I planned on using the blue one to highlight the publications which were possibilities if I edited my work to meet their criteria. The green one, I decided, would be used to highlight those publications which wanted material which appealed to me but which I hadn't written yet.
I sat cross-legged on the floor with my markers and went through the book cover to cover. In order to stay organized, I found I needed to use a black ballpoint pen to scratch out all the publishers who were asking for material which I could never write... such as poetry about fishing and hunting in Alaska, sestinas with a cooking theme, haikus for cat lovers, and historical political humor backed by fact. This is just process of elimination work, it seemed to me. "I'll just scratch out all the ones that I know won't work, first, then go back through again with my highlighters," I said to myself. So, I spent about 10 hours on the first run through the book, scratching out publishers. Men's magazines looking for poetry about weight lifting. Southern California tourist periodicals asking for submissions of poetry about sightseeing. And on and on. I did well. I was able to eliminate a little more than half of them this way. The book was getting a little worse for wear but hey, I was moving forward with the submission process.
OK, so I got some sleep and then the next day I woke up bright and early, enthusiastic about getting started again. I took the cap off the yellow marker, ready to highlight all those publishers which I knew were just waiting for my work to be submitted. I read and read for about 4 more hours. This one wanted 10 lines or less on specific topics. That one wanted 20 lines or less on specific topics. Hmmm. I knew I had some poems that would fit the criteria. "I've written about that topic before," I said to myself. So, I went to my computer and started searching. I searched by file name, I searched by content. But dammit, none of my poems were that frigging short. What I decided to do was to open up all ten folders which have about 200 poems in them each and print them out so I could catagorize them and see which publishers they matched up with. But I didn't have enough paper so I went to the office supply store and bought two reams. I printed for 2 days. Then I ran out of black ink and only had about 25 sheets of paper left but still 5 folders to print. So I went back to the office supply store and invested in two ink cartridges, $24.95 each, and 3 more reams of paper, $7.99 each. I came back home and printed 3 more folders then ran out of ink again.
By this time I was getting tired of printing, so I took a break and decided that was enough material to start with and started organizing the poems by catagory. Love. Romance. Angst. Cut-ups. Futility. Sensuality. Death. Hope. Sonnets. Haikus. "Oh phooey! Wait," I said to myself. Many of my poems fell into several catagories. So I started piling them up in sets and subsets. I used little yellow stickums to label them. There I was sitting on my living room floor with big piles and little piles of paper with yellow stickums. Catagory- Love. Set- Desire. Sub-set - Free verse. You get the idea. It took me about a week to get the piles of paper divvied up into these catagories, sets and subsets. I felt like I was accomplishing something very important. But I felt a little weak. It dawned on me that I hadn't eaten for three days. I needed a drink. I went to the cabinet where I keep the vodka and there was no vodka. "My God!," I said to myself! "I haven't even had a drink in three days!" I started shaking and went back to the living room to lie down but the couch was piled up with papers and I couldn't find a place on the floor and I felt ill from the withdrawal and threw up all over the Angst pile. So I had to reprint them. But I didn't do that until I got back from the liquor store. I made myself a ham sandwich on toast and a very dry martini, shaken, not stirred. Actually, I had to have two before I felt better. Martinis. Not sandwiches. I couldn't eat but half of the sandwich. The mayonnaise didn't taste fresh and the bread was stale. Almost made me throw up again but since there were 750 sensual poems piled up next to me, I didn't allow myself to do it. I didn't have enough money for another ream of paper.
Alright, so back to 'The Poets Market'. Now that I had 3/4 of my body of work printed and organized, I opened up the book again and got out the markers, ready to highlight. I spent another day and a half reading submission guides and couldn't find one publisher which I could highlight yellow. Nothing fit. Everything was either green or blue. I either had to go back through my piles of papers and find a poem which sorta fit the publisher's criteria but which needed to be edited down to 20 lines and retype it double spaced as per the submission guidelines or start from scratch and write to fit what they were asking for.
After I came to this realization, I donated 'The Poet's Market' to the local library, checked out 3 videos and spent the rest of the day in bed watching them, drinking martinis and chain smoking Marlboros. My cat. I forgot to tell you about my cat. He died. I ran out of cat food. Several days later, I found him lying underneath the pile of Rhyme, Meter & Humor. It wasn't funny, really. It was very sad. I cried for two weeks, then decided to write a novel with animal characters so I could bring my cat back to life. Plus, there's more money in novels. It's pretty cool, really. It's a political satire. The animals live on this farm and talk to each other. It's very deep. I don't know where I got the theme from but I'm self publishing it. If I could just figure out how to get an ISBN# and a bar code and come up with enough cash to get a few printed, I'll be in business.
I sat cross-legged on the floor with my markers and went through the book cover to cover. In order to stay organized, I found I needed to use a black ballpoint pen to scratch out all the publishers who were asking for material which I could never write... such as poetry about fishing and hunting in Alaska, sestinas with a cooking theme, haikus for cat lovers, and historical political humor backed by fact. This is just process of elimination work, it seemed to me. "I'll just scratch out all the ones that I know won't work, first, then go back through again with my highlighters," I said to myself. So, I spent about 10 hours on the first run through the book, scratching out publishers. Men's magazines looking for poetry about weight lifting. Southern California tourist periodicals asking for submissions of poetry about sightseeing. And on and on. I did well. I was able to eliminate a little more than half of them this way. The book was getting a little worse for wear but hey, I was moving forward with the submission process.
OK, so I got some sleep and then the next day I woke up bright and early, enthusiastic about getting started again. I took the cap off the yellow marker, ready to highlight all those publishers which I knew were just waiting for my work to be submitted. I read and read for about 4 more hours. This one wanted 10 lines or less on specific topics. That one wanted 20 lines or less on specific topics. Hmmm. I knew I had some poems that would fit the criteria. "I've written about that topic before," I said to myself. So, I went to my computer and started searching. I searched by file name, I searched by content. But dammit, none of my poems were that frigging short. What I decided to do was to open up all ten folders which have about 200 poems in them each and print them out so I could catagorize them and see which publishers they matched up with. But I didn't have enough paper so I went to the office supply store and bought two reams. I printed for 2 days. Then I ran out of black ink and only had about 25 sheets of paper left but still 5 folders to print. So I went back to the office supply store and invested in two ink cartridges, $24.95 each, and 3 more reams of paper, $7.99 each. I came back home and printed 3 more folders then ran out of ink again.
By this time I was getting tired of printing, so I took a break and decided that was enough material to start with and started organizing the poems by catagory. Love. Romance. Angst. Cut-ups. Futility. Sensuality. Death. Hope. Sonnets. Haikus. "Oh phooey! Wait," I said to myself. Many of my poems fell into several catagories. So I started piling them up in sets and subsets. I used little yellow stickums to label them. There I was sitting on my living room floor with big piles and little piles of paper with yellow stickums. Catagory- Love. Set- Desire. Sub-set - Free verse. You get the idea. It took me about a week to get the piles of paper divvied up into these catagories, sets and subsets. I felt like I was accomplishing something very important. But I felt a little weak. It dawned on me that I hadn't eaten for three days. I needed a drink. I went to the cabinet where I keep the vodka and there was no vodka. "My God!," I said to myself! "I haven't even had a drink in three days!" I started shaking and went back to the living room to lie down but the couch was piled up with papers and I couldn't find a place on the floor and I felt ill from the withdrawal and threw up all over the Angst pile. So I had to reprint them. But I didn't do that until I got back from the liquor store. I made myself a ham sandwich on toast and a very dry martini, shaken, not stirred. Actually, I had to have two before I felt better. Martinis. Not sandwiches. I couldn't eat but half of the sandwich. The mayonnaise didn't taste fresh and the bread was stale. Almost made me throw up again but since there were 750 sensual poems piled up next to me, I didn't allow myself to do it. I didn't have enough money for another ream of paper.
Alright, so back to 'The Poets Market'. Now that I had 3/4 of my body of work printed and organized, I opened up the book again and got out the markers, ready to highlight. I spent another day and a half reading submission guides and couldn't find one publisher which I could highlight yellow. Nothing fit. Everything was either green or blue. I either had to go back through my piles of papers and find a poem which sorta fit the publisher's criteria but which needed to be edited down to 20 lines and retype it double spaced as per the submission guidelines or start from scratch and write to fit what they were asking for.
After I came to this realization, I donated 'The Poet's Market' to the local library, checked out 3 videos and spent the rest of the day in bed watching them, drinking martinis and chain smoking Marlboros. My cat. I forgot to tell you about my cat. He died. I ran out of cat food. Several days later, I found him lying underneath the pile of Rhyme, Meter & Humor. It wasn't funny, really. It was very sad. I cried for two weeks, then decided to write a novel with animal characters so I could bring my cat back to life. Plus, there's more money in novels. It's pretty cool, really. It's a political satire. The animals live on this farm and talk to each other. It's very deep. I don't know where I got the theme from but I'm self publishing it. If I could just figure out how to get an ISBN# and a bar code and come up with enough cash to get a few printed, I'll be in business.
