Post
by Doreen Peri » October 3rd, 2014, 3:36 am
How many scraps of paper with poems
and stories can fill a stack of boxes?
How many journals packed cover to cover
with writing can be piled year upon year upon year
on a bookshelf, left only for the kids
to toss away in the trash once we pass?
What would be the purpose in that?
You could own issue after issue of
The Writers Market or The Poets Market,
dog-ear the pages, color code possibilities
with a variety of highlighters, pink, blue, purple,
organize and reorganize your work printed out,
place it in piles each with a little stickum post-it
note reminding yourself which publishers might be
interested based on two or three paragraphs in those
ridiculous books which tell you they only accept this, that
or the other topic, line limitations spelled out like this
whole thing is some kind of puzzle to be solved and
you can bookmark website submission guideline pages
dozens upon dozens, flag the sites, keep going back
to review all the absolutely stifling number of rules and
regulations, oh WAIT! Is it doubled-spaced typeset in
Times New Roman? No WAIT! Do I have 3 extra lines
when the limit is only 24? WHAT THE FUCK?
What's the point? Submission Reader fees, $10, $20, $50? Which pile
of printouts goes to which publication and did you remember
to include a stamped self-addressed envelope and do you realize
the text says you'll probably never hear back from them despite
the hours and hours, days and weeks, months and years
you spent trying to fit your work into their fricking parameters?
How many hours, how many days, how many weeks, how many years
can you spend paying the subscription fee for The New Yorker, wading
through poem after poem after poem, studying the requirements of the
NEW Poetry Editor who just took his seat this year or was it last year
and next year there will be another one with even DIFFERENT parameters
to meet and how many years can this go on? What the hell is the point?
MAYBE you can get a few published here and there on this journal site or
that so-called top shelf literary site or this or that blog or that or this
print anthology and guess what? You still have to buy one to see your fricking
name in print and for what? What's the point? Maybe they pay you back the
$50 you invested to do all this fricking work and maybe, just maybe, you
can buy a few more copies and give them away to friends and family at
Christmas for a gift and here's the BIG maybe, maybe someone will actually
eventually READ on of those pieces you finally got published after all that
fricking work where you had to edit your piece down, whittle it so it doesn't
even say what you wanted to say in the beginning and the whole damn thing
lost it's life, gagged itself, drowned in its own spit and shit, what the fuck
is the goddamn point, yanno?
Fuck that.
I'm an internet writer.
I write right here where there's a better chance
someone may even see it and read it and not have to pay
for it and where hopefully my words will touch someone's
heart one day and they can reply immediately, instant gratification
and say, "bravo! you reminded me I was still alive!"
Yeah, gimme the internet any day over all that bullshit.
I'm published. Here it is. Read it. That's it. Done.
There's LIFE in these pages. Real true breathing life and
nobody's gonna fit me into a box to meet their ridiculous rules
for approval.
Eight is the number of infinity, the symbol turned sideways
where there are endless possibilities and we think together, breath together,
feel together, spill hearts and minds and LIFE together and if those fucking
publishers don't get it, they can forget it, 'cause this is enough for me and
when it's time to read, I just print out whatever the fuck I want to read and
it's DONE! LIVE Life ... on stage.... straight from my pen to some listener's ear
where their heart resides.
This work is ALIVE. There's enough fucking death and I'm having no part of it.
Halleluyah I can't even spell that word and praise be the Internet, the GOD of NOW!
Our writing gets out there somehow.... one piece at a time instantfuckingtaneously!
YES!
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V
Most users ever online was 140 on June 28th, 2007, 7:23 am
(invite your friends and enemies)