Tag Archives: publication

Make Friday Write

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I managed to submit two sets of poems this week, one was a request to send some and out of three one was picked up so that was a nice surprise. But, perhaps an even bigger surprise, was the poems I sent to Hayden’s Ferry Review several months ago came back with a rejection AND PERSONAL COMMENTS! Not just the – send again, please (which is rare enough), but actual “Hey we really liked this one particular poem.” This really made my week! Although, it didn’t help me really produce anything new. Things have been a bit quiet here for new material.

Granted, I have been revising – a lot. I had recently rejected poems to revise, my Farscape essay had significant editorial comments to work through, and I’m supposed to be working on a shorter essay for that same anthology on a new topic sooo yeah, busy. But, maybe more of my busyness this week was the writing I need to do for school. I have been preparing my classes and loading them into our Blackboard learning management system. For anyone who doesn’t know what I mean by that think a website with all assignments, gradebook etc for each class. I’m working on the last set of three classes today. Hoping to finish so that next week I won’t have to be worried, during all the meetings we have, that I really need to leave said meeting and get ready for classes that start on the 15th.

So, not an excuse just an explanation. Think I’ll have more time to write new stuff, if I want to, in upcoming weeks. I think I’ll share a piece today that I’m not sure about keeping. I try to write a sestina everyone once and a while, and this is my most recent attempt. As always feel free to post what you’ve been working on in comments or link to them and I will take down my poem as well as any work you post one week from today.

Oh and quick side note I finished an interesting poetry book by Nick Lantz titled We Don’t Know We Don’t Know which uses some fascinating quotes from Donald Rumsfield. Yes, you read that correctly. Also a fun video about linebreaks from some fairly well known poets. And for some silly fun: a YouTube based role playing game?

–and the big old meaty poem is out of here :)  

Poetry 2011

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Poetry 2011

Friday Wrap-Up

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Here we are again! After a department meeting this morning (my first at the school where I adjunct), I wasn’t sure I’d even have time to work on submissions this week. But, in between doing some grading, I have knocked out some! Yay! Now that grading is gonna be hanging over my head the rest of the weekend since I didn’t do it this afternoon but ah well at least I got some of the pending revisions done by working on the submissions. Sometimes you just have to pick which battle you are gonna fight on a given day.

  • Submissions: 7!  A nice variety including copies of my chapbooks, full length manuscript and everything excetp fiction.
  • Accepted: 2! Both poems.
  • Rejected: 4 and maybe a 5th since my book wasn’t picked as a finalist for the SIBA award. It was such a thrill to be nominated though!

In other news: Robert Lee Brewer of Poetics Aside nominated me for the Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere! Neat! If you guys get a chance to check out the rules and vote, I’d appreciate it :)

I have a new photo up in the fantastic The Northville Review <

And, I'm a little nervous about posting this other recent publication: a story titled 4 to Go in Wilderness House Literary Review. Let’s just say: some stories are hard to tell, but are still important. Or, at least this story made me write it!

It has been a busy, busy week (as always) but I have kept up with NaPoWriMo. Although, to be fair, I did miss one day but then a lovely fellow poet gave me some words and I ended up writing two last night at the Jackson’s Java open mike so now I am back on track.

Yay for poets getting together! Challenging their introverted tendencies :)

And for discussion as I had this on Facebook. What would you think if posed with this scenario:

  • Person  1 – And XYZ has a poetry book out!
  • Person 2 – (to XYZ) so did you self-publish that?
  • XYZ – (how do they answer?)

What have you guys been writing? Any submission news? I always love to hear from you!

Friday Wrap-Up

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Friday – are you in love?

I’ve been fumbling around all week trying to prep an online creative writing class for my school for the summer. I need it ready by April 15th! But, I finally asked a friend to look it over so I could take a break. I’ll get back to it on Monday methinks.

Giving myself a break from that really gave me a chance to sit down today (after a good salad and mall walk) to work on submission packets which I was a bit behind on. Well, I always do submissions on Fridays, but the real issue was I had quite a few recent rejections and some NaPoWriMo items I wanted to type up.

So, I’ve done it, but my brain is spinning! I doubt I’ll have it in me to work on grading tonight. But, grading and prep must be done this weekend!

And here is to the numbers:

  • Submitted:   9! See I told you I had a lot pending. That included one set of photos, some stories, an essay or two, some poems, my poetry chapbook and MY FIRST CONTEST ENTRY OF POETRY MANUSCRIPT 2!!!
  • Accepted: 4!  Another big surprise as I had 2 sets of poems and 2 sets of photos accepted this week! Online and print venues for the poems, no less! I mean I got a real printed mail acceptance! That just felt good.
  • Rejection: 1 essay turned down with “ink”

Yes, I feel tired just reading that as well, but a pleasant tired. I had several places I really wanted to send my book to, but – for someone who tends to always be short of the length requirement – I was actually over the length requirement for two of the contests I really wanted to enter. As I start sending the book around, I’m sure I’ll change things in it. I tend to revisit a book, chapbook, poem, essay etc whenever it is rejected so this will be an interesting process. My thought is to try sending the book around for a year to contests before I look at other avenues. We shall see how long my resolve for that holds out!

Hope you guys had a good week. Did you send anything out? Any news to report on the writing or publication front?

I’m off to type up one poem from my notebook then I’m sure my hubby will be home and I think he wants to go out to eat – and to see if our dishwasher is in . . .

Friday Wrap-Up

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I’ve felt kind of out of it all day and yet the afternoon seems to have zoomed by too quickly. Perhaps that is part of the being out of it . . .

I taught this morning then came back to work on some submission packets. I finished them up with the following to report:

  • Submit: 6 including 1 set of pictures, 3 sets of poems (2 to print journals) and 2 stories (one to print and one online). Didn’t have anywhere to send chapbooks this week.
  • Accepted: 2!! I had 2 poems accepted by an online journal and a group of pictures picked for a journal that will put up an online gallery. I’ll let you know when that is all up.
  • Rejected: 2 sets of poems. One from a print and one from a contest. Had some hopes for the contest. Ah well.
Couple of things of note:
  1. The poem acceptance put me over the 50 published (that weren’t in other projects) which meant I needed to print my ABC document for 2nd full length book consideration. I’ve been toying with this book off and on for at least a year but I gave myself some distance from it. I, however, did have it printed today over at OfficeMax and I hope to have some time this weekend to start working on it. First step? Read each poem and rank them – 1, 2, 3 for yes, maybe, no.
  2. Second, speaking of pictures, I have a new folder on Facebook for published ones but the newest to be released are in ken*again
  3. And to finally speak of pictures how about my Boston pics? I didn’t get a chance to really concentrate on taking pictures while on the short trip. Maybe next time I get to go up North!

What else to sum up?

I weigh the same as I did the Friday before I went away for the trip (so two weeks ago). So that is kind of a wash. Hoping to continue to work on that but no over pressuring myself cause that just leads to the diet yo-yo (making me a yo-yo!).

Need to buckle down this weekend to do prep work for classes and quite a bit of grading as I had papers due in both of my intro writing/Expository writing classes. I’ll be teaching that again this summer in a mini-semester but currently the tentative fall schedule doesn’t have me teaching it at all! In fact, I’m only scheduled for 4 (instead of 5 for max part-time) classes so far for fall with two different classes – neither of which I have taught before! Time to start hunting for books to assign etc . . .

In between some more grading this evening, I want to finish typing up the things I wrote while in Boston. Being away did free me up a bit and my feet didn’t wear out so I consider the trip, overall, to be a win-win :)

Hope you guys had a great week and I look forward to hearing any revision/publication/submission news from you!

To the weekend!

Friday Wrap-Up

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Look guys, we made it!  I’m still feeling a bit under the weather with a persistent cough that no OTC medication seems to be able to tame, which made being one of four lovely featured poets last night at a library quite interesting. I read for about 10 minutes including two newer poems, one from each of my chapbooks and then quite a few from Paper House. I’m at that point now, where I am kind of tired from reading from the old collections. My first chapbook At the A & P Meridiem is down to only about 6 copies in my possession. I don’t think I’m going to reorder (at least for a while) once those sell. I’m ready to move onto new things and I have plenty of PH and Atom copies to sell and then Fat Girl will be out in September. ANNNND I have a reader looking over what might be a 4th chapbook that I can start sending to publishers :) I may not be writing anything new, but I keep working on revisions and sending my stuff out there.

Speaking of which:

  • Submitted: 3 items: group of photos, set of poems and 1 essay.
  • Accepted: Zilch
  • Rejected:  Nothing. THAT IS WEIRD!

I procrastinated this afternoon by going through more of my online folders to see which photos I thought appropriate to send out. I’m slowly working through them all, then I want to make my way to other computers (phones etc) and even the printed pictures and slides I have from pre-digital years to see what I should scale in. It is a slow process.

The poems I sent out were the last of the new material that I thought were keepers. I typed everything from my notebook and, except for the one still up on poem Thursday, I’ve cleaned house and no new ideas are coming to me right now which is ok (I know I know, I talked about this before). I know as soon as I start reading some work I really enjoy, I’ll start writing again. That’s always how it works with me. I’m inspired by other writers. I will always say my first love is reading.

My lone essay was one I pulled from 6 months of no response. I only changed one word which means I’m either way too in love with the essay or it is just perfect (HA!). I doubt the latter.

A few more notes on publication stuff. I forgot to mention my Fabio poem is now up in Wild Goose Poetry Review and that one of my stories Sex of Food is up in Steel Toe Review (PG-13, ya’ll!). Still not sure what I am going to do with the remaining fiction pieces I have. Under 5000 words of flash fiction does not a chapbook make! And, one of my previously accepted photographs titled “Once” is now up in LitSnack.

Last thing. What do you guys think of editors publishing their own material in their magazines? I read a new print publication recently called fresh. It doesn’t appear they are taking non-solicited material at this time. Do a lot of magazines publish mainly themselves and people they know when they start up? I know, my start-ups have often involved people I knew – at first – cause that’s how word got out, but I’ve always held back from publishing my own words in my own mags. What do you guys think?

Hope you guys wrote, submitted or at least though of words this week! See ya around the web

and around

and around

Friday Wrap-Up

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Well we’ve made it to Friday and can you believe that next Friday is the proverbial Black Friday? Wow. This year is closing out fast….

Not a lot of activity on the submitting work front.

  • S: 1 set of poems, 1 copy of my long poem and 1 set of pictures
  • A:
  • R:  1 essay and 1 set of poems

I decided to weigh yesterday and found out I was down 2.2 to a new low. Guess my whole virtually vegetarian, carb loving diet is working pretty well for me and the walk, walk, walking. I’m at the weight I wanted to be by the end of the year so hopefully I can hold it or maybe even (if miracles happen) drop a few pounds over the holiday season.

Very little on the writing front this week. I did draft a new essay and, out of nowhere yesterday, scribble a flash fiction piece. Really want to write some more poetry but I also don’t want to force it. I think once I have some days off in December I’ll be able to catch up on the few handwritten ones remaining in my notebook. I always feel more free to write once I have a clean “desk” so to speak.

Today, I’m hoping to create a grading guide so that I can easily plug in numbers when I need to report grades next month. Have a few papers that also need to make comments on but we are in the home stretch my friends..home stretch..

What have you guys been up to this week? Check in!