100 rejections update
So far I am running 2:4, which again, even with rejections outpacing acceptances, I'm still submitting more than I do most years. It occurs to me that 100 might be a bit unfeasible, especially since I don't do simultaneous subs (for logistical reasons--it's hard enough to keep track without all that withdrawing when things are accepted.) I wondered if perhaps I might set my sights a little lower, like 50. Or 20. But then again, much like with NAPOWRIMO, the rewards are in the trying, not necessarily in accomplishing the actual goal. So I suppose the aspirational numbers are irrelevant.
I have gotten a couple acceptances from places who have previously rejected me. (Radar and Elsewhere). And a rejection from somewhere I am about to give up the ghost on (Sixth Finch). Also, today a rejection from a fancy academic print mag I suspected would reject me (Gulf Coast), though maybe not for those poems, which are some of the best I've been writing (the swallow series.) I promptly fired them off to an favorite who has published me previously (Hobart) and a new discovery (Poached Hare). I currently have about a dozen others out there floating since February. It's too soon for most of the April daily poems, but we'll see what I get in the next month.
Since I've hit up even the hardest to crack of my favorite lit mags, as well as some places that published me previously, I am mostly looking now for cool new journals who might be a fit with my work. Moreso web than print, but I'd love to discover some print journals I haven't come across that have really nice design and fit my aesthetic (or, I guess, my aesthetic fits them.)
I was thinking about the days of postal rejection slips, how eagerly I would check my mailbox (which now I check once a week tops and it's all catalogs and things related to my TIAA-CREF) How every envelope was a little like Schrodinger's cat--either a success or letdown, but so full of potential in that moment. I guess I've traded it now for e-mail and stalking my submittable account, which is somehow less dramatic, though much easier than all those SASE's. My first acceptance ever was a form letter with a scribbled note with which poems that I still have in a scrapbook somewhere from 20 years ago. If you went back and told that 24 year old all the amazing things that would happen to her in this business--the publications, the readings, the books, the shear number of poems-- she would scarce believe you.
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