Submission & Publication & Writing Stats & the 2018 Poetry Bloggers Revival Tour

Sometimes -- okay, most of the time -- these things (submission & publication statistics) can be depressing. They are helpful, however, when you're trying gain an unbiased, more or less accurate perspective of where you stand -- or if you stand, period -- in the writing world. 

For instance, in 2017 I submitted my book manuscript to 41 contests and small publishers and garnered zero acceptances. Yes, that's depressing  -- particularly because of the rejection of a little book I love and believe in, but also because of the amount of money I spent on entry fees. Out of those rejections, however, I managed to gain some acknowledgments or recognition. The manuscript was a semi-finalist in five different competitions and a finalist in three others. (Making a total of eight semi-finalist and five finalist nods since I first began submitting the book.)

And for more on the topic of spending $$ for a chance to publish, please read Rachel Mennies' excellent article "Paying to Play: On Submission Fees in Poetry Publishing" in The Millions.

Also, I managed to have poems published in the 2017 issue of Phantom Drift: A Journal of New Fabulism, where my poems end the magazine (and they are poems that end their respective sections in my manuscript, too, so I see this as both kismet and the work of adept editors). 

Probably more significant than any of that other stuff is that I managed to write almost 20 new poems last year. TWENTY, PEOPLE. This number is laughable for most poets, I think -- of my friends who also write poems, I am probably the least prolific person I know -- but the poems are individual bodies of work, even if they aren't fantastic. I say that because, as of now, I consider about three of them worthy for submission to journals, and so I am beginning to send those creatures out into the universe . . . Also, for some strange reason I feel compelled to admit that 15 of the 20 are really, really short poems. I was doing this thing in the winter of 2017 where I'd wake up and write a rondelet, a seven-line French form that requires a refrain, which is repeated three times. The repetition and the brevity of the form makes me feel a little (a lot) like I'm cheating when I say I wrote 20 poems, but those 15 little poems are still poems, even if they are practically hiccups compared to what I usually write.  

A note on reading a Paul Muldoon essay/lecture on Yeats.

Lastly, I wrote 27 blog posts in 2017, which more than doubled 2016's total. This makes me happy because it means that I was actively thinking about writing and submitting, even if there wasn't too much writing going on (obviously, there was a lot of submitting going on). And I have a semi-faithful readership of, like, two people, one of whom is C.C. and the other is my mother, but like I've said earlier, this blog is written primarily as a way for me to document my process, so it's a tool. (Like *I'm* a tool! Ha!) It's public because I know that *I* like to read about other poets' processes, so the blog format makes me feel like I'm part of a larger conversation, even if my participation is occasional because other poets read this only once in a blue moon.

That's really why I'm interested in publishing my poetry, anyway. I want to be a part of the bigger conversation. It's really as simple, and as challenging, as that. And I guess that when I look at all of this -- the publication and writing stats -- I can see that. . . . I have a pulse? I'm present? I don't know how many people know I'm here, on the sidelines, ridin' the pine, as we used to say in high school basketball, but I'm here. (In high school I rode the pine exceptionally well because I'm not an exceptional basketball player. . .  so . . . if I'm going to use this analogy, that probably means . . . I'm  . . . not  . . . an except . . .)

ANYWAY, MOVING ON AND SPEAKING OF BIGGER CONVERSATIONS, I joined the 2018 Poetry Bloggers Revival Tour. It's this collective of -- you guessed it -- poetry bloggers, people who write about poetry and the ins and outs of writing and publishing poetry, who have resolved to write a blog post at least once a week in 2018.  It's an opportunity for anyone who let their blog kind of dwindle into nonexistence to revive it and get back into the conversation; and it's a kind of accountability measure, too. If your name is taking up space on D.V.'s page, you better be earnest about posting consistently. It's also a cool compendium of blog authors and addresses, if that kind of thing interests you.

Forgive the long post. I've been stuck in the house with three kids for 24 hours now, trapped inside while Winter Storm Grayson dumped snow and wind on us but FAILED TO PRODUCE THUNDERSNOW WHERE IS MY THUNDERSNOW I WAS PROMISED AND WANTED TO HEAR THUNDERSNOW!

Anyway, I'm a little starved for adult conversation. A.'s been outside working in this sh**, so this is more or less the extent of my interaction with the world -- apart from an occasional FaceTime call with my sister, which just devolves into our kids high-jacking the phones anyway. Like, honestly, it's impossible for me to have a phone conversation in the presence of my children. I wish this wasn't the case but it's obviously my most profound failing as a mother yet.

Because there are more failings to come, ammaright? 

HAPPY NEW YEAR, NO ONE!!