Word Raccoon is moping. She sat down to record in her spreadsheet recent responses to some poetry submissions, and all of them were no’s.
She knows this is how the game is played.
She knows we did not/do write just to be published. That’s not our main reason at all. But it gives us some tangible manifestation that maybe, maybe, our words mean something to someone other than us, and when the rejections roll in with their arms joined, marching together, well, damn.
That micro-chapbook we so lovingly put together? It’s ALREADY been refused.
The day is gray. We forgot to charge our laptop so we are on the porch but plugged in and for some reason we can’t explain that bothers us.
We are still listening to that audiobook and hoping the literary ghost becomes a little more pronounced because is that even a ghost or did we miss it while submitting.
About the submitting: we vetted a certain journal, we did. We’ve been thinking about it for a couple of weeks. It seemed okay. Last night, the flashing lights on a submission platform reminded us it was closing in four hours. So we assembled a packet. We were excited, because some of the poems we are sending out this week are ones that have not been seen otherwise. It’s always kind of exciting to see which ones are asked to dance immediately, and which ones need a trip to the powder room to put on some lipgloss.
Then today, we received a newsletter that mentioned this journal by name and said what their sneaky practices allegedly are: publishing work without notification and changing it substantially. That’s a no for me, so I raced over to the submission platform and was happy to see that they had not read my work yet. I withdrew it.
Am I still out the (small) submission fee?
Of course.
But that’s okay. WR will just have to do without that new bottle of jelly nail polish she’s been eyeing in Riviera Rush. (Calm down, raccoon! I’m not serious.)
This same writer-saving newsletter (Lit Mag News!) also mentioned a new upgrade to Chill Subs that will include a “red flag” system for sniffing out troubling lit journals. I’m not sure if it will be included with the free package or not, but I’m going to look into it, because it seems pretty nuanced.
Oh, well, at least there were leftover brownies for breakfast.
And lunch, if we so choose.
dremadrudge.com 