The act of submitting your writing is a mixed bag of emotions.
Well, hold on. Let's establish something first. You ARE submitting, right? You're not pouring yourself into these worlds you're creating (that applies to poetry, too) and then hoarding all the fun for your own?
Do you have journals full of work that's "just not ready"? Writing that "just doesn't feel right"?
Ask yourself a serious question: In all that work, is nothing ready, or are YOU not ready?
Sending our writing out is an act rendering us quite vulnerable, especially as the fragile writerly being we often are. Our work might be criticized, rejected, misinterpreted, lost, or ignored. All that will happen. Often. That's the inevitable life of a writer.
You might be waiting to submit when everything feels perfect: the perfect top tier journal, your perfect poem, the perfect timing, the perfect needs of the journal based on their space and themes, your perfect mood and confidence, the perfect arrangement of your writing space aligned with the moon and stars and the weather, etc.
I'm afraid that's a formula for a thin-skinned let down. Most of that's never going to come together for anyone. Not for me. Not for you.
Submitting successfully is about getting over our fear of "the send" or "the mailing." The actual doing of the act. Most writers, I believe, have work that can go out NOW, but are sitting on it, hesitant for every reason necessary NOT to send it out.
This is not to say send work that's not ready. Never. But there's a difference between work that's ready and a hesitant writer. What's wonderful is that once we realize that the world doesn't really come to an end no matter the outcome of a submission, we can do it over and over, revising at our leisure, learning how things REALLY work out there in the land of publication.
Send out something today. Today.
Well, hold on. Let's establish something first. You ARE submitting, right? You're not pouring yourself into these worlds you're creating (that applies to poetry, too) and then hoarding all the fun for your own?
Do you have journals full of work that's "just not ready"? Writing that "just doesn't feel right"?
Ask yourself a serious question: In all that work, is nothing ready, or are YOU not ready?
Sending our writing out is an act rendering us quite vulnerable, especially as the fragile writerly being we often are. Our work might be criticized, rejected, misinterpreted, lost, or ignored. All that will happen. Often. That's the inevitable life of a writer.
You might be waiting to submit when everything feels perfect: the perfect top tier journal, your perfect poem, the perfect timing, the perfect needs of the journal based on their space and themes, your perfect mood and confidence, the perfect arrangement of your writing space aligned with the moon and stars and the weather, etc.
I'm afraid that's a formula for a thin-skinned let down. Most of that's never going to come together for anyone. Not for me. Not for you.
Submitting successfully is about getting over our fear of "the send" or "the mailing." The actual doing of the act. Most writers, I believe, have work that can go out NOW, but are sitting on it, hesitant for every reason necessary NOT to send it out.
This is not to say send work that's not ready. Never. But there's a difference between work that's ready and a hesitant writer. What's wonderful is that once we realize that the world doesn't really come to an end no matter the outcome of a submission, we can do it over and over, revising at our leisure, learning how things REALLY work out there in the land of publication.
Send out something today. Today.
