Didn't write on here for nearly two months exactly, for the simple reason that I realized that many of the poems I had had published on the Internet over the past decade were no longer there, and that if I was ever to be asked to compile a book of published poetry, I wasn't going to have much published poetry to offer the publisher. When I first started publishing poetry 20+ years ago, I would simply remove poems from my big computer file'o'poetry when it was published and store the contributor copy away in a cardboard box, and I had been doing the same thing with the online publications. So I spent most of September frantically retyping all of the published poetry I could find, with the names of the publications listed with each poem, and after an exhaustive month straight of going through musty old cardboard boxes and carefully searching through the contents, I now have enough published poetry safely saved to compile two or three good-sized books, or six to eight slim volumes. And, of course, due to this obsessive pursuit, I met almost none of my goals for September, but, oh well, I think this was something that needed to be done. I've already gotten one request for a poetry manuscript for tentative publication from a really wonderful press that I'm afraid to mention for fear of jinxing myself, but anyway, I did get a manuscript off to that particular press and several others, so my goal of sending out book manuscripts/pitches for September and October was more than met.
With the kids going back to school, and my husband busily working on trying his hand at short story writing, I've suddenly found myself blessed with a whopping two hours of completely uninterrupted writing time on my hands for almost an entire work week. I say "almost" because when my husband has writer's block, he tends to find things for the two of us to do together instead of write, such as grocery shopping, trips to the hardware store, or a longer jaunt than necessary to collect the newspaper. So probably one, maybe two days a week, I miss out on my morning writing time, but oh, well--what I'm getting is better than what I had.
So with this new-found writing time, I've found myself plunging ahead on the novel revision, and if I can come up with an additional 6k words to plug in during the revision, I'll have hit the Golden 70K word count. I think that's the number I'm supposed to be striving for. I've also heard people say that novels are at least 75k, and if that's the case, I guess I'll have to go back one more time and add more words, but I'm hoping I can get away with just the 70k, because that is a goal within sight.
And the September/October Total Count Is:
So I was pretty bad about keeping up with my notes for the last couple of months, but so far as I can tell, I had manuscripts rejected by 144 magazines/ezines and acceptances from 16 magazines/ezines during those two months, including an acceptance from Slipstream, which is a first placement in that fine publication for me and makes me very happy. So far as actual publications go, I had 38 poems published in 10 print magazines and 12 ezines during that time, and reprint of my cover letter in an ezine. My Exceptional Publication for the Month was seeing my poetry in Phoebe in September (even though I've been in there before, it's a great magazine to still be a part of) and in The MacGuffin in October, which was way, way cool.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The Super-Late August Part 2
Fell way behind on my writing this month, mostly because of trying to prepare myself for book signings (as previously mentioned), teaching, and getting ready for the kids to go back to school, which I am still not really ready for, especially in regards to my daughter (the kindergartner). So while I did get about 100 manuscripts sent off to magazines, I didn't get much writing done, I did a lousy job keeping track of what got accepted for publication (although I did keep good records of how many manuscripts got rejected) and am only now hoping that September will prove to be a calmer month.
Teaching at The Loft
Call me highly, highly paranoid, but I felt like I was being stared at by the people who worked at the place I teach for the whole two weeks I was there. People would either not make eye contact with me, or I would catch them staring at me whenever I turned around or looked up from what I was doing. I'm serious--one time, I was filling out papers before class, and when I looked up, I found one of the other instructors standing in the hallway outside, just staring at me. She disappeared after saying "hi" when she saw me looking back at her. I only teach a few weeks out of the year, and every year that passes, the group running the place gets weirder and weirder, and I feel less and less like I fit in.
Then, of course, was the incident with the postcards announcing my book-signing down the street "disappearing." That was really weird. Of course, no one from the Loft showed up at the signing, and my students, who had only heard about it from me three days before in passing conversation, didn't have a visual reminder to give their parents. So that stunk.
All I really have to say about teaching itself is that it's really hard for me to do, because I'm not a terribly sociable person, but I just love working with 15-17 years olds, because they're so brave and cool and absolutely fearless. That, and they've got time on their side, and their heads are full of adventurous notions of what being an adult means. I like my adult classes, too, because most of the people taking my writing classes are considering some sort of drastic change in their lives, and need someone to hold their hand through it, which I can do--but the kids are the most fun.
Too bad office politics suck hard, no matter what field you're in.
August Round-Up
Okay, so for August, so far as I can immediately tell (and I'm way behind on all my correspondence, so there may be a few additional acceptances that I'm not aware of), I had poetry and fiction rejected by 83 online and print publications, 15 poems accepted for future publication by a scant 9 magazines/ezines, while one magazine wants to print another one of my cover letters. So far as actual publications go, I had 7 poems published in 5 print publications and two online publications (again, there may be more online publications, since I'm way behind on my emails) and one short story published in an online publication.
My I-can't-believe-my-work-is-in-this-amazing-magazine publication for this month is the new issue of Bottle (#6)--a gorgeous, hand-set letterpress magazine with silver and gold embossing, and lots of poets in it with much, much bigger and more important names than mine. Really wonderful and humbling to hold this one in my hands. Like I said before, so long as I get in one magazine of this calibre every month, my writing setbacks don't seem nearly as tragic.
Teaching at The Loft
Call me highly, highly paranoid, but I felt like I was being stared at by the people who worked at the place I teach for the whole two weeks I was there. People would either not make eye contact with me, or I would catch them staring at me whenever I turned around or looked up from what I was doing. I'm serious--one time, I was filling out papers before class, and when I looked up, I found one of the other instructors standing in the hallway outside, just staring at me. She disappeared after saying "hi" when she saw me looking back at her. I only teach a few weeks out of the year, and every year that passes, the group running the place gets weirder and weirder, and I feel less and less like I fit in.
Then, of course, was the incident with the postcards announcing my book-signing down the street "disappearing." That was really weird. Of course, no one from the Loft showed up at the signing, and my students, who had only heard about it from me three days before in passing conversation, didn't have a visual reminder to give their parents. So that stunk.
All I really have to say about teaching itself is that it's really hard for me to do, because I'm not a terribly sociable person, but I just love working with 15-17 years olds, because they're so brave and cool and absolutely fearless. That, and they've got time on their side, and their heads are full of adventurous notions of what being an adult means. I like my adult classes, too, because most of the people taking my writing classes are considering some sort of drastic change in their lives, and need someone to hold their hand through it, which I can do--but the kids are the most fun.
Too bad office politics suck hard, no matter what field you're in.
August Round-Up
Okay, so for August, so far as I can immediately tell (and I'm way behind on all my correspondence, so there may be a few additional acceptances that I'm not aware of), I had poetry and fiction rejected by 83 online and print publications, 15 poems accepted for future publication by a scant 9 magazines/ezines, while one magazine wants to print another one of my cover letters. So far as actual publications go, I had 7 poems published in 5 print publications and two online publications (again, there may be more online publications, since I'm way behind on my emails) and one short story published in an online publication.
My I-can't-believe-my-work-is-in-this-amazing-magazine publication for this month is the new issue of Bottle (#6)--a gorgeous, hand-set letterpress magazine with silver and gold embossing, and lots of poets in it with much, much bigger and more important names than mine. Really wonderful and humbling to hold this one in my hands. Like I said before, so long as I get in one magazine of this calibre every month, my writing setbacks don't seem nearly as tragic.
Monday, August 17, 2009
August is Too Busy
I have been dreading August for a while now, because I knew it was going to be way too busy. The only way I could think to write about the first half of the month is to just list all the crazy things happening in it.
Part #1. Book Signings
My husband and I kicked off the month with a book release party at my brother-in-law's house. About two hours before the party, our car got a flat tire, so we had to inch it to a repair shop and spend a good hour or so walking around in our party clothes, trying to find some way to spend the time. We got to the party minutes before the guests started showing up, with just enough time to put food on the table, ice the beer, and get a little tipsy ourselves. Only a couple of people I knew showed up, which has been pretty typical with my past attempts at a book release party, but luckily, my sister-in-law's got lots of friends that showed up and picked up the slack. I figure we sold about 12 books at the party, and gave another 4 or so away. It's hard to tell, because we were pretty lit up by the end of the night.
My first in-store bookstore signing for Walking Twin Cities happened the first weekend of August, in a suburban mall Borders. I signed one book during the whole hour I was sitting there at my little table, watching the bookstore staff try to forcefully drive people to my table--which just didn't seem like a good sales technique to me, but they seemed to think they knew what they were doing. I was so depressed when I left the store that I called my mom to come pick me up and went and bought about $30 worth of chocolates at the Godiva shop next to the Borders.
My second in-store signing was the next Friday at the downtown Minneapolis Barnes & Noble, and Sherm decided to come with me. Luckily, this one seemed very successful to me--we signed 8 books, including one to someone who worked for the City Planning Department, who promised to recommend the book to his co-workers and one of my friends from SEMCOL showed up to buy a book for his wife, which was really cool. Oh, and this lady came up to the table and bought two books, claiming that she had saved and laminated some of my (former) weekly columns from three years ago, and was so excited to have a whole book of my writing. That concept floated around in my head all day, that someone had liked something I'd written enough to save it and laminate it.
I was really feeling pretty darned good about the way the day had started off until I went in to The Loft (see August Part #2, soon to come) and went to see if anyone had picked up any of the in-store signing announcements I had left in the Reading Room--and found that someone had moved my postcards from the table I had set them on (after asking permission to do so) and stuck them in a corner behind an armchair where they were literally invisible from the main floor. But, like I said, more about The Loft later.
Part 2 of August coming later. Knocking off for the night now.
Part #1. Book Signings
My husband and I kicked off the month with a book release party at my brother-in-law's house. About two hours before the party, our car got a flat tire, so we had to inch it to a repair shop and spend a good hour or so walking around in our party clothes, trying to find some way to spend the time. We got to the party minutes before the guests started showing up, with just enough time to put food on the table, ice the beer, and get a little tipsy ourselves. Only a couple of people I knew showed up, which has been pretty typical with my past attempts at a book release party, but luckily, my sister-in-law's got lots of friends that showed up and picked up the slack. I figure we sold about 12 books at the party, and gave another 4 or so away. It's hard to tell, because we were pretty lit up by the end of the night.
My first in-store bookstore signing for Walking Twin Cities happened the first weekend of August, in a suburban mall Borders. I signed one book during the whole hour I was sitting there at my little table, watching the bookstore staff try to forcefully drive people to my table--which just didn't seem like a good sales technique to me, but they seemed to think they knew what they were doing. I was so depressed when I left the store that I called my mom to come pick me up and went and bought about $30 worth of chocolates at the Godiva shop next to the Borders.
My second in-store signing was the next Friday at the downtown Minneapolis Barnes & Noble, and Sherm decided to come with me. Luckily, this one seemed very successful to me--we signed 8 books, including one to someone who worked for the City Planning Department, who promised to recommend the book to his co-workers and one of my friends from SEMCOL showed up to buy a book for his wife, which was really cool. Oh, and this lady came up to the table and bought two books, claiming that she had saved and laminated some of my (former) weekly columns from three years ago, and was so excited to have a whole book of my writing. That concept floated around in my head all day, that someone had liked something I'd written enough to save it and laminate it.
I was really feeling pretty darned good about the way the day had started off until I went in to The Loft (see August Part #2, soon to come) and went to see if anyone had picked up any of the in-store signing announcements I had left in the Reading Room--and found that someone had moved my postcards from the table I had set them on (after asking permission to do so) and stuck them in a corner behind an armchair where they were literally invisible from the main floor. But, like I said, more about The Loft later.
Part 2 of August coming later. Knocking off for the night now.
Friday, July 31, 2009
July has 31 Days, Not 30
Okay, so I've been at my desk working very hard day, because I did want to get August off to a good start, when I just now realized that today is the last day of July, not the first day of August. So I'm not as big a fuck-up as I thought I was, because I have this one more day! So far today, I've sent off nearly 30 manuscript submissions and spent a couple of hours doing market research, so I can now feel much better about July. Also, I got 2 more poems accepted by two ezines today, including one for a Fibonnaci poem that I totally flubbed the form of (because I still just don't get math) but the editor kindly reworked one of the lines so that the poem fit the form. And is giving me money (like, $5) for the poem when it comes out next month.
Okay, back to work--15 minutes until my husband comes home from work!
Okay, back to work--15 minutes until my husband comes home from work!
July Wrap-Up
July was dedicated way too much to pushing The Book--I fell way behind in just about every way. Didn't help that I spent way too much time contemplating switching literary agencies, either, which used up time that should have been used working on my novel and assorted other types of writing instead. Oh, well--water under the bridge, no use crying over spilt milk, etc., etc.
Went into the Roseville (Minnesota) Borders bookstore yesterday and saw the very prominent display for The Book, with the big posted notice of when I'd be there signing copies, and it was so weird and surreal that I had to run out of the store and go hide in the car. I think I'd be much better at all this if being a working writer was just about writing, and not all the interpersonal crap that goes along with it. If I can just get through August, I'll be okay. Our big book release party is tomorrow night, I teach writing classes for the next two weeks, and we have book signings at bookstores scheduled for three out of the four weekends (and one Tuesday)--but other than that, the month should be pretty easy. Hee-hee! If I lose my planner this month, I might as well shoot myself.
My son and I switched rooms last week--he moved into my tiny basement office, while I got his big bedroom. It's so much space I'm baffled. I spent the past three days trying to figure out how to get comfortable at my new desk, the new wall in front of the desk, the light in the room, the acoustics, etc., etc.--oh, and having a window in my office. My son seems happy, though, so I'm glad. I wrote four books in that office, so I know it's got a good, productive vibe to it. Already sort of miss it, actually. Especially since I'm still shoveling out piles of garbage from what was under my son's bed in order to make room for my own stuff in here! That, and the Internet reception in this room sucks ass.
And the Count Is:
Despite my remarkably unproductive month of writing, I did pretty well so far as publications and acceptances went. I had pieces rejected by 79 magazines (and the low number definitely reflects my lack of submitting new material), but I had 32 poems and one short story published in 4 print magazines and 16 ezines--which brings this year's total up to 119 poems, 11 short stories, and 2 nonfiction articles published in 95 magazines. This is cool because that means I've already had pieces published in more than twice as many magazines as I did all last year, and we're only entering August now. Of course, last year I had 4 books published, and this year I'm probably only going to have the 1 book published, but, still cool. So far as acceptances go, I had 26 poems accepted by 16 magazines/ezines for future publication, which isn't my best month, but ain't bad.
Went into the Roseville (Minnesota) Borders bookstore yesterday and saw the very prominent display for The Book, with the big posted notice of when I'd be there signing copies, and it was so weird and surreal that I had to run out of the store and go hide in the car. I think I'd be much better at all this if being a working writer was just about writing, and not all the interpersonal crap that goes along with it. If I can just get through August, I'll be okay. Our big book release party is tomorrow night, I teach writing classes for the next two weeks, and we have book signings at bookstores scheduled for three out of the four weekends (and one Tuesday)--but other than that, the month should be pretty easy. Hee-hee! If I lose my planner this month, I might as well shoot myself.
My son and I switched rooms last week--he moved into my tiny basement office, while I got his big bedroom. It's so much space I'm baffled. I spent the past three days trying to figure out how to get comfortable at my new desk, the new wall in front of the desk, the light in the room, the acoustics, etc., etc.--oh, and having a window in my office. My son seems happy, though, so I'm glad. I wrote four books in that office, so I know it's got a good, productive vibe to it. Already sort of miss it, actually. Especially since I'm still shoveling out piles of garbage from what was under my son's bed in order to make room for my own stuff in here! That, and the Internet reception in this room sucks ass.
And the Count Is:
Despite my remarkably unproductive month of writing, I did pretty well so far as publications and acceptances went. I had pieces rejected by 79 magazines (and the low number definitely reflects my lack of submitting new material), but I had 32 poems and one short story published in 4 print magazines and 16 ezines--which brings this year's total up to 119 poems, 11 short stories, and 2 nonfiction articles published in 95 magazines. This is cool because that means I've already had pieces published in more than twice as many magazines as I did all last year, and we're only entering August now. Of course, last year I had 4 books published, and this year I'm probably only going to have the 1 book published, but, still cool. So far as acceptances go, I had 26 poems accepted by 16 magazines/ezines for future publication, which isn't my best month, but ain't bad.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Oh, and the Rejections Keep Coming In
Lest we pretend it's all sunshine and roses, I have to put in the rejection count for the month--so far, I've been rejected by 36 magazines. Smallish number this month so far, but only because I've only sent out 16 submissions for July.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Paperwork
Okay, so I'm finally feeling like myself again, got a home-made plaster slapped on the broken tooth, and the kids are out of the house. Should have been a perfect day to sit and write stuff. However, being sick for the past few weeks means that I've fallen way behind on my paperwork, especially responding to poetry/fiction acceptances, printing up and signing magazine contracts, and logging in publication credits. What a silly thing to feel a need to do, but I guess I didn't think it'd end up taking two hours (or really, 1-1/2 hours, with half an hour spent sending out about a dozen new magazine submissions). I may seem like a complete disaster from the state of my house/office/personal life, but I have always been extremely anal about keeping track of who's doing things to my poetry and fiction.
So anyway, a nice evening wasted on paperwork, but at least I'm caught up. So far this month, I've had poetry and fiction published in three print magazines and eight ezines, which is pretty good considering we're only halfway through the month--especially since one of the publications was in Sam Pierstorff's gorgeous Quercus Review, which is "growing up" to be an amazing magazine, one I can feel especially proud of having been a part of numerous times (yay for me!). So that's my really really good literary publication for the month. I also have work accepted for future publication by seven ezines and two paper magazines so far, including an Australian anthology (The Tangled Bank) that looks like it's going to be a really good publication that will actually send me money for my poem ($15 AUS, whatever that equals). Oh, and I got another $5 check for a short story and a $5 for a poem so far this month. Obviously, I'm not going to get rich off my literary endeavors, but one or two big scores and I can at least claim my hobby breaks even.
So far as book-related stuff goes, I had 1100 (beautiful, if I do say so myself) postcards with info about the book printed up, and got over 100 sent out in the mail so far--most are going to sit in newsstands around the city and will be passed out at next month's book signings and the kick-ass book release party/AKA alcohol-fueled tax write-off, but about half will go out in the mail to businesses. I think this book might actually sell some copies--twice in a row, the sample copy I brought into stores got bought from under me by the person I was showing it to, which I think must be a good sign. So far as other borderline-soap-opera-events-in-my-life-go, I'm giving the untested agent a break for a little while, or taking a break for myself from the fishing expeditions, because I really want to start work on my damned novel again, and write down some of the poetry that's threatening to come bubbling out of me unbidden every time I get locked in a human conversation, and not spend my days killing myself retooling nonfiction book proposals over and over.
So anyway, a nice evening wasted on paperwork, but at least I'm caught up. So far this month, I've had poetry and fiction published in three print magazines and eight ezines, which is pretty good considering we're only halfway through the month--especially since one of the publications was in Sam Pierstorff's gorgeous Quercus Review, which is "growing up" to be an amazing magazine, one I can feel especially proud of having been a part of numerous times (yay for me!). So that's my really really good literary publication for the month. I also have work accepted for future publication by seven ezines and two paper magazines so far, including an Australian anthology (The Tangled Bank) that looks like it's going to be a really good publication that will actually send me money for my poem ($15 AUS, whatever that equals). Oh, and I got another $5 check for a short story and a $5 for a poem so far this month. Obviously, I'm not going to get rich off my literary endeavors, but one or two big scores and I can at least claim my hobby breaks even.
So far as book-related stuff goes, I had 1100 (beautiful, if I do say so myself) postcards with info about the book printed up, and got over 100 sent out in the mail so far--most are going to sit in newsstands around the city and will be passed out at next month's book signings and the kick-ass book release party/AKA alcohol-fueled tax write-off, but about half will go out in the mail to businesses. I think this book might actually sell some copies--twice in a row, the sample copy I brought into stores got bought from under me by the person I was showing it to, which I think must be a good sign. So far as other borderline-soap-opera-events-in-my-life-go, I'm giving the untested agent a break for a little while, or taking a break for myself from the fishing expeditions, because I really want to start work on my damned novel again, and write down some of the poetry that's threatening to come bubbling out of me unbidden every time I get locked in a human conversation, and not spend my days killing myself retooling nonfiction book proposals over and over.
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