A Writer's Notebook, Day Four-Hundred-And-Twenty-One

The waiting game of submitting is often quite exhausting.  It is not about the actual rejection itself, but about the unknown aspect of the waiting.  In part, this is due to the potential for the piece to be turned away, but it is also largely about not knowing when a response will arrive.  Really, that, itself, is a rather brutal.  I've heard it said that torture is most effective, for example, when it is randomized, when one does not know when to expect it.  In the same way, a writer with a series of submissions out has no idea when they will get any word about the work.  A few weeks, perhaps a month by now, I received a few rejections, but other work I sent at the same time is still lingering, waiting for a response.  Each day, I wind up spending a bit of time looking for those responses.  Often, I will get other emails from a press or journal, many of which may not relate to the specific entry, but I will go through my old emails to see if I missed something important. 

Of course, all of this is the nature of any such enterprise, and the far better thing would be if I could let go of submissions at a certain level.  Essentially, keep the work out in the mail, but don't worry about the responses, detach from that, and just focus on getting the work in front of editors as often as possible.  That is a really nice idea, and an attitude I would like to say I am on the road towards, but the truth is that submitting work is important to me on many levels, and I am invested in the outcome. I  do think it is important to get work in front of editors, and I see submitting, even when rejected, as an opportunity to get work in front of people who matter.  It certainly means something for an editor to see the same name, especially if it is associated with work that is promising.  Even work that is not accepted may leave a positive impression in some way.  I am aware that rejection is not always about quality, or even necessarily about what an editor likes.  The decisions made are difficult, especially for print media with limited space and resources.  Getting good work out is important, even if it does not immediately garner acceptance.

Beyond all of that, I know it is a necessity for me to send out work.  At this moment, I am not certain the number of poems I have on my computer, but I have no desire to keep them locked away forever.  It is not that I am expecting all of them to be great additions to the literary cannon, or even publishable as they are, but I think a lot of them, or at least a fair percentage, will find a home at some point.  I certainly believe in the work that I've already sent out.  At the moment, I have so much work that it feels important, even incumbent upon me, to send it out, if I am not to feel that I am just wasting time with this writing.  It is the step that I must take, though I cannot control where or when my foot will land.