Maybe it’s the Jazz playing or the sun shining or the crisp fall air, but today I feel like I’ve been making real progress as a writer/poet…. At the beginning of the month I submitted some poems to a few literary journals. Some are currently under review, others haven’t even gotten to that stage yet. I don’t expect acceptances, and I’m surprisingly ok with that. I’ve been following a handful of poets on Twitter and there’s more hand-wringing about submissions, rejections, and acceptances than I would have expected there to be. Sure, the anticipation is interesting – I can feel it, but I’m not nervous about it. I’ll be curious to see if my attitude changes when the rejections show up. But for today, I like my odds.
And maybe it has nothing to do with the Jazz or the weather or even feeling good about myself as a writer, but is instead entirely about feeling good about the content and the effort. I reread some of the poems I had submitted and felt a sense of – “yeah! That’s solid… I stand by that.” It could also be that despite being slow to build my network of writers and journals because I want to do it with sincerity and authenticity… a few have decided to follow me back – which gives me all-too-familiar modern day false sense of having had a real conversation wit these people. It will all be slow going, but much like the rejections, I’m ok with that too. I feel like I’m doing this writing thing and literary community thing on my own terms… not for an assignment or for praise, but because I can and because I want to. There’s a certain liberation in not caring too much about the outcomes.
All of that said, I’m wondering if I should ride these endorphins and submit my work to a few more journals, or put some time into fleshing out the few ideas I’ve jotted down on the back of my digital napkins. My struggle there is that I’m not much of a multi-tasker nor am I much of a slut. In submitting work, in dating, in job applications, and anything else that might require playing the field or sowing one’s oats, I tend to want to keep my focus limited. I tend to go all-in or at least most of the way in as opposed to spreading my love around. Having grown up in house meager with compliments, I learned to survive for long periods of time on the few that I get. I’m like a camel with water when it comes to needing praise – I can go a while without it and I might even spit at you if you get too close. I don’t need a lot of women or employers or literary journals to tell me I’m pretty or smart, or that they like the cut of my jib… one or two will suffice. And I suppose today, for reasons unexplained, I feel bolstered by my own confidence. It will all come shattering down soon enough, but for now I’ll take it.