siren song
13 November 2009
While in my personal life I am absolutely terrified of rejection, as a writer I consider myself quite fearless. In sixth grade I wrote to the William Morris Talent & Literary Agency asking them to represent me based on a novella I had written as a fifth grader. And I haven't stopped since. In fact, since I started seriously submitting my short stories and poems back in college, I have kept every rejection notice I have ever received. Well, kept every one that arrived before electronic submissions became so popular and you started finding rejection notices in your email or could keep track of the consideration progress of your poems with a simple log in to a submission manager. Truthfully, while I love the green aspect of online submissions and how easy it is, I miss the days of painstakingly putting together cover letters and packets of poems into big ol' manila envelopes and filling out those SASEs. Of dropping them
in the mailbox after a hesitant moment of lost confidence, only to then spend the next few days, weeks, and months waiting not-so-patiently to find out if someone outside of your creative writing workshops finds your voice worthwhile.
in the mailbox after a hesitant moment of lost confidence, only to then spend the next few days, weeks, and months waiting not-so-patiently to find out if someone outside of your creative writing workshops finds your voice worthwhile.I've sent to the big names: The New Yorker, Paris Review, Atlantic Monthly because I figured, hell, I didn't have anything to lose. As it happens, of all of the many, many rejection notices I have received over the years I have three personal favorites: one is from OSU's The Journal which contains a lovely handwritten note from the editors (a personal message on the standard rejection form is quite a coup for any writer), the second is a rather encouraging paragraph-long letter from the editor of The Georgia Review (an even better coup), while the third is a rejection notice from Playboy because, well, who wouldn't love to be able to say they were in Playboy?
So it was back in late January, I submitted a small selection of poems to three different literary journals. I heard back from two of them within the past few months and had consequently forgotten all about the third, which is why I was very puzzled when I opened my mailbox last night after work to discover an envelope from Potomac Review. Had I signed up for a newsletter? Gotten on some random mailing list?
What was inside the envelope was something I haven't seen since I was a senior in college and working as an intern at a literary journal and was on the other side of the process: a publication agreement. That is, a contract/acceptance letter. Yes, dear and faithful readers, Potomac Review wants to publish my poem "In Ithaca" in their upcoming issue and is paying me handsomely with two free copies of the issue it will appear in. But not only do they want to publish me, I found out on my birthday. I mean, really. For a writer how could there possibly be any better present? When I went back to their submission manager and logged in (for the first time since submitting), I saw there were comments from staff regarding my submission. They described my poem as "wonderful" and said they would like to publish it if it was still available. As if the poem is so wonderful, they figure some other journal has already snatched it up.
And now I get to do the one thing I have always always always wanted to do: write my author bio. The life and times of Tudor Rose in 50 words or less. I haven't been this excited since I was in high-school and props mistress for the fall play and got to write a bio for the program. If this is any indication of things to come, it looks like 28 is going to be one fucking phenomenal year.
