and all this shit happens!
First, J.D. Salinger kicked, which I found a little sad despite my first reaction being “J.D. Salinger was still alive?” So even though I didn’t know he was still alive, and only found out about it from blogs, I still worry that with him gone there’s no one left to carry the torch for authors who wrote one massively successful novel and then never wrote another book (also known as the Harper Lee Fiction Award). I’m also a little concerned that disaffected youth will now focus on sparkly gay vampires instead of wandering around saying “fuck” a lot. And that’s just not right.
Then I miss Lady GaGa day on Facebook because I actually spent most of the workday working, goddammit. Not that I had a thing to wear for Lady GaGa Day, or would, but you know, it’s the principle of the thing. Something perfectly deserving of mockery and I missed it. Fuck.
That “fuck” was for you, Holden.
Then just as I pitch a big bitch fit yesterday about wanting to change the paradigm of submissions and literary journals and the lack of relevance of poetry in today’s world, I get an acceptance letter for a poem that I write especially for Just Do It, but submitted to cc&d on a whim, and they took it for their May issue, which is pretty badass, because that makes two acceptance letters in one month, which I think is a pretty good hit rate for most writers. I keep waiting for the bottom to fall out, because everybody I talk to says “You’re going to get rejection after rejection after rejection before you ever get anything accepted” and I’ve gotten two pieces accepted in my first month of submitting seriously, so I keep either waiting for the other shoe to drop and for me to either wait a year to get anything else accepted, or to realize that most people that write poetry suck. But it’s probably a mix of both, because I do think that a lot of poets suck, and likely do a crap job of figuring out where to submit their stuff, so because I know I’m not great but I’m better than a bunch of the truly suck-ass writers out there, I can at least submit my stuff to places more likely to accept it.
Damn that was long. Fuck.
Fuck off, Holden, that random profanity was all mine.
Fuck to Holden as well!
You are probably doing a better job of targeting your work. I’ve already had more acceptances this year than any year prior because of the places I am picking.
Of course, I am still going to try for journals like Poetry and The Gettysburg Review because well, why not? But I know I full well have a better time with the ones that I read myself more often and that are smaller.
But congrats on two! that is good!