That is the question. At least my question. I discovered an unknown ability of mine this past semester. I can write poetry. Which is odd because I'm not a big poetry person. I wrote more poetry than I did short stories for my Creative Writing class and was told that my poetry blew away my prose. I don't know if that says much but I'll run with it anyway.
In my last Creative Writing class, the professor gave his farewell lecture. It included the usual things about writing everyday, reading everything you could your hands on, and finally to submit and forget. Let me explain that one. He's little pep talk was that we shouldn't fear submitting our work. Submit it. Once we've done so, don't agonize over it. Remember who you submitted to but don't lose sleep over it. Let it go. What can you do once it's out there? You just have to let it find its home. Move on to the next work and if you get something back on it? Great. But what if it's a rejection letter? That's not a failure. That's another chance to seek out its proper home.
I love this. After all, Thomas Edison once said "I didn’t fail ten thousand times. I successfully eliminated, ten thousand times, materials and combinations which wouldn’t work." The same can be said for submitting writing. Rejection letters are failure. Look as them as one less place to look for a home for your writing. That's the approach I think I'm going to go for.
But as my title says, I'm pondering whether I'm ready to submit or not. I wrote three great poems. One even had the professor and fellow student compare me to Dickenson (quite an honor for this dark soul let me tell you). But are three scribbled poems enough to think I can submit my work to anything? I don't know the answer to that. I do know that if I wait until I'm ready there may be no time left to do it. So now I'm off to search the web for literary mags that take open submissions. I may find a home for them. I may not. The best I can hope for is finding out where they don't belong and perhaps there may come the day when a letter or email comes and says "Home Sweet Home".
What are your thoughts? If you've submitted work before what's your story? Why did you submit? How was your first go 'round? What would you do differently? If you haven't submitted your work, What's stopping you? Leave me a comment and give me some ideas where to go from here.
1 comments:
KEEP IT UP.
do you wish to be an official at bluebell?
no payment, but you polish your writing skills by doing biography book reviews.
let me know
send your email to
jiyanwoo@gmail.com
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