Wednesday, March 16, 2011

allpoetry

So today I did something that I've been thinking about for a while now: I removed all my poems from allpoetry. All 776 of them. I remember wanting when I was younger to be one of those people with 1000 or 2000 poems posted on there, but really, what does the number matter?

I didn't delete them for real, of course; I have them saved off on my computer. I just think I've moved beyond that site, and I didn't want to leave them up there, obligating me to return. I left my account up though, so I can go back and start writing there again if I feel like doping so in the future. But I think I've moved past it; I no longer have a deep-seated need for people to see and like my work. At the moment, I'm feeling much more like an Emily Dickinson: keep it all in a storage trunk, and some crazy relative can edit it to make it more PC and publish it when I'm dead.

Was it the best idea to do this on a down day? Probably not. But manic me didn't have the balls to do it, and I think it needed to be done. It's strange: for so long my allpoetry was my webpage, where I directed anyone who wanted to know more about me. But now, I've lost the need for it. I write in notebooks and on scraps of paper, and occasionally post things to my private journal. This feels to me like a big part of growing up and setting aside my emo teenage past, and really defining what poetry is to me: a way to make people like me and garner compliments; a cool dramatic thing to affix next to my name, like dreamer; or an inherent part of who I am--the burning need to put words on the page.


--
Listening to: Exile by Enya, my old friend in times like these.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

short bursts and time to think

Last night I sent off my first paper manuscript. I decided to send my Arizona story to Cricket, since they're a good paying market. I'm still poking around to see if my Rumpelstiltskin story could be sellable to any market other than the magazine I wrote it for (initially, I was going to send it to Cricket, since they'll take fairy tale retellings, but I decided I like my Arizona story better, so I sent it in first). I brought Willow with me when I went to the post office at about 4 am, and after seeing no signs prohibiting pets, let her ride on my shoulder while I poked at the machine to weigh and print postage for my package.

Monday, March 14, 2011

thoughts on rejection

I just got my first rejection letter for a story I submitted. I have mixed feelings about this. In my writing group, we say that rejection letters are something to celebrate and collect, because they mean you're sending out stories, or something. But it still would have been nice to be published. Oh well. (I need to actually ask my writing group why we celebrate them; just so we don't get bogged down and depressed?)

I'll take the opportunity tomorrow to look at markets and see if I can send it out again. Maybe I'll work on my other story that I could possibly sell--to fix the things my writing group pointed out--and send that out too. Because as nice as writing every day has been for simply producing words, it would also be good if I started editing and submitting what I've written.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

two weeks and more

Today marks eighteen days of me keeping my writing goal! Two days in that were over 1000 words, and four were 500 or more. That totals to nearly 9000 words, most of which were added to my NaNo novel (with about 2000 written in my quarterly challenge story for my writing group). And while that evil little gnome in the back of my head is saying that I wrote that much in one of my self-imposed Epic Sundays during NaNo, I'm heartily ignoring it. 9000 words is nothing to sneeze at, whether it's written in one day or two weeks, and the real accomplishment here is that I've been writing every single day for more than two weeks.