To Submission Service or Not To Submission Service
I’m seriously considering using a submission service. In so many ways it would be worth it. I know a poet who uses one and says it’s been very good for her—the advice, connections, and opportunities that come out of the association. I would love for someone to take over the crap. I feel like I just can’t do it right now. So, I’m going to get together a plan for the assistant to see if she can take over and if I can stand someone else doing it for me—if that works well, then I’ll move on to a submission service in the summer. Unless she ends up being so good at it that I start paying her to do it after her assistantship is up, which doesn’t seem likely. She’s due to graduate and I suspect she’ll be off to graduate school.
But the problem is figuring out what’s ready to submit, what has and has not been published. God it’s such a mess. And the thing is, I’ve reached a point where I don’t mind holding onto work longer, letting it marinate and stew a la Bishop, waiting to see what it’s like later. I’ve heard that that’s what great, serious, important writers do. But I could die with my arms full of writing, of unread stuff, you know? As romantic as that notion is, the reality is me watching my writer friends just clip along, publishing all over the place, getting nominated for this and that and winning this and that. I’m feeling like I’m standing still.
As for today, I will polish up “Loose Floorboard” and send it into the Carve contest. Will probably pull something else out and send it in, too. I know the editor there likes my work, though he is only one of the panel of judges. I will also get out The Terrible Baby and mail it off to the Margie contest. As for other submissions, I just don’t know. I haven’t heard back from SQ or Glimmertrain on the things I sent in October and though submitting to these biggies is such a shot in the dark, I do live in hope.
And another quandary—an editor of a shortly-to-be-launched online mag wants to publish some poems of mine, but the staff has a vision of how these poems should be arranged that is rankling me. They see the poems as a progression, as a unit. They want me to drop the titles and publish them as a trilogy. I must admit that I like the look of them that way, the feel of them, but the titles of two of the poems are integral and this whole trilogy thing wasn’t my idea and so it’s difficult to know if it’s right. Should I just go with their idea and call it a day? I’ve done this before, let editors lead me toward a poem as they see it. I’ve edited and edited a certain piece to suit the editor and sometimes this works well and sometimes it doesn’t in that I end up liking my original better and disliking the piece that gets published. So I’m not sure what to do. And there’s the fact that this is a new, untried magazine, so should I make compromises? When I edited/edited/edited a poem for Ron Offen and Sophia Stone, and Stephen Meats, I felt that it was worth it and in Stone’s and Meats’ cases, was pleased with the result. I’m still not sure about Offen. When John Witte wanted to publish “Soaping” as an essay and then the wanted to publish the next three pieces (that I randomly sent him) in succession in one issue, I jumped at the opportunity. These are all very solid magazines, so editing/reworking/reshaping seems less like a sellout in the initial rush of it. But with an unknown magazine which may or may not have a good go? I just don’t know. And going with a new mag can turn out to be a wonderful thing. When Jalina asked me for poems last December, I sent her some, never expecting the wonderfulness that has come out of that—it’s been amazing and certainly RSP is taking off.
And blahblah all these decisions and lack of decisions.
~r.
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