Another Update on the Bad Poetry Project

I didn’t want to update on this so soon, but I just have to give you all my news….

I have FOUR poems accepted for publication. Three for Naked Cat Literary and one for Free Verse Revolution.

I am very, very honored, proud, and excited. I knew that someday I’d get there, but the question was when…and lo and behold, both acceptances came in my email the same day. How’s that for wild? I’m still on Cloud Nine.

Today I just submitted another poem to Naked Cat Literary (love that name!), the one that accepted the three poems. Interesting story about this acceptance. I sent my poems in. I didn’t hear anything, and they had mentioned in their Twitter (X?) feed that they were starting to send replies, but didn’t indicate that they’d sent all of them yet. So I sat tight, waiting, on pins and needles. During this time, I had a weird prescient feeling that they would be the first ones to accept my poetry. Why, I couldn’t tell you. It just was. So then a week or so later, they tweeted that they were working on their next publication. And I wondered, were they done sending replies? And I hadn’t gotten anything? Not even in my spam mail? Hmmm. Time to politely — very politely — nudge. So I did that, via Twitter, and overnight they’d tweeted me back that they’d look into it (they were very apologetic, which I appreciate) and when I got up the next morning, my acceptance was in my email. With an apology that my email had landed in their spam. So, if I hadn’t nudged them, I wouldn’t have gotten my acceptance. And boy, did I wrestle with that. Back in the day, it was okay to do that, politely, and after a certain amount of time had passed. What were the rules now? It seems it is okay. With this submission, I did tweet them a heads up, just to avoid this happening again. Politely. Because I don’t want to upset anyone. They are really good people, and I want to develop a good relationship with them going forward. But I’d hate to have that happen again. So, being proactive and all.

So, naturally, I will keep submitting. Actually, I need to write more poems. And resubmit the rejected ones. I haven’t had a ton of time lately, with work and stuff. I also need to get back on the fiction train. I’m at 12,000 words or so for the year, and that’s…really low. I need to step it up, bigtime.

It sucks when you have a bizillion things you want to do, but no time or energy to do them. Story of my life. It’s been this way for a long time. I do what I can when I can, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t frustrating sometimes. I’m doing my best. I just didn’t want another low-wordcount year. But maybe this year is destined to be my Year of Poetry. I dunno.

I’ve also been pondering my chapbook, Eterne (“Eternally” in Esperanto). I’ve considered trying to get it published by a publisher, or even a literary magazine (some do publish chapbooks!), but being that the chapbook will have some poems in Esperanto/English, I feel like this should probably be self-published. That way, I have control. And, the other two were. (Speaking of which, how is the re-cover process going, Erin? Uh…it’s…not….). So that’s a thought. But I need more poems to fill it, right?

So that’s the update. Oh, here are my stats as of today:

TOTAL OUT	12
REJECTED	7
ACCEPTED	2
PENDING	3
As of	9/19/23

Hoping to increase that ACCEPTED number. 🙂

Alrighty then. Cross your fingers for today’s submission. I’d be thrilled with a second publication with the Naked Cat Lit folks. They have a special Halloween issue, and I wrote the poem specifically for that issue, so it’s right up my alley. I just loooove Halloween, spooky stuff, and fall.

And now I must return to Real Life.

Gis la revido!

(See you later!)