Thirty stories now completed. Have been working today on my ms You Wake One Morning, Remembering. Rearranging the contents. I want to enter it into contests. Nearly 50 poems based on my dance with prostate cancer—it's discovery, treatment with radiation and hormone therapy and semi-recovery. The cancer's still there. Much reduced. My urologist says I'll die of something other than prostate cancer. Only time will tell. He's the one who likes to say, "Everyone's got to die someday."
Lately my rejections have been accompanied by requests to resubmit. Either editors are becoming kinder with their rejection letters, or I'm getting closer. I'm reading Hemingway's short stories recently, having finished Raymond Carver's. It's been a half year since a poem of mine was included in Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro's project, Washington Poetry Map. It's there near Huckleberry Mountain just north of Interstate 90. My record is pretty consistent—one or two publications a year. Nothing spectacular. Not bad for a writer who is a stranger to most, if not all, editors of literary magazines, internet as well as hard copy.
The recent photo reveals the fact I'm letting my hair grow long on the top. On top that is.
The rewritten "All About Jane" has already been rejected by a magazine called Chestnut Review which
collected a fat $5 fee for considering it. They took all of 5 days to
consider it. Fair to say I get rejected a lot. Most writers do unless
they have huge name recognition, but 5 days and $5? Makes me think it
could be a scam. Easy... form a magazine, put it into Poets & Writers Magazine
and charge a $5 reading fee. Publish the magazine online for very low
cost and make at least pocket money rather than lose money as I did
publishing George & Mertie's Place. Most magazines these days
use Submittable to handle mss and Submittable gets $3 to handle a ms.
Fair enough, but $5? I'm tearing up my file card for that market. Too
suspicious.
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| by rob mulally @unsplash |
Good
news on the other hand. One of my poems has been accepted by current
Washington State Poet Laureate Claudia Castro Luna. It appears on the
map. You will find the poem by clicking on the red button about 2/3 of the way on Interstate 90 from
Spokane to Seattle. A very handy blip on I-90 occurs just below the red
dot. The dot represents Huckleberry Mountain in the North Cascades
whose name is in the title of my poem "Group Encounter at Huckleberry
Mountain".
Thirty stories now completed. Have been working today on my ms You Wake One Morning, Remembering. Rearranging the contents. I want to enter it into contests. Nearly 50 poems based on my dance with prostate cancer—it's discovery, treatment with radiation and hormone therapy and semi-recovery. The cancer's still there. Much reduced. My urologist says I'll die of something other than prostate cancer. Only time will tell. He's the one who likes to say, "Everyone's got to die someday."
