by admin
I received a rejection today, and I’m over the moon about it.
Maybe I need to explain. I started submitting my work to various publications last week, after that dream of epic poetic proportions.
Risks, remember? Plus it’s just good practice as a writer. I mean why not? I’d like my words to expand beyond the bubble of
this city. The words aren’t born for stage only or a few choice ears or my bottom desk drawer. Maybe it’s my class and the discovery of
process(I am, you see, still forming mine). If I love writing so much, why have we developed a commit-fearing-yet-the-sex-is-amazing type of relationship?
Oh pen I’m sick of the love ‘em and leave ‘em disposition. Let’s change our story.
That’s what I’m doing. I used my lunch breaks at work to send off poem after poem. Today marks my first rejection, from a press that
prides themselves on being notoriously tough. I’m waiting to hear back from nine other publications. I’m well aware of the odds, and that’s
part of why I’m so damn happy about this first rejection. There are going to be more “thank you but no thank you’s.” The sooner
I can get rejected, the sooner I get the green light. I have a thick skin. It’s plenty okay.
I just finished preliminary work on my second writing class assignment—a poem based on our reading of “The Lesson” by Forrest
Hamer. We have to tell the story of a road trip, tap into an experience that holds meaning and tie it to a national or cultural event.
I spent a few days thinking about the various car trips, bike trips, walks. I kept coming back to the Greyhound trip from Pittsburgh to
Ohio on September 13th 2001. It wasn’t the most profound, not really at all, but that’s what intrigues me in regards to writing about it.
The magnitude and proximity of an event like September 11th, and the disconnect I felt going home. Honestly, I tried to think of
another impacting road trip because I don’t know how I feel about writing about that time. Don’t ask me why, but my instinct was to fight
against that. I rotated a few options in my mind but came back to that one, and now I think I have a great structure for it. I’m very close to being finished and I’m surprised by what came out. In a very good way.
Which brings me to my lesson learned this week, a lesson I’m going to continue to acknowledge going forward. It isn’t just bullshit when people tell you to do what you love and to do more of it. Think about how doing what you love makes you feel. What feels better than feeling that?
Helping others makes me happy. Being there, listening. The things I am passionate about, becoming a little more hellbent on chasing them. We forget how lucky we are. We forget how many things move us. We push them aside for trivial, for what bothers us or what makes us tired. Simply put: time’s too quick for that. Do what you love to do, do what moves you. Do more of it. This is a bonafide way to beat the blues back.
This could mean standing outside somebody’s house with a fistful of flowers because you know they’re busy fighting the good fight. This could be discussions based around things in this world that enrage you—building that comraderie, talking. This could mean more theater, less drinking—more symphony, less bitching.
And as noted in the photo above, I am still waiting for my contacts to arrive(oh elusive UPS man, our paths not even star-crossed). I’m fighting the urge to feel like a shy middle-schooler again, and remembering to lean back when I take the lid off the boiling pot of water. Instana-fog.