Chapbook plans

I’ve been deciding whether or not to submit a few poems to a literary magazine and have been ambivalent about it. In the past, I’ve submitted my poems pretty much everywhere and only in LGBT lit mags do they ever get published, leaving me with the impression that my poems are only good enough for queer audiences. I know poetry is probably my weakest genre to write in although I personally think some of my poems are pretty darn good, even though publishers and editors don’t seem to think so. It’s been really frustrating, to say the least.

Today, I realized I don’t necessarily have to get my poetry published in lit mags to get it out there. I could publish my own chapbook! Duh. The Vancouver Public Library even has a collection of zines that people can borrow — it’d be really cool to have it there where people could borrow it if they wanted. The idea of designing my own poetry collection and leaving it up to people to read if they wanted to (or not, I fear).

Now to do some research into zines/chapbooks… 🙂

I’ve finished writing a book.

It feels strange to say that. I’ve written a book. I’ve written a book. I’ve written a book. Weird. But really cool.

Mind you, it’s not published yet so I’m not sure I can call it a book yet. Meh.

I’ve written a book!

The library is more important than me

Of course the library gets a copy of the issue of filling Station I’ve been published in before I do. Speaking of which, um, where is mine?

Rejection dream

Had a dream the other night where I received a letter from a publishing house I had sent my book proposal to a couple months ago. The letter was terribly scrawled; it looked like some third-grader had written it. I tried my best to decipher what it said, and the gist of it was that they had passed, saying my proposal/book was “exaggerated.”

This past week I’ve been anxious about receiving anything from from the actual publishing company I sent my proposal to. I check the mailbox every day, dreading to see the self-addressed stamped envelope I included in my proposal, while also being paranoid that the longer it takes, the more the answer is no. I also wonder whether or not they even received my proposal and am further paranoid they never did. Basically a lot of anxiety and paranoia. Between games of Age of Empires.

Last month to finish my book

I said in November that I’d spend the month semi-taking part in NaNoWriMo, except that I’d be finishing my memoir instead of writing a whole new book. Obviously that didn’t go quite as planned since I was in California for a week, and then I just got lazy after that. I did manage to finish another chapter last week that I had been planning to send to the Prairie Fire contest but after getting some feedback, there’s a lot of work to be done before sending it out anywhere. So now I’m planning to try and finish the book by the end of the month/year, then send out proposal to get a literary agent in January. If I don’t manage to finish, I can use the time that I’ll be waiting to hear back from literary agencies. We’ll see how that goes.

If I don’t manage to get anything published this month, I’ll have gotten an entire year of rejections. (although I did get a piece published in Existere but I submitted that on December 31st of last year) Man, it’s been a crappy year for getting published.

My name on a magazine cover

Whenever I get news that I’ve been published, I’ve been obsessively checking and re-checking the magazines’ sites to see if the new issues have come out. Today, I found out that the #66 issue of subTerrain magazine came out last week; there, on the Facebook page, was a photo of the cover of the issue. SubTerrain features the names of all its writers on the front of every issue, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I saw mine, just a couple spots away from my former college English teacher (Peter Babiak). I must’ve stared at my name on the screen for about a minute, quietly digesting the awe and pride of seeing my name published, and to know that my story will (hopefully) be read by many others.

Not sure if other people understand what I mean. Here’s the picture: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=689339287763566

When I get my copies of the issue, I swear I’m probably going to cry a bit.

Deadlines are great!

I may have written about the wonders of deadlines but in case I haven’t, they are awesome. At least if you’re into creative writing.

Case in point: I had an assignment due today, and I spent many hours working on it until I finished the first draft and submitted it a little while ago. Could I have done that without a deadline? Perhaps. Is it likely? Perhaps not. Even the awesome and lovely Amber Dawn reminisced about how great being in a program with deadlines was. Once you’re out of school, you have to push yourself to finish things and we all know we’re not very good enforcers.

Here’s a tip. I use submission deadlines for publications as deadlines to write and complete pieces I’m working on. It worked quite well last year, and I’m sure it would work well if I weren’t busy with my own assignments. How else do you all keep motivating yourself to write?

Poetry published!

Got an acceptance for a poem I submitted (that I wrote last semester for my poetry class, nonetheless) to a literary magazine today. I believe that’s four acceptance emails/letters in a row now.

What. The. Frig.

Good news, everyone!

Got another email yesterday — another creative non-fiction piece of mine has been selected for publication! Huzzah! I stared at the email for a few seconds because I just didn’t know how to process the news. I’ve been getting so many rejections this year that it almost seemed like a mistake. Two acceptances in a row! What is this???

It’s almost like I could actually be a writer. Imagine that.

I WILL be a writer.

For some reason, I’ve been feeling lately like I could really be a writer and write books and novels and all that stuff. For anyone that knows me, I haven’t really believed that I could ever finish a book and get it published, so this is a really good feeling. I think part of it is having read Amber Dawn’s memoir, who is a friend and colleague, has made me realize that people can do it — and I can be one of those people.

So yes. I WILL be a writer. And I WILL get a book published — not in five or ten years, but quite soon. I know it. I can feel it.