submission – Clara Hsu

Submit Submit

“How do you get published?” Someone asked.

“You submit.”

That’s the bottom line. It’s easy to say but it takes just as much discipline to send out a poem as to write one. (Much of the time, writing is easier than sending.) I have failed this particular new year resolution time and again; failed to submit even just once a month. What’s the problem? Submission is not poetry. It is work of the tedious kind: reading requirements, guidelines, following directions, licking stamps, etc. And when the rejection letters come in, they reaffirm my reason for not submitting.

Occasionally I get excited when the ad says contest winner gets to give a reading. I am a sucker for such privilege. It gets me going and dreaming a little. It’s good to dream.

Image taken from: pcmailingservices.com

The Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope

It’s the last thing I want to see in my mailbox but here it is, long, white, with my own hand writing and stamp. I don’t even need to open it to know what’s inside. The sealed and delivered thin envelope contains my failure and rejection. The slip of paper inside has only two sentences. Thank you for your submission. We regret that we are unable to publish it. It invariably ignites a host of negative feelings and ruins my morning.

I put the unsavory letter in my drawer along with the others. Every writer has to have a rejection pile. With the growing on-line submission I even use a dedicated email address to account for all the rejections. They seem a little less ghostly without the white envelope but the disappointment is the same.

I feel sorry for myself for a little while. Moan about it to my cats. And then…and then…go to the next call for submission and stuff the poems into another envelope. SASE be damned.

Writers, Not Beggars

creacion-de-las-aves-remedios-varo-1957 — Creacion de las Aves by Remedios Varo

Publishing is a big business. Writers know that. Agents know that. In this age of Internet most submission is going electronic, and with it comes an attitude—the demand for pristine manuscripts with specified margins, spacing and formats. With it comes threatening remarks of deleting queries that are formatted incorrectly, and a writer’s chance of being snickered at if the agents deem you incompetence in following their simple instructions.

I’m sure agents are swamped with queries to the boiling point. Otherwise they must not forget that writers are artists and their work is a creation of art. To discriminate and incriminate based on their own guidelines is to exclude the possibility of discovering some true talents who are not wired to follow instructions or go online. Some writers are too poor to spend $600+ to go to a writers conference. Others work in obscurity and don’t have time for a “platform”.

You may say too bad for these writers. They’ll never see the light of day. But I say the publishing industry is the loser. Long ago it was the emperor who set out into the mountains to seek the advise of a hermit. Writers are not smoochers, least of all beggars.

Waiting

It’s like throwing a bottle with a message into the ocean. In this case, a query letter dropped into the sea of literary agents. The initial excitement cooled down as time passed and when I received the very nice form letter in the mail after six weeks of idling I had no drama left but a sigh of relief. Thank you. I may go on with my life. Submission has to become mechanical without emotion like brushing teeth, cleaning the toilet or putting on my shoes; stoic as someone who leans on the pier fishing . The bait is out there, as long as the line is connected.