Confession Tuesday - Positively Rejected

September and I'm pinching myself. I'm like for real? Already? But it is and I can see little signs to confirm this. Let's go to the confessional.

Dear Reader: It's been two rejection letters since my last confession.

I confess that when I say that I've had two rejection letters in the past week I'm really not distraught or anything about this. In fact I really feel pretty good about it. I suppose because I've been much more proactive about submissions this year compared to last. I know that you are going to get more rejections then acceptances - it's the reality of the beast. The two recent rejections were very reputable journals so these were not cheap rejections. If I was just sending to any old place and getting rejected I might not feel so good about it, but these are journals that have rejection rates in the mid 90% range.

Today I was reading about the Poets on the Coast in Oregon [here] a women's writing retreat and I confess I was jealous. I truly believe women poets tend to be far better organized the their male counterparts. I suppose I understand women in the arts have been marginalized over the years and this has no doubt diven them to take on projects to support their female peers. I think that is great but I'm still jealous.

It's been cooler here in Missouri the past few weeks. Weather closer to the San Francisco weather I love on a couple of them. And the mood last night was mammoth! I know summer is over the verge of leaving us. Baseball season winding down, I confess that I'm at least subliminally aware that SAD is just around the corner. A period in which many people including myself struggle with melancholy.

I'm about confessed out at this point - thanks for stopping by! Have a great week!

Unconscious Mutterings Week 450

You say and I think:

1. Submission :: poetry
2. Lucy :: Linus
3. Feather :: pillow
4. Magnetic :: personality
5. Bowling :: for dollars
6. Stress :: deadline
7. Sweetly :: charming
8. Creamy :: Lemon meringue
9. Awaken :: early
10. Beaten :: up

Get your own subliminal list weekly here

Sealing the Deal

A kiss seals two souls for a moment in time.  ~Levende Waters

Magpie Tales / Poem: Revenant

That I was surprised
at his return
an understatement
at the cold calculation
of his every move never

would the diabolical
alive become anything
less upon return
from the grave

perhaps in the depth
of his rest he might
think about our past
but can the dead think
and if so what would be
the difference

the cerebral gift he had
was plotting not thinking
certainly not feeling
not emotion     the cold
in life could not thaw
could not warm the heart

Freon pumped throughout
his body he must be
brittle cold -- unnerving
what can he want
from me --  in death
but to possess
the very warmth
of my breath
suck it out of me
and pull me under too.



Michael A. Wells


Magpie Tales



*photo credit - The Revenant, 1949, Andrew Wyeth

A Time To Write

This week I explored some notions about time and writing and what follows are a compendium of my thoughts:

• We all have 168 hours each week to work with.
• Time spent at the office during the work week including hour allocated for lunch is 45 hours.
• Allocating 8 hours a day for sleep eats up another 56 hours.

Those are pretty much fixed expenditures of time. I could be a little more precise by throwing in travel time to and from work but leaving this as it is, the leaves 67 hours for all that other stuff,  [family time, travel, recreation, doctor appointments, grocery shopping, cleaning, shopping, lawn care, writing and so on...

There is a lot of stuff to eat up that remaining 67 hours. As a writer I have to figure out how and when to carve out time and then to make sure that allocated time is optimally used.  I've thought about the amount of remaining time and decided that I should schedule about 10% (rounding up to 7 hours)  of the remaining time for writing. It seems like a lot on one hand and yet it really not quite so much on the other. For example, I I am accustomed to writing often in 30 minute segments then I can think of it as a hour a day for seven days and it them seems like a lot. Now there are plenty of times that I buckle down and write for more then an hour at a time, working on new stuff and rewrites.  But that is not a daily occurrence and more likely then not to happen on a weekend. So a full hour every day then seems like a lot. On the other hand, if you think of your writing as a career/avocation then it hardly seems like much - 7 hours a week.

Another consideration is are we talking about writing or everything including writing related. If I start adding in the latter then we suddenly are talking about a lot of other things that could encroach upon that 7 hours. For example:

• Submitting work
• Organizing material in a retrievable fashion / backing up, etc.
• Reading (all writers need to be reading)
• Researching topics
• Researching markets
• Networking
• Attending events for peers and giving readings of your own work.

All of the above things are what I tend to refer to as administrative functions of a writer. They are not writing but they are ever bit a part of the process unless you just plan to write and stash your work in that third drawer of your dresser that you don't use for anything else because you have to stoop down to use it.

For now I have decided to embrace the 7 hour plan for a while and see how it works for me. I have yet to decide how much of that I will allow to allocate for writing related tasks. Realizing anything that comes out of time not a part of the 7 hours is essentially reducing the remaining 60 hours left after sleep and work.  These things have to be done but perhaps with a balance of not taking away too much from writing or remaining unallocated time.

I've decided that I need to do my best to elimination of distractions from the specific periods that I write. Some of those I can control and some are less easily effectuated but I need to try none the less.
For example - I can't stop to check my email or post on face book. I should park my cell during this time. TV off. Maybe add one of my writing play lists to the room to help reinforce what I am doing and as a way others entering may realize what I am doing at that specific time.

Getting 7 hours in would allow for example to take a night off to do something else and adding that extra hour to the weekend so I don't end up staying up late one night to get in an hour if we've been out for the evening. It allows for some flexibility with the weekend hours.

This is what my approach will be for the immediate future and I will address how is is or isn't working at 2 weeks and 4 weeks and make adjustments if necessary.

So how do you spend and allocate your writing time?

Amy Leigh Davis Reading September 16

Friday, September 16, 2011 ~  7:00 PM at  THE WRITERS PLACE

Amy Leigh Davis, author of The Alter Ego of the Universe   recently published by Finishing Line Press will read from her book as well as new work.  I've had the pleasure of knowing Amy and experiencing her writing over a period of several years now.  Her works always seems fresh and active. This is a reading I  especially looking forward to.

Two other poets with whom I am not presently familiar  will also be reading. The are Susan Rieke, Mary Rogers-Grantham.  Rieke has  two books of poetry are Small Indulgences and From the Tower. She is Professor of English at the University of Saint Mary in Leavenworth.  Mary Rogers-Grantham’s collection is titled Clear Velvet.


Mark your calender for this event  at The Writers Place ~  3607 Pennsylvania
Kansas City, MO 64111-2820

Confession Tuesday - Do The Math

My body keeps telling me it’s Monday but it isn’t. No, it has been a week since my last confession even though being off yesterday for Labor Day makes it feel a lot like a Monday work day. So join me if you will…

Dear Reader: 

I confess that 3 day weekends make me wish they were all that way. Actually they make me wish they were longer still. Give a guy a day off and he wants two. I confess that I get greedy that way.  

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Over the weekend I tried to utilize some of the extra time doing what I call the administrative things a writer does. I’m not fond of these things but unless you are going to take the Emily Dickinson career path and stash your writing away in a dresser drawer and hope someone comes along and gets it published for you after death then the proactive approach seems to be necessary.  So sending out your work becomes the dreaded necessity.

I confess that I was not fond of math in school. Algebra was in my view something I needn’t concern myself with and I recall that my grades in the subject would testify to that fact.

Strange as it may seem, my post school days poring over and processing detailed election poll data, strategizing over ward and precinct numbers, margins of error, voter turnout, and then there was my fascination with baseball statistic.  My wife likes to remind me these are the very uses that I swore I’d never need such complexities of math for.

But over the weekend I noted that on Duotrope – my submission tracker tells me that I have sent out 56 submissions in the past 12 months and that I have an 8.89% acceptance rate and that is higher then normal (though I haven’t a clue as to what normal is).  So I confess that I am again dragging numbers into my life – my poetic life at that!  I confess it feels sleazy talking about it.  

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Shamefully I confess that I also check my blog analytics from time to time. I suppose it is a good thing that I don’t yet have a book published or I’d be checking that sales ranking daily like it were the Dow Jones or something.

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I confess that my San Francisco Giants are torturing me with their play these past few weeks.

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I confess I need to pay my library file and check out some books

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I confess I watched like three old episodes of Friends last night and felt like it was the good old times again.

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I confess I’m loving the weather today because it is so San Francisco!   And I confess that when I’m resorting to confessions about weather it must be time to stop.  Have a great week everyone!