PLOMH: September Update

Hello fellow poetry enthusiasts! My day job has picked up and poetry has slowed down, but the progress keeps progressing!

The hugest of news must be shared before anything else! I have submitted my poetry SEVEN TIMES! That’s right. We are on the board for submitted works! I’ve submitted to lit mags! I’ve submitted to contests! I’ve submitted to places that pay pro rates! I’ve submitted to places that don’t pay you anything! The places I’ve submitted run the gamut! And my cyber travels have lead me to some great directories and directory-adjacent sites to find more places to submit poetry. There’s the standard Submittable, but also my beloved Submission Grinder, and I also found Chill Subs through social media. Needless to say, all three are bookmarked.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, I wrote 9 poems in September. Surprising because I wasn’t really focusing on my quota in September and not surprising because most of those poems were poems I wrote to be submitted. Several of my submissions had poems I wrote earlier this year or even before that but a significant number of them were made the day of or the day before I submitted them. When a magazine has a theme, I gots to write to theme! Now before this year, the main culprits for my inability to submit more or at all was the lack of pieces to submit and when I did have a piece to submit, I didn’t have much faith in its quality. The first issue, is pretty much a non issue this year for obvious reasons. The second issue? Still an issue. But once again, playing the numbers game is the way to go.

Ya see, I used to be a barista. I was good at my job. When I made a blended mocha? It looked GORGEOUS and customers thought they were delicious. Now I was a barista for years. So when you do something for years, there’s gonna be days that aren’t your best, sometimes that blended mocha won’t look as pretty, often because of no fault of your own! Low inventory of essential supplies, or even the customer just didn’t want specific ingredients and that made the drink look less photo perfect. And you know what? Those drinks I made weren’t as pretty, weren’t as exact as I’d like, but they’d still meet company standards. The customer? Still loved the drink! Especially in the case where the customer asked for it that way!

Lots of poems I write won’t be as beautiful as I want. Heck, I might not like them as much as I’d…like.

But as long as they exist and meet submission standards? Whether or not they are good isn’t a me problem. As long as I have the general sense of ‘I think someone might like this and the thought of this being associated with my name doesn’t fill me with dread’, I’ll probably consider it for submission. Because if imposter syndrome is gonna do me like that- if my brain refuses to believe anything I make is good? I’m not gonna put whether or not it’s good as a part of the equation.

So I write lots of poems. So many that the imposter syndrome is buried under a mountain of letters. So even when I “don’t think it’s good”, I can still pick out parts I like, I can still recognize parts of it that others might have the potential to like.

Plus, once the finished blended mocha is on the counter, you think I’m losing sleep over it? Not unless it’s going to a customer I’m particularly fond of, like that lady who got everyone who worked at the cafe, gas station gift cards for Christmas. I’ll spend a bit more time fretting over whether or not she liked the drink I made.

On that note, I have attempted writing children’s poetry again.

Children’s poetry was a lot easier to write when I was a child.

Every children’s poem I’ve tried to write in the past month was agonizing. I had one that was like 3 lines, 17 words? I AGONIZED.

I didn’t even realize I’d put children’s poetry on this pedestal until I tried to stand on it! But I’m not too worried. It’s like what I’ve done all this year. The more I practice, the more I complete, the less fraught it will be.

Finally, a last bittersweet update. I can’t find my dang middle school journals. There are two of them and they have first drafts of a bunch of poems I wrote in middle and high school. I can’t freakin’ find them. I have held them in my hands while in the very room in which I type this update so they aren’t over 20 years lost but they may be over 3 years lost. But they are most likely somewhere in this room. I have spent a significant amount of time searching for them and I will continue to do so. Because those journals contain the only copies I have of a lot of those poems… I’ll work on transcribing them at some point… after I find them…

But yes! September! Little was done but a great deal was done! I have no idea what I’ll do in October, maybe get the poem writing/editing numbers up. But I shall not worry! Even when I have no idea what I’m doing and little is done, that tends to be exactly what I need to happen at that time.

For now, I bid you adieu! Happy writing, happy reading, happy sleeping, and happy whatever else you may be pursuing.