This is My 9th Submission to Your Lit Mag
From The Editor's Desk
An Introduction
This is a new section on Stay Curious that I’m calling “From The Editor’s Desk”. I’ll discuss my experience as an editor with a focus on what I’ve been seeing as Founder/Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART.
If you have a suggestion for a subject (or subjects) that you’d like me to address, please reply in the comments or send me a note. These topics do not have to pertain directly to ONE ART or the submission/publication process. I’m open to doing my best to answer questions based on my experience.
*
This is My 9th Submission to Your Lit Mag
In a submission cover letter, if you inform the editor that this is your 9th time submitting to the journal and you have yet to be accepted… reflect on how this comes off. For one thing, you’re informing the editor(s) that they have previously not been a fan of your work. Second, there’s this instant feeling of, at best, frustration, coming from the writer that is perceived by the editor… I don’t read this as persistence. Instead, it really feels like the writer is a bit pissed off at having been turned down again and again. “Not my fault,” the editor thinks to themself. “You need to work harder.”
I never tell a poet to “give up” on submitting to ONE ART. That being said, there’s a point when I’d recommend asking yourself (as a writer) if you want to take a breather for a year or two from sending work to a lit mag where you are consistently being turned down.
Typically, periods of growth do not happen overnight.
Meantime, find journals where your current work is suitable for their pages.
Mark, I will say it took me a while for my work to be accepted by ONE ART. But your constant encouragement made me study the poems you were publishing and carefully craft work to be submitted that aligned with your lit mag's style and tone. Thank you for pushing me to work harder.
Ha! I submitted 8 times before my first OneArt turn. Forty five times to Rattle before my first (and over 400(!) since). SMH that folks don't understand that even if their poems are "good" and the curator likes their work, the odds are still in favor of their work being passed on.
It doesn't make sense to me that poets cannot put themselves in the places of curators. After all, so much of poetry has to do with empathy. The poet is, in effect, inducing empathy in the reader. Perhaps curators should require one poem in every sub to be a persona poem from an editor's POV. 😂😇❤️