On Friday I got my third rejection from a literary journal. It is to be expected. It’s almost as if you have to collect the rejections like a pack of cards.
What you do with them, or what your mind does with them is up to you.
Another one bites the dust quickly goes through my mind, but then slows down . . . time slows way down and I remember all the work and time I spent rearranging all those words, those thoughts. The tone as I walked into the piece. What did I really want to say? How did I feel? What was the tone when the reader walked out?
The day before the rejection I started to email my professor to touch base, but then didn’t finish. Then I got the rejection – and thought, oh I will wait. Wait for what? Time to move through that space.
Today he emailed me, funny enough. Asking how I am doing as well sending an invitation to submit for the six-word poem contest coming up. I read about it a couple weeks ago and haven’t made my way around to it. Well – I will write some poems this weekend. A bunch and submit a few because I should.
You have to get used to submitting and then being rejected. It is part of it.
Another friend posted the other day, maybe yesterday about an opportunity to submit as well. In the guidelines one of the option to submit is a vignette.
“A vignette is a short scene that captures a single moment or a defining detail about a character, idea, or an element of the story. They are descriptive, include little or no plot detail” – I am reading the description, as I want to get this right. “They are not stand-alone literary works, nor are they complete plot or narratives. They are small parts of a larger work and can only exist as pieces of the whole” (literaryterms.net).
A vignette means “little vine” and the term rose from the small vines drawn on the pages of printed texts – the old thick paper and that had physical weight in it. Your hands literally felt the weight of the words, with the wrinkles folded into it.
This journal submission guidelines are a 50-60 page manuscript, or poetry (60 poems), or prose 800 word max per piece, 20,000 words max in total.
I can totally do this. I could write a solid vignette which is a more manageable goal than a book – even if the book is only 120 pages. I have a piece which is a good start – build on that.
Remember Brokeback Mountain – 64 pages. That is what comes to mind right away.
To me rejections – in my mind, in my visual thought processes – you take each of those pieces of paper, sew them together, piece them together and raise them up on your sail; one hand over the other, watch it raise. The larger the sail, the further you will go when the wind catches it.
Break –
No one ever encouraged me to be here. Scratch that for clarity . . . the feeling was I was always we were on unsteady ground. I was unsteady ground. Too scared to speak further.
For years upon years, everyone looked at me twice – once for the acknowledgment for still being alive. The second, to measure me up – how am I fairing really? Too thin, too small?
In that moment, I learned how to visually trick the eye and build upon what I had. I was small and thin, sure. But eventually if I could start picking up weights, stretching, running, working out in the gym, I looked a little less small and thin. I started to look like I was in the game. Same height, and weight not all that different, but I looked healthier.
Every time I learned something, a way of moving about, or the way words hop over each other or the way to dribble a ball, or hold the bat on the right even though I am a lefty – because it just was easier for everyone else, things started to make sense.
You build on what you have learned in the past, and what you know today, in this moment and move ahead.
All the rejections in the world are just to there to propel you further.
All the rejections in the world also allow you to stop, look, and thank you and you and you – to all the folks that have helped by giving you a nudge through and through.
Get to work –
Much love to you. Be well. Take this energy and roll it down the street and make it move.
p.s. Did I ever tell you to get a VPN? You should. The computer thinks I am in New Jersey. Also – because the search engines do not know your exact location, you should get a wider search when buying online. You may save a little dough.