Discouragement, Nice Rejections, and Persistence

Sometimes reading an old blog post accidentally can be really enlightening. I posted about “nice rejections and the MFA blues” a few years ago, back in 2007.

http://myblog.webbish6.com/2007/02/does-anyone-write-nicer-rejection-slips.html

What’s especially interesting is that the comments were so supportive, mostly from people I’d never met (though I would meet some along the course of life as a writer.) David Barber has since continued to write me very nice rejection slips over the years. I almost look forward to them now!

I also thought it was interesting that Kelli Agodon said she had never sent to the Atlantic, and that was February of 2007. By August of 2007, her poem “How Killer Blue Irises Spread” was published in The Atlantic. John Gallaher mentions his own post-graduate blues; this is right before his second book, The Little Book of Guesses, appeared, to pretty terrific acclaim.

I was also thinking that I didn’t remember being particularly discouraged as a writer after my MFA – but apparently I was, because there is the proof, captured in an old blog post. A cycle of discouragement appears throughout the years on this blog – sometimes I’m excited and busy, like I am right now, consumed with a new project. But sometimes I feel sending out poems and manuscripts is drudgery (not the writing part, but everything that goes with writing.) Sometimes I feel happy with my work, other times not so much, but what’s interesting is the work keeps happening, whether I’m happy with it or not. My writing and submitting habits – which you could follow if you could see my files on the computer – stay remarkably consistent, regardless of what I’m feeling, apparently. Which I think is actually a good thing. Keep sending out your poems and manuscripts. Try sending somewhere you might not believe you’ll get an acceptance from. You just never know.