Allison’s Year of Poetry (2022)
You know the saying ‘the days are long but the years are short?’ That’s kind of how I’m feeling right now. I’m exhausted. It’s been a long year, a weird year, yet it also seems to have flown by. Or maybe I just need a nap. Yeah, it’s probably that.
But still, it’s been a strange year, especially for my writing. Normally, up until this year, almost all of my work has been short fiction pieces plus my novel, The Other Side of Winter. I haven’t really written poetry in decades. No real reason, just the way it was.
I am, however, nothing if not full of wild and varied ideas. My poor ADHD brain will just spit out a phrase or an image and it lands on the paper however it chooses to land, in whatever form it wants.
This year, that seems to have been poetry.
2022 has been the year when I’ve published the most pieces ever, with a total of seven: two stories and five poems. I’ll get to those celebrations in a minute.
But first, I want to talk about all the stuff you, as a reader, don’t necessarily get to see. Mostly, the rejections that come with putting your work out there, into the hands of total strangers, and asking them to deem it worthy of publication. It’s not just a matter of sending in a story or a poem and they publish it right away. Some journals get thousands of submissions. Some only publish during certain times of the year. Regardless, it takes an extreme amount of time on their part to read every submission and decide if it meets their requirements, their aesthetic, their vision. And most of the time, it doesn’t. It can take months to hear back from a publication, even if it is a rejection. Most rejections I’ve received have been polite form letters, which is fine. Others go a bit more in-depth, letting me know what they liked. But at the end of the day, it’s a yes or a no.
Here are my statistics for 2022:
13 pieces submitted (2 stories, 11 poems)
86 separate submissions to 79 different publications — I submitted the same pieces to multiple journals and also submitted to the same journals a couple of different times during the year. Usually, the poem submissions were bundled into a group of 3-5 poems at a time, depending on the requirements of the publisher.
23 submissions withdrawn as the pieces had been accepted elsewhere
22 total rejections for my two short stories, “Ruby” and “The Sycamore Table”
72 rejections for individual poems, even if they were submitted in a batch
2 submissions I still haven’t heard back from yet
2 short stories published
5 poems published in 4 journals (1 journal published two of my poems)
1 poem published in hard copy; the rest were all released digitally
And I did all this while also writing for NaNoWriMo, getting The Other Side of Winter ready for editing, and working on a couple of other concepts. Plus, you know, my day job and my family and everything else.
Like I said, it’s been a hell of a year. The spreadsheet where I track my submissions is more colorful than it has ever been, but there was an awful lot of red (rejections). It’s all part of being a writer. Not everyone is going to like everything and that’s okay. Hell, even I don’t like everything I write sometimes. Other times, I impress the fuck out of myself.
Which brings to the good part of this post: THE CELEBRATIONS!
Of course, you can find all these links on my Published Works page, but I’m going to share them again here because why not?
Half-Life - poem (CW: attempted suicide)
The Sycamore Table - short story
Ruby - short story
Bleeding - poem, published in hard copy. All sales benefit the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Fractured - poem
Burning Bridges and Wise Woman - two poems published by the same journal
For now, I’m working on editing The Other Side of Winter. Editing is a scary place to be, but I am loving working with my editor, Jeni. Shit’s starting to get real and I’m eager to see where I can take this novel. Speaking of TOSofW, later this month will mark 8 years since I first started the story that has become so incredibly important to me.
I hope you all have a wonderful winter and holiday season, however you celebrate. Thank you to all who have read my work and supported me this year. I love you, dear readers!
Have a happy New Year!