Submission Notes: A Baker's Dozen

28º ~ gray skies hovering close, the promise of 2 - 4 inches of snow has us all thinking Snow Day tomorrow! (with apologies to my northern brothers & sisters who might scoff at the idea of a city shutting down for so little accumulation)

Given that my experiment with doing a smaller number of poetry submissions each Monday didn't really pan out last semester, I'm starting this semester off with a big effort.  Today, I submitted to 13 journals, using three groups of four poems each.   The task was made easier by the work I did last Monday when I went through each poem with a fine-tooth comb and sorted them into groups I thought worked well as mini-manuscripts.  I only did a wee bit of tinkering on two poems today and the rest were 'shovel-ready.' :)

I'm still wishing for the sorting hat (see Monday), as the first part of the day was taken up with going over my spreadsheet, checking guidelines, and making the final decision on which poems might fit where.  I know it's still a subjective game, but I do believe that knowing the journals well helps put the odds in my favor.

Of the 13 journals, eight had online submission capabilities (two required small fees, $1.75 and $3.00) and five were postal only.  Either way is fine with me, although I have to admit to liking the ease of the online submission, and I don't begrudge the small fees at all.

Pick Me!  Pick Me!

This clears the desk for a bit of the more strenuous work this week: revising some more of my fall 2010 poems.  I'm going through a bit of a low concerning these.  For some reason, I'm not feeling confident about very many of them.  I'm guessing this is because the table of contents in the new manuscript has stabilized and I'm spinning my wheels during the transition to whatever's coming next.  I need to remind myself that it's all part of the process, and while I might be slow, I'm steady as she goes.