Imagine taking your baby, your cute cuddly new baby, and voluntarily throwing her to the sharks. This is what the world of publishing feels like to beginning writers. I am currently anxiously awaiting a reply from a poetry journal about a few of my “best” pieces. I prepared them with great care, making editing and re-editing multiple times, removing and inserting the same comma, tweaking and fiddling with my words until they were just right. Then in they go, slipped into a crisp manila envelope along with a query letter explaining my pieces and hopefully, portraying my poetic brilliance and certain success in the literary world. I sent my little poetic brain children off in May, with their own “SASE” as we say in the Literary World, (self addressed stamped envelope, for you who do not know) fully aware that the waiting period of two to twelve months would surely kill me.
Not only may I discover that according to the publishing world I have no talent whatsoever and that I better not write anything again ever or the Bards will all be turning in their graves, but I have to wait at least 60 some days to wait until I’m informed! Think of all the awful poetic crimes I could commit in the course of a year. That’s an awful lot of bad haikus.
What’s worse is, I may not ever get a response. I could get the “don’t call us, we’ll call you” of the literary world. I may never find a letter postmarked from New York in my mailbox. How long do I wait until I just give up all hope? This doesn’t sound like such a big deal, but when you’re holding your breath every time you open your mailbox it’s the center of your universe. Not to mention the fact that because many poetry journals don’t accept simultaneous submissions, a poet has to find out where she stands with one publication before she can submit to another one.

So, even if I wait for the publisher to get back to me with a “no thanks” or hopefully a “This is great! Send more! Here’s money!” I could be waiting six months to a year, if I continue down this path I may have something published by the time I’m forty.

So, what’s a girl to do? Simple. Keep writing, keep sending, keep hoping.