It seems that I’ve been so wrapped up in the relatively short reading period for LA Review that I have let my own writing and submitting fall by the wayside.  It’s been weighing heavily on me, especially given that I have an idea for revamping my manuscript that I’m really excited about.  Yet, each time I’ve had a few minutes to sit down and work on it, I’ve found myself overwhelmed, stuck, and unsure how to begin.  Classic blockage.  And because I have so many other things competing for my time, and no hard deadline, it’s too easy to just put the writing aside for another week or three when it feels challenging.

Submitting has been a similar story.  I’ve had a few acceptances and a few rejections trickle in the past month or so, but I haven’t been sending things back out.  So now I find myself with one submission out there (not counting full book manuscript submissions) and a long list of poems that still need a home.  Despite the fact that I get great satisfaction from having a long list of journals I’m waiting to hear from, getting them out there is time consuming and, admittedly, boring.

This week a new PANK came out online with three of my weirder pieces in it, and the summer issue of Rattle also dropped, in which I also have a poem.  I feel great seeing my work out there.  I don’t think “euphoric” is even too strong of a word.  But I know I can’t keep the euphoria going without more journals publishing more of my poems, and that won’t happen if they’re not out there being read by editors.  So with that in mind, I have promised myself that I will push everything else aside today, lock myself in my 3rd-floor turret room office (a Victorian is a good kind of house for a poet, I think), and not emerge until every worthwhile poem is out in the world. Call it “submitapalooza” if you will.

Not only that, but the reading period for the next issue of LA Review closes in a couple of weeks, and at that point, I think I will have no excuse for putting off my own writing.  Time to generate some new work.  Time to remember that I am a writer first and foremost, and that means actually writing.