on stamina

& round-up

Despy Boutris

Jan 26, 2022

Hi. Friday newsletter coming to you early because I’m bored at work & want attention.

SO!

Here’s what I have for you today:

Housekeeping
Resources
On stamina
What I’m reading
Quotations
Tweets

Housekeeping:

Having a website that is easy to navigate and has all the information submitters might look for is important. We know about gatekeeping, but what about anti-gatekeeping? What about subverting the notion of there needing to be any of these obstacles at all?

I will talk about this more at some point. In the meantime, you might read my post on being a good literary citizen.

on being a good literary citizen

Resources:

10 Literary Magazines Open to Fiction, Poetry, Essays NOW - Paying markets

On stamina:

If the rejections start rolling in and you decide, fine, I’m just going to stop submitting altogether, you won’t ever be published. In the literary world—which is so subjective, so competitive—you have to get used to rejection. You have to learn to bear it, painful as it may be. And, unless you’re, like, a god, sometimes it is going to take many tries before an acceptance comes.

Because I’m interested in a) transparency and b) certain statistics, below I’m sharing a (very abridged) list of journals who accepted me only after many attempts. It’s normal. It happens. And you’re not alone.

The list:

Josephine Quarterly: accepted on the 17th attempt
Guernica: accepted on the 14th attempt
The Adroit Journal: accepted on the 11th attempt
Typehouse Lit Mag: accepted on the 9th attempt
Ninth Letter: accepted on the 8th attempt
Bennington Review: accepted on the 7th attempt
Crazyhorse: accepted on the 5th attempt

Further reflection:

In college, when I first started submitting my work, my professor said you can expect an acceptance 1/10th of the time—at best. Years later, I see that she was right.

Although Submittable doesn’t perfectly encapsulate my submission statistics—since some journals have their own submission systems and others use email—it offers a large sample, & one that I think is pretty accurate.

As of now, my Submittable shows:

1,103 rejections
144 acceptances

And—I’m not a math person—but I think that means only 13% of my submissions have been accepted—and only after many attempts to submit to the same journal(s).

In summary:

Be strong! The right editor(s) will appreciate your vision. You just have to give it time.

What I read last week:

Christina Ricci Knew the Spiky Roles Were Coming
Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (again)

Quotations:

In rereading Sontag’s 1964-1980 diaries:

Sometimes feelings are too strong: passions, obsessions. Like romantic love. Or grief. Then one needs to speak, or one would burst.

-Susan Sontag

My loyalty to the past—my most dangerous trait, the one that has cost me most.

-Susan Sontag

The incredible pain returns again and again and again.

-Susan Sontag

I’m so stuck on the “was” of people—

-Susan Sontag

I experience the writing as given to me—sometimes, almost, as dictated. I let it come, try not to interfere with it. I respect it, because it’s me and yet more than me. It’s personal and transpersonal, both.

-Susan Sontag

I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces “intelligence.”

-Susan Sontag

Also rereading Dickinson’s letters to Sue:

We are the only poets—and every one else is prose.

-Emily Dickinson in a letter to Susan Gilbert, 1850

Oh, my darling one, how long you wander from me, how weary I grow of waiting and looking, and calling for you; sometimes I shut my eyes, and shut my heart towards you, and try hard to forget you because you grieve me so, but you’ll never go away.

-Emily Dickinson in a letter to Susan Gilbert

In thinking of those I love, my reason is all gone from me, and I do fear sometimes that I must make a hospital for the hopelessly insane, and chain me up there such times, so I won’t injure you.