I waited 10 months to hear back
Oh, hi friends!
I submitted some poetry to The New Yorker back in March. (You can submit yours right here!)
They use Submittable, the online submissions manager used by contests, fellowships, magazines, and the like.
When you send off an application or your latest work, it’s classified as “Received.”
The New Yorker’s reading time for poetry is six months. Given the chaos of March and April and…well, the rest of the year, I figured it would take a little longer. But during 2020, I would still log in to my account and check on my application.
It became a funny little habit, a tic. I’d check on it after a particularly grueling day or when I was feeling uninspired.
Maybe it reminded me that I finished something — six poems, in fact! That I was brave enough to send them into the world and, crucially, the inbox of an editor. I planted seeds and could wait for them to grow.
Six months passed…seven…eight…nine…ten months.
Then last week, my application changed. It was now classified as “In Progress,” which means the poems were assigned to an editor and are currently being considered.
And that, too, reminded me of something. And it wasn’t the fear of being rejected.
It reminded me what it feels like to create something and hang onto the hope of it.
It’s the thrill you get from caring.
And that’s the reminder I needed.
Maybe you need it, too?
“Sometimes even I myself am afraid to submit to my subconscious inspiration, for fear of being ridiculous, but no matter how wild or vulgar an idea seems at its conception, within five years someone is sure to come up with it. My suggestion to anyone who is creative is: never hold back.”
From the memoir of Bill Cunningham, the late street-style photographer for the New York Times.
Photo by David White on Unsplash
May you fly through your Monday with all the ease and deadly strength of this tiny American Kestrel.
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Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara