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firefly124Here's something that no writer in their right mind ever does.
1. Write something.
2. Have a trusted friend read it over to be sure it's what you want it to be.
3. Sit on it for weeks until the night before the deadline.
4. Decide at the 11th hour to completely rewrite the thing from scratch in under an hour and email it in without having a single other person look at it.
Had I done this with a bit of fanfic, I'd expect it to get bounced from any moderated archive with a note a mile long. So of course, what I'm talking about is a bit of original poetry that would be the first bit of creative writing with my legal name attached to it (should it be accepted) in well over a decade.
I half wish I could say there was alcohol involved in this process to justify that lunacy. Certainly the final version had been percolating in my subconscious whilst I wibbled about just what was wrong with the prior, proofread version. (It did lack balance, but given the form I'd chosen, there was no way to really address that without starting over.) Thing is, I've not submitted poetry (or anything non-fannish) for publication anywhere in years, so the idea that I banged this thing out (on the fourth or fifth complete rewrite from scratch, mind) in under an hour and sent it in without a second set of eyes is vaguely horrifying. To an editor I rather idolize, no less. I can't even bring myself to reread it this morning.
The one thing I'm positive it does wrong is take something that was utterly visceral and give it a substantial amount of distance so that I could actually bring myself to submit it. In poetry, and, really, most forms of writing, the result of doing something like that tends to be a very bland flatness. So it may be that this was a bit of self-sabotage to make sure it wouldn't get accepted, given that if it does print, the odds of my being outed from both closets* simultaneously go up just that little bit. (Though, frankly, it would probably take one of my parents randomly googling my name to stumble across it. It's decidedly not a publication either would be reading as a matter of course.)
Just shoot me, please, somebody?
*Unrelated: it was amusing to note in a conversation with a friend that "broom-closet" isn't as universally understood as I'd come to expect from using it with fellow Pagans online. Fellow was Pagan, too, but totally thought it was a size thing and got into an extended metaphor about walk-in closets with mirrors. Um, intriguing, but not quite what I meant. Brooms ... witches ... *waves hands*
1. Write something.
2. Have a trusted friend read it over to be sure it's what you want it to be.
3. Sit on it for weeks until the night before the deadline.
4. Decide at the 11th hour to completely rewrite the thing from scratch in under an hour and email it in without having a single other person look at it.
Had I done this with a bit of fanfic, I'd expect it to get bounced from any moderated archive with a note a mile long. So of course, what I'm talking about is a bit of original poetry that would be the first bit of creative writing with my legal name attached to it (should it be accepted) in well over a decade.
I half wish I could say there was alcohol involved in this process to justify that lunacy. Certainly the final version had been percolating in my subconscious whilst I wibbled about just what was wrong with the prior, proofread version. (It did lack balance, but given the form I'd chosen, there was no way to really address that without starting over.) Thing is, I've not submitted poetry (or anything non-fannish) for publication anywhere in years, so the idea that I banged this thing out (on the fourth or fifth complete rewrite from scratch, mind) in under an hour and sent it in without a second set of eyes is vaguely horrifying. To an editor I rather idolize, no less. I can't even bring myself to reread it this morning.
The one thing I'm positive it does wrong is take something that was utterly visceral and give it a substantial amount of distance so that I could actually bring myself to submit it. In poetry, and, really, most forms of writing, the result of doing something like that tends to be a very bland flatness. So it may be that this was a bit of self-sabotage to make sure it wouldn't get accepted, given that if it does print, the odds of my being outed from both closets* simultaneously go up just that little bit. (Though, frankly, it would probably take one of my parents randomly googling my name to stumble across it. It's decidedly not a publication either would be reading as a matter of course.)
Just shoot me, please, somebody?
*Unrelated: it was amusing to note in a conversation with a friend that "broom-closet" isn't as universally understood as I'd come to expect from using it with fellow Pagans online. Fellow was Pagan, too, but totally thought it was a size thing and got into an extended metaphor about walk-in closets with mirrors. Um, intriguing, but not quite what I meant. Brooms ... witches ... *waves hands*
no subject
Date: 2011-05-05 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-05 04:09 pm (UTC)I mean, I know what possessed me to submit something at all: the Bi Women magazine/newsletter asked for submissions related to spirituality, and I wanted to create something that dealt with my relation to Apollon with regard to bisexuality. The personal essay approach ended up dry as dirt, so I went with a poem. The original poem just felt too raw to put out there. However, the one I replaced it with, which I've finally re-read, is just bland and borderline didactic, and I'm very annoyed with myself for submitting it like that.