Rejection

Did you see Nadal's loss at Wimbledon 2017? He was 2 sets down, managed heroically to catch up, then lost 13-15 in the final set. Soul destroying. Similarly, some of my literary rejections hit harder than others.

Since my pamphlet publication I've been on 3 short/long lists for publication of another poetry book or leaflet. In chronological order, I've been on a short-list of 2, a short-list of 5, and a long-list of 40, which doesn't look like a good trend. The most painful of these was when the short-list was announced before the judge had chosen the winner - getting into the short-list was the hard bit surely. But I lost the final set. So close and yet so far.

This week the short/long lists of the Bath and the Bristol short story competitions were announced. I entered both and got into neither list. Depressing. I was hoping I might get into one of the competitions' anthologies.

The other rejections that depress me are when, to recover confidence, I send some of my better poems to a minor magazine and I can't even get into that. I've had these this month too.

It's not all bad news. Pieces accepted months ago are coming out in next few weeks. Also I've changed my submission recording process, making it easier to produce some statistics. I now know that about 1 in 6 of times I submit (each submission might contain 3 poems, or one story) I get an acceptance. By the law of averages I'm due for an acceptance any moment now.