Even though my chapbook All in the Family is forthcoming from Bottlecap Press, that doesn’t mean I’m sitting around just waiting for it to be published. Oh no, I’m doing edits on it and polishing it till it’s shiny. Because that’s what you do as a writer – it’s not just the writing of the poems (if only!), it’s also the editing and rewriting and reworking. And it’s also the continuous process of submitting poems.

Another poet once asked me how I get my poems published. The short answer: I send out a lot of submissions. I average about 3 hours a week, just submitting poems to various journals, magazines, and websites. In addition to sending out submissions, I spend several more hours writing, rewriting, and editing my poems. Every week I spend a total of 8-10 hours on my poems and poetry. And while that’s a lot of time it pays off. I have several poems being published in upcoming journals. Recently, my poem Trigger was published in SHE Zine. (Click here to get your copy, my poem is in SHE Zine #2 and it’s $4.)

SHE Zine – great with coffee or wine!

And I just finished assembling my full length manuscript. After much editing and rearranging, I’m finally happy with the end result and have sent the manuscript off to several publishers.

Manuscript planning!

There’s no fast and easy way to get published, the key to writing and publishing is to keep at it. Keep sending in submissions. There will be a lot of rejections, but there will also be some acceptances. And those are the golden nuggets that keep me writing and submitting.