#9 / Keep Trying
Hi everyone,
As some of you know, I’ve been lucky to be published a few times in my life. But I’ve also gone through long periods in between.
When I was 10, I wrote a speech for a school contest — with a lot of thematic help from my mom, I have to say — about my relationship with my 5-year-old brother Avi, who has significant developmental disabilities. At the time, he was also having terrible seizures, and nobody knew exactly what was causing them. Our life was very different from the other families on the block and in my neighborhood elementary school. Other kids’ younger siblings were very different from my brother.
My speech was called “Differences Make Us Special.” Despite the fact that we couldn’t communicate with words and sentences, my brother and I have always been close. Our relationship looks very different than the one I have with my partner or my parents or any of my friends or cousins — and something about that makes it more precious. I relate to Avi on his level. Normally my humor is bone dry, but with him I’m a slapstick goofball. Sometimes there’s not a lot to say, so I just hug and kiss him a lot, and tell him I love him.
He also sees and feels and knows more than anyone, including me, gives him credit for. He just can’t always express it.
I didn’t understand what was medically wrong with my brother, or why we got such dirty looks when he made too much noise in a restaurant, but I did understand something about the value of my special relationship with him. I understood that the people who judged him by his behavior and by his disabilities — and who approached others in their lives the same way — were missing out.
I’m proud of the fact (and it feels emblematic of my point) that the speech only earned honorable mention in the contest. But I know it was better than that, because it found an audience. First, the local Jewish Press published it, and later it was accepted into a national magazine for parents of special needs children.
Then there was a gap until college. I suppose I was already publishing stuff myself on the web by the time I was 13, but it doesn’t have the same gravitas as a publication granting you a byline. At Wash U, I wrote for the sports section of the Student Life newspaper, which was good because it was regular writing and interviewing practice, but not entirely prestigious. Despite having a lot of great teams, sports weren’t important to most students: they didn’t even care about football, let alone softball or track and field.
I fell into the trap, too. Because it wasn’t prestigious, I didn’t always take it seriously. It was hard to come up with anything new or interesting to say. The best thing I remember writing was a piece on a quarterback who had just had a baby, which seemed wild to me. I wanted to stick it out until junior year, when I’d have a shot at writing a weekly column, but boredom, fear, or both got the better of me, and I quit.
I’ve put plenty more writing on the web since then, and published an academic paper, but never stuck with anything. I think that paper, in 2011, was my last official byline. Recently (as evidenced by these emails) I’ve been writing more, including the short story I shared last week, and some poetry. A writing friend has also been writing poetry — and even submitting it to journals.
This inspired me. I wanted in on the action. We came up with a game that would help us stay accountable to each other, but at the same time keep the exercise light and fun. Instead of us submitting stuff at random times, we could only go in order, one after the other. This puts a little pressure on whoever’s at the plate not to spend too much time fiddling with their batting gloves, knowing that the next hitter is cooling their heels in the on-deck circle.
So I sent out a few poems, not expecting too much. I’m pretty raw here, and these were just things I wrote for fun. The first two journals responded pretty quickly with a standard rejection notice:
Thank you so much for your submission and your support, which we value more than we could ever say, but this time around we've decided not to publish your work…
This is not a reflection on your work or on your worth as a writer; the inherent strengths of your pieces were simply different from what we envision for the next issue…
Continue to write boldly. We wish you well with your work and hope you will find a publication for which it is a perfect fit.
Nice enough. What you really want is a “good rejection,” which is when the editor includes an additional personalized note. “You were so close to getting in and it was painful not to select this one; please keep submitting!”
There was a third journal I was waiting to hear back from, but it took longer and honestly I forgot about it. The other night I was going through email, after having fallen several days behind (sorry!), and I read the first rejection from this other journal. Then a second one, and a third.
“Oh, I guess they’re sending a rejection for each poem.” I couldn’t actually remember how many poems I’d submitted. One was apparently called “Obscenity”; "don’t remember which one that is," I thought.
A fourth rejection scrolled past, and by then I had opened a few dozen emails and was getting exhausted. I wandered into my browser and aimlessly read some news. It was time for bed. But instead of closing the laptop, something drew me back into Gmail.
I saw a fifth one. The subject was just the name of the journal and the name of the poem. I opened it and for a split second I started to read the rejection text, which was the same as the text of the other four emails; only no, it wasn’t the same text at all.
Congratulations! Your submission "For All These Things and More, I Forgive You" has been accepted for publication in Havik 2020!
Look at me, the lucky stiff who’s publishing poetry on his third try, stumbled upon the acceptance note a week late, and wouldn’t even have missed it had it never come.
I guess the way this works is that I can’t show you the poem until it’s published. Havik is the Las Positas College Journal of Arts and Literature, which I’m told hails from lovely Livermore, California, which sits between Oakland and the Central Valley and in which resides the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Plus it is a mere stone’s throw from the former site of the Altamont Raceway! Anyhow, the journal will be published sometime this month, so I’ll give y’all a shout when that happens.
Havik is actually the last journal I submitted to; I suppose I ought to pick back up again. Not that I expect this 1-out-of-3 ratio to continue, but I figure I owe it to myself to see what might happen. And now that I have the first one out of the way, it will be a lot more fun.
Mood
Car Seat Headrest has a new album!!
Here’s “There Must Be More Than Blood.”
There must be more than blood
That holds us together
There must be more than wind
That takes us away
There must be more than tears
When they pull back the curtain
There must be more than fear
https://open.spotify.com/track/0DodvoV40rsxLewqzzWEeb?si=fJReLLOgQ7i5coI7jipg1w
Thanks for reading. Please take care, and write back if you can!
Love,
Aaron