i can’t help but think

of all the four-

leaf clovers i’ve

eviscerated

with my weed whacker,

unseen, awaiting

me in front of my house,

their arms of fortune

open for my embrace

*

This has been a year of swinging for the fences, of telling myself stories, of overwhelming myself, and of rediscovering my breath. Getting pneumonia multiple times this winter, followed by influenza and COVID, I found myself in the middle of a writing slump, in the worst shape of my life, and in a war of attrition with my mental health.

Currently, I work as a high school teacher, and I work very closely with the seniors. That means that come May, as I was still struggling to pull myself back together, I was swamped with senior projects/presentations, graduation, meetings with parents, the senior camping trip, and my regular English classes. I came in early, stayed late, and skipped lunch. I loved how the days were filled with meaning, how I was able to help such deserving students reach their goals, and how the time flew by, but I was drained. Neurotic. Exhausted. Full of junk food. Too many happy hours with the other teachers. It was a great unraveling of my entire being. Add to that the fact that I’m studying to get my C2 Spanish certification (certifying me as a native-level speaker), volunteering as a poetry editor for a literary magazine, organizing poetry workshops with the other editors of that publication, looking for possible graduate programs, and, most importantly, raising a three-year-old ball of pure energy and seeing that I’ve written, published, and exercised at all is something I should have been proud of. Should have.

Apparent salvation, though, came recently on a trip to Ecuador. My wife and I decided we don’t want to have any more children, so I traveled back to South America alone for a couple of weeks to have a small medical procedure to help with our family planning goals, to have a root canal, and to get some tattoo work done. It was a painful vacation to say the least, but Ecuador – Cuenca, in particular – has always had pacifying effect on me. I’m not sure if it’s the culture, the mountains, or the people. I just know that three times I’ve shown up depressed and anxious, and each time the mental fog was lifted the moment I ascended the Andes.

Now, I feel like myself again: eating healthy, running for enjoyment, writing with inspiration, teaching with passion, and even forgiving myself for being human.

Life in the “Maybe” Pile: the last 12 months of publications

I make a lot of assumptions when I track my submissions to, and rejections from, publishers and literary journals. Surely, those assumptions are misguided, and each publisher/publication has their own process and priorities. However, I’ve been experiencing what I call “arcs of hope.” I send work in to a very high-level publisher or journal. A couple of days or weeks pass without a rejections, so I assume I’ve made it past the initial screening. Hurray. Then, a couple of months pass, and I still don’t hear anything. Awesome. I’m still alive. A few more months go by, so I start telling myself that I must be in the final round of consideration. A few more months go by. It becomes apparent that my rejection letter just never got sent, which gets confirmed when I email the editors for a status update.

In fact, I still haven’t published anything in English this year, which I’m not too concerned about. Like I said at the beginning, I’ve really been swinging for the fences with the journals to whom I’m sending my work, and they tend to take a long time to respond. Even though I haven’t gotten that good news that I’m looking for yet, I’ve gotten some “personalized rejections” from some big-name journals (or, if not personalized, rejections that praised my work and asked to see more in the future), and I’m still holding onto hope for some high-profile submissions.

Additionally, my novel in English is still awaiting judgement. About a year ago, a literary agent reached out to me to tell me that I was in their maybe pile. Then, I never heard from them again. With that being the case, I’ve started sending my novel directly into smaller publishers. Since many publishers charge a reading fee, I want to wait to hear back from this first round before I submit it elsewhere. Those responses should be coming any day.

My novel in Spanish is still under consideration from a publisher in Spain that publishes a lot of my favorite authors like Mónica Ojeda. If I don’t hear back by September, they said to send my work to a different publisher. I already have a few options in mind if that becomes necessary.

A Big Miscalculation

Along with my other mountain of unpublished work, I had collections of poetry in English and in Spanish that I keep trying to get published. I’m sure I’ve talked about them a ton in previous newsletters. For my English-language collection, I should be hearing back from a whole bunch of contests and publishers soon. I’m still riding that arc of hope with one publisher who promised a response by the end of May. Are they writing me a publishing contract or did they just forget to hit “send” on my rejection?

For poetry collections in the US, many publishers say that they take into account if and where the individual poems in the collection were published, so I assumed it would be the same for Spanish-language publishers and tried really hard to publish as many poems as possible. Now that my full-length collection is ready, I’m seeing that most contests and publishers want only (or mostly) unpublished poems! Now, I’m scrambling to reconfigure my book and praying for rejections for the submissions I already sent. With all that being the case, various versions of this collection have been submitted to contests with a few more submissions on the horizon, barring some good news.

New Narratives

I currently have 4 books, if you’ve been keeping track, that I’m trying to publish. With all this time waiting for responses, I have started on new novels in both English and Spanish. They are both based on ideas that came to me at the end of last year. I’ve been working a lot on these, but I have hardly anything written. The reason for this gnarly case of writer’s block is that I think some part of me realizes that I’ve been writing for ten years now, and it’s time for me to take my writing to the next level. As much as I tell myself that I want to write freely

The Other Half of the Year

I’m currently right on pace to hit my goal of 100 rejections and 10 publications. Although I’ve been teaching summer school to make extra money, I’ll have a couple of weeks off at the beginning of August to refine my poetry collections and to hopefully get some momentum going with my novels. I have been taking some music classes with my son and running every day. I’m trying to bring that balance back in my life, even if it means writing slightly less. The best thing, though, is that by doing all of these different activities and by living in the moment, the poetry has started to flow again. Just the other day, I was on a run and a poem presented itself to me that, when I got home and wrote it down, turned out to be one of my best poems. Just writing on instinct, free from desire. That’s when I’m at my best.

The road is long, but my legs are conditioned. I just need to keep going.

To wrap up, over the next five-and-a-half months, I really hope to just get my legs back under me and to find a bit more stability in every aspect of my life by getting back to the basics.