Achieving For The Greater Good

Day Five: Submitting Poetry

  This process will take place before April. I have to set a goal. At the moment I will concentrate on the poetry publication since I know more about that. I have a deposit of $200. As far as I know the one I'm going to enter is the Senora Review. They ask for 3-5 pages of poetry and an entry fee of $15. They recommend it be a typed submission and in a single document (I'm not entirely sure what that means but we'll go with it. I need to include a cover letter with a brief biography, my contact information and any other pertinent information about my submission.

I should mention that Danieljames Domar is my alias. I don't know. I won't for this sake. I'm only sending them one poem. It is the refurbished version of "An Inner Battle." This is one the first poems that I have ever written. I'm guessing that single document just means one document. I don't know why anyone would send it in more than one but that's just my outlook on the recommendation.

To the side you will see my cover information. I'm not afraid to give out this because of the alias reason. I wrote a brief biography at the top, the title under, and the contact information as follows. It was recommended to me by another website that I keep track of my submission.

Since I have so many poems to send out there is no need for me to send another submission for "An Inner Battle". If it is accept and published I will mention this and put it to the side for another publication someday.

Keep in mind that my first poems are actually really long. This one barely made the cut. It is four pages. When you submit make sure that the font is Times New Roman, the font size is 12, and to double space your work.

This is how my poem that I thought was average became really long. Every now and then I'll go through my poems, edit them for publication, put it into the format, and cross my fingers. So far, this one is he only one that is under five pages.

I have a folder that is called: Publication Format. Soon I will go through and make a folder within to help organize my work. I've seen three to five pages very often. It's amusing honestly. The fact that two almost three years ago I wrote really long poetry. The length of a poem does not make the poem but for the sake of competition I can understand. I'm allowed to submit more than one poem but under the same document.

Like I said, I don't have another poem at the moment that is under five pages. The double spacing is what gets me the most. The main thing about the font and size is that you don't over exaggerate and make it look 'fancy'.

Yes, there is a different between fancy and professional. Personally without having to look at the statistics. I rather see a poem that I can read instead of something that 'looks' nice. Because then if I see the poem and I read what looks beautiful but the poem is horrendous then that makes me think that the font was there to fancily.

Font size twelve is what I write in anyway to the exception of not caring and writing in Calibri(Body) font size eleven at the moment. I doubt that they would care if I sent my poem in this font and size but for the sake of formatting I will go with Times New Roman font size twelve. It's what my teachers ask for and it is also a recommendation from my College American History teacher that you go with the bigger font. If it weren't for the format that I saw on the internet I would have gone with this one. It would let me post more. Do I sound crazy yet?

I will be organizing my poems into different sections. One folder will be titled Three To Five. In this folder I will have any poem that I place into format that falls under three to five pages. Within that folder I will have another that gives the date that I sent out some of the poems.

For example if I'm sending out two poems individually. One of them is a five page poem and the other is a four. After I print them out with the dates that I'm sending I will place them into a folder that has the day I sent them out.

My plan is to keep you informed on how I do this, how many times, what I learn, and what I do. So, I'm thinking that I'll be able to post the dates anyway but just in case I get behind on my dates. I'll keep a safe record inside my computer.

There will be a folder for one paged poetry, another for two, and so on. Now that I think about it I should make one that is within the three to five paged folder specifically for the three pages, four pages, and five pages.

It'll help me keep my poems in order since I know that I have more than four hundred at this point. Every time I mention it the number gets higher but I'm lying at least. Right now I'm focusing on submitting from my first poetry book "Venture."

Yes, these are old but the younger me still needs glory. Besides, I'm not going to be offended when someone tells me that they don't like my poetry. I was fourteen. Now I'm seventeen. I know that I've improved. But, for the sake of putting myself out there. I might as well start safe.

It didn't occur me how many opportunities that I really had at my fingertips. My friend and I were talking about Tumblr and I didn't think to check if they had a blog about writing. They do. The blog is called: Aerogamme Writers' Studio URL: aerogammestudio.tumblr.com they have a website as well but since I'm speaking of tumblr I'll go ahead and use it as a reference.

Oh! I almost forgot. I need to tell you about the how I'm submitting. I told you what it looks like but the sending is another part that we don't want to forget. Specifically for Sonora Review I need to send an SASE (Self-Addressed, Stamped Envelope.) to the addressed person and place.

I'll post a picture of that later as well. Come to think of it I may even blog about this and use this as my blogging book but for the sake of the pictures I need another way to do this. I hate my Facebook. I look so stupid. Oh well, At least I'm getting somewhere. When I upload this I'll give the link to the cover photo.

For my sake and yours don't do anything to it lol. My brother in law will probably be mad that I'm giving out my phone number but I don't care anymore. Go ahead, call me if you need me. WE can have interesting conversation I can imagine.

**I should also mention that you should read up and research about what magizine you're publishing into so that you have a better chance of getting published but I'll save that for the next time I write about this.

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December 30th, 2013