Submissions, Old and New.

I'm still waiting on a lot of submissions from last spring, but I know a lot of journals slow down during summer months. I had work out at a few dozen places, but this week, I've sent out to four or five new presses. At least a couple are entirely new to me, like Bellingham Review and Cheat River Review. I've never submitted to them before. 

A poet I met this summer at Community of Writers, Carrie Nassif, has organized a virtual workshop with some of the participants, extending our ability to get feedback from this wonderful group of writers. We share our work and offer input via Google Doc; it's been a great way to stay engaged with the process of revision. I need to really channel the momentum and get back to drafting new work. 

Monday is the start of fall term. For the most part, my courses are ready to go--I put tremendous amount of time into updates last year. Today, I might try to do a bit of yard work, if my knee cooperates. I threw together a chocolate chip muffin mix, and I plan to work on my submissions a little, but I also want to relax and enjoy the next two days.

UPDATE: It's now 5:00 pm on Saturday. I've put SO. MUCH. TIME. into getting poetry submissions sent out today--I've sent out small selections of poems, chapbook manuscripts, and full-length manuscripts. I submitted to a few awards, and went through the last several Poets & Writers and Writer's Chronicle magazines, and pulled potential presses out of their classifieds. I am exhausted, but I've bolstered my submissions by a great deal today. I feel accomplished, especially after taking so much time away from the labor of submitting work. 

I also was able to edit a few poems today as I got together bundles for submission, and I've sent out several of the poems about Mr. Greene that I wrote in June. I still have a little bit of work to do before I can say that my poems are all on the maximum number of editors' desks, but I could easily finish up this coming week. 

I also finished up laundry today, and I ran the vacuum cleaner a bit. I spent about an hour in the back yard, pulling weeds and watering, and moving a few bins of dirt. I also watered everything back there a bit--still a ton to do, but if I could get out there for an hour a day for the next week or two, I might make some headway. Today, as soon as I felt a twinge or two in my knee, I came back inside, reluctant to hurt myself. Myrtle, one of the neighborhood cats who lives in my yard, has dug a burrow so that she can get into my back yard. So, now it looks like I'm going to have to line at least one side of my privacy fence with a line of  blocks, just to keep her out. Sigh.