This is not the flesh and meat of the pubski post I would like to make, but in the meantime,

This Time I'm Really Going To Do It, I Swear - another post about New Years, but from last year lil , shamelessly mine, I know.

The question I have is:

Did you really do it?

_____________________

Edit: Here is some of my flesh and meat.

In 2014, I completed 313 submissions[1, 3]. I sent 77 distinct poems to 70 presses [2]. Seven (7) were accepted for publication, in six (6) distinct publications, although not all have been published in 2014 (a few slated for Jan 2015 I know for sure). My "acceptance ratio" at Duotrope is 2.6%, although that covers my entire history of use at Duotrope which goes back to 2012.

I have appreciated everyone's support and encouragement this year. I've reached out to a few of you privately, and publicly vented, about submissions and rejections. You all have been wonderfully supportive and positive and have kept my head directed towards the right frame of mind, if not always squarely in it.

I mention these statistics because I think it's a great, (depressing? frank?) indicator of what it can take to gain a measure of outside "success" at one's passion. This is a year's worth of work expressed in one set of metrics that, of course, doesn't really reflect a lot of the work/writing I've done, directly and indirectly poetry-related...but I like metrics, and I like quantifying things, and at times like this - anniversaries, New Year's, birthdays, etc - I like to note them.

Work is hard. Keeping up your passion is hard. I imagine that successfully sustaining a long-term relationship is in its way just as hard as slogging through poetry submissions, and so on - what I'm saying is that I'm sure every single one of you has worked just as hard at something as I have at poetry this year. It's not easy. I hope for all of you it has been worth it. I admire and respect the hell out of all of you, sweating away at your own individual passions and pursuits.

Best wishes, and LOVE, for each and every one of you in 2015 - muted or not, whether we agree on any single topic or not, hushed or not, in the USA, Hong Kong, and everywhere in between.

(from ref - your secret sentimental)

[1] This is confusing phraseology. This is a count of all of the individual, non-distinct poems that I sent to non-distinct presses. Often, I can submit, say, 5 poems to a magazine at a time, and I can submit the same 5 poems to multiple magazines for consideration, Hence, I sent out 313 poems, but the number is misleading because it reflects neither actual number of distinct pieces nor actual number of distinct presses.

[2] There are a number of presses I submitted to twice in 2014, so while there were a discrete 70 of them, that does not mean I sent one submission to one press total over the course of the year.

[3] These numbers as of 1:41 P.M. today. I know it's ambitious but I'm hoping I can send just a few more out...just a few more...before 2015. :)