I’m pleased to announce my poem “Low Tide” will be published at the Nine Muses Poetry site on September 23rd. Check them out here: https://ninemusespoetry.com/
Tag / publishing
Welcome to 2019!
Today is the day we think about goals for this new year. Think about it, what do you want 2019 to bring to you? What do you want to make happen?
I was blessed to publish my second book of poetry, publish 17 individual poems and hold my first reading. Yet, there will be more to come in 2019.
My goals for 2019:
Set up my writing coach boot camps and anthologies (more on this later)
Convert my poem series Medusa to prose (novella). I started work on this yesterday
Finish the Fleeting Lights, a book that I started long, long time ago
Publish the family cookbook (this has been sent to the publisher)
Complete poem collection, Beyond the Pink
Publish a minimum of 5 blog posts a week (been slacking here).
How about you?
Coming Soon! Weathered Fragments Excerpts
My new chapbook, Weathered Fragments, Weathered Souls, will be out by the end of March. To help mark this occasion, I will be posting excerpts from the work through out the month of March.
Look out for it! Details on when it is available for purchase will be posted soon!
JL
Excerpt – Medusa – The Lost Daughter
From “The Decree”
Revelations of secrets’ past blinds the
sight in the present, as the mind shifts the
blame to soothe the past for the present’s use.
My book has finally arrived! Get your copy here at Politics and Prose!
Excerpt: Medusa – The Lost Daughter
From “A Mother’s Humble Plea”
Humility rests not with the weak, but
with the strong, who knows when best to show it,
for she knows it is its own sacrifice.
Excerpt: Medusa – The Lost Daughter
After days of not being able to post…the excerpts continue…
From “A Mother’s Cry”
Power rests in those who give its wrath, not
in those who suffer and cower from it.
Excerpt: Medusa – The Lost Daughter
From “The Gray Ones”
He who tries to circumvent his sentence
will still be guilty for crimes committed
no matter his attempts to forget them.
Excerpt: Medusa – The Lost Daughter
From “Athena’s Vengeance”
The best punishment is often one that
allows the thief to steal the forbidden
and think he is wise for it, until he
is caught and punishment is a surprise
Excerpt: Medusa – The Lost Daughter
From “The Favorite Daughter”
A true sacrifice is one given at
the loss of the one who is providing
the sacrifice. Flawed is the sacrifice
given with the hand held behind the back…
Happy New Year
Thank you for reading this blog. Your support and correspondence over the year (and beyond!) means a lot to me. This blog has grown a lot since I started it over a year ago, with many, many works added to it. I hope to continue to add more content over the next year to make it an even better experience for you, the reader.
Even after being fortunate enough to have published about 60 works (thank you, dear editors and journals!), I still feel like a new writer at times, and often wonder how other writers go about writing and submitting their works for publications. Enter Trish Hopkinson’s New Year post about her blog and submission totals for the year. Reading her stats, I am in awe of her blog stats (it is an awesome blog, check it out here, if you haven’t already!) and of her submission stats too, so I decided to look at my own.
Using Duotrope, I looked up my stats for 2016. I write mostly poetry, though, I also write and publish fiction and nonfiction occasionally.
In 2016, I submitted 197 works for publication. These are Duotrope stats.
187 were poetry –this does not include my Alaska Women Speak submissions, of which I had 9 poems published. Duotrope does not list them, so they are not included in the raw numbers.
7 nonfiction – This number leaves out 1 AWS submission as well that was published.
3 fiction – This number, again, leaves out 1 AWS submission that was published.
Overall, I had a 14% acceptance ratio, without the AWS submissions counted. Poetry acceptance was 13.1, fiction was 100% (OK, believe it or not, I just got lucky here for this year, for one of these pieces was rejected in 2015, which doesn’t count this year). Nonfiction acceptance was 16.7%.
In 2017, I plan to submit to more tougher markets (yeah, I know, isn’t it hard enough to get published without MORE rejection!), so my acceptance rate will probably decrease quite a bit next year.
38 works were accepted for publication in 2016, with 3 to be published in 2017.
Not bad, definitely, but as a writer I always strive for more challenges.
Next up are goals for 2017, which I have not articulated yet.
Writers out there, how was 2016 for you? Please post and share!
J.L.
J.L. Smith 