Once, as a teenager, I answered a classified ad in a magazine: “Poets wanted.” Interested writers were asked to submit poems for an anthology. My notebook was brimming with poetry, and without hesitation, I submitted poems to the publishing company who I convinced myself would help me on my journey toward published poet.
For weeks, I walked to the post office with thoughts of success filling my mind as I waited anxiously for that cherished letter. When it finally arrived, my impatience vigorously overtook my restraint, and I ripped open the letter as I stepped onto the sidewalk. My poem ‘had merit,’ they replied, and had been ‘selected to be published’ along with hundreds of others. I raced home, thoughts of published books dancing in my naïve mind. I shrieked as I handed the letter to my mother.
My mother was not as gullible as me. She pointed out how the company would publish my poetry if I paid them $50 per copy of each book. Since I had no experience in the publishing industry, I had assumed that was how it worked. “They are scamming you,” rung through my ears as if someone was stabbing me with my sewing needles repeatedly. Dejected, I trudged to my bedroom, my writing sanctuary, convinced my mother was coming between me and my dream.
I never sent the money. Still angry with my mother despite her efforts to steer my thinking and save my allowance, I grew angrier with the publishing company, and wondered why they would dangle my hopes in front of me, while targeting my vanity with broken promises.
The ads of false promises continue to this day, baiting emotions and vulnerability. As writers, we spend hours pouring our hearts into our work. We study the craft, pay for workshops, and sacrifice Saturday picnics to write thousands of words, pitch our work, intent that someday, someone we place our hope and trust in will realize our value. We give lit mags money for the chance to be seen, even if the response is a rejection, and yet, we circle back, for more disappointment and loss.
I often wonder why I continue along this underappreciated path. If it was truly easy, everyone would do it. But it is not. Yes, publication is important. Yes, money is better. And as a writer, I keep going because just as the sun was designed to appear every morning, and the moon at night, so it is in my DNA to keep writing. Otherwise, I might as well stop breathing.
Writing, for me, is not a part of my life. It is my life.
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