Have you heard the big news yet? BOR Online just happens to have a fabulous new interview with Steve here. Now we have to interview him all over again...
***
There's an interesting post about solicitations over on Keith Montesano's blog. (BTW, I have solicited Jason Bredle, and I'm happy to say that he has a poem coming out in BOR #2). As for my two cents on the topic, solicitations seem to work best when both parties have some familiarity with each other, and can meet each other's needs.
These days I tend to only submit poems by solicitation (I need to stop that), and it's always worked out, though sometimes journals have asked me to send more than the initial submission. My big problem is that I'm terribly slow, and sometimes need to be reminded that I've been solicited. But I don't think I'd be devastated if they decided to pass.
When I solicit people, it's usually folks I'm quite familiar with, often on the page more so than in person. I make a distinction between soliciting and nagging, though in both cases we are likely to accept something.
***
Why are there three red pencils on my desk? I'll tell you in a few weeks. I have secrets. I have red pencils. They don't erase well, but they're red pencils. They are saying hello.
***
Finally, since this post is miscellaneous and not particularly helpful, I offer a bit of time management advice.
Try identifying a number of manageable tasks on your to-do list.
Imagine the face of a clock. (This gets better--hang in there) Estimate, realistically, the amount of time that it will take you to complete the task.
Set goals and challenges for yourself wherein you attempt to finish a task in a slightly smaller chunk of clockface.
Example: This morning I had to annotate ten poems. Usually I'd take an open-ended 1.5+ hours for that. Instead, I gave myself the challenge of packing those annotations into 45 minutes of clockface. If I did it, I got three gummi worms (you may substitute for something less wiggly if you'd like). And I did it.
This blog post has been afforded twenty minutes of clockface. And I have five minutes left to spare.
If anyone has similar, or better, time management advice, please share! We'll all be so much more efficient = more time for facebook, I mean work.
5 comments:
I think Jason has since taken that message off. Now I'm not sure if it was a joke or not (my current thought it that it still wasn't meant to be). I hope there are some other opinions on the post, though. I didn't start the post to cause any bitterness; I'm just legitimately interested in the process, so thanks for the your thoughts, Mary.
Funny--I've solicited and accepted work from Jason too. :-)
Thanks for the notice and interview!
It was sincere but you guys are why I took it off. I get solicited and accepted too and it's all going really well for me in general. I was just really hurt at that moment and later realized it's not that big of a deal.
Re: Time Management
The best time management advice I ever had was get up 1 or 2 hours earlier. This can create the equivalent of one or two modest (7 hour) working days a week. Or just 7-14 hours extra a week to enjoy being alive, as I'm all for working to live, not vice versa!
You didn't mention the red paper clip. Was that by design?
Post a Comment