Theater

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Rejection is Inevitable for the Writer

If you are a writer, and you want to publish, you have to submit your work to a publisher, a journal, a magazine, a website….If you submit, you will be rejected.  No one who submits goes without this inevitable experience.

I recall reading Thor Heyerdahl’s account of his myriad rejections of Kon-Tiki.  He said one editor wrote that no one would buy into an account of a crazy person sailing 5,000 miles across the Pacific in a hand-made raft and another who said no one was interested in Oceana or sailing anymore. 

Rejection can be valuable.  It can cause us to re-examine, refine and re-edit.  Maybe it will make our work better.  You can learn things about the market from rejection.  How can you make it more universally appealing?  Remember, rejection is not personal.  It’s about the work, not you.  The publisher doesn’t even know you.  

Sometimes rejections are worthless.  Just because a person is an editor does not mean they’re qualified to pass literary judgments.  But if you keep getting the same criticism of a piece, a repetition, then maybe it is a valid criticism that you could heed and use to rewrite.

I once got so frustrated with rejections, I wrote a poem about it:

Villanelle for the Rejected Poet

The Exalted Society regrets to inform 

That despite your verse’s abstruse plot

Your poem was rejected by the Writers Reform.

We do not understand your sonata-like form

Your work has no rhyme nor school of thought

The Exalted Society regrets to inform.

We do not like to discourage or misinform

Please with some other place find a spot

Your poem has been rejected by the Writers Reform.

Do not whine, criticize, or fill out a claim form

Your work left us confused and distraught

The Exalted Society regrets to inform.

Do send a check or cash with this subscription form

With your handiwork contact us not

Your poem has been rejected by the Writers Reform.

We publish all races, creeds, genders and artists’ forms

From everyone but you – we have got

The Exalted Society regrets to inform

Your poem was rejected by the Writers Reform.

                                    Published in The Road Not Taken, Fall 2013

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Writing As A Skill

Writing is necessary for so many things. We need it to exist in the world.

At school, we are judged and given grades by how well we perform on paper. The academic essay is the ultimate test.

To communicate at a distance with friends and loved ones, we need to know how to write.

Writing falls into all genres. From realistic fiction to mysteries to sci-fi to poetry to academic papers, your writing is only limited by your imagination.

I have written in many genres. I am specializing in poetry these days. I recently published a collection of poems called Touch My Head Softly about my partner who died of Alzheimer’s. Take a look:

#https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

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Finding a Theme for Your Blog

There are many types of blogs out there, from buying a car to reading graphic novels. Read some of those blogs and you will get a sense of your competition. Try focussing on a theme for your blog. If you have a sense of what you want your theme to be, look for similar blogs and read them.

Standing out and finding readers for your blog is a challenge. Finding a theme for you blog can help to brand your blog for the right audience. What are you passionate about? What do you want to write about? What is your expertise? All these things should guide and focus your content.

I have a literary blog. I am most interested in writing, the writing process, books, publishing, readings. This is what my blog is about. I blog announcements of new books and events on Tuesdays and I blog about the literary life, writing and blogging on Thursdays. Consistency is important.

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My most recent collection of poetry, Touch My Head Softly, was published recently by Finishing Line Press. It’s about my experiences with my partner, who died of Alzheimer’s in his sixties. Check it out:

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

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Keep Writing

Practice makes perfect. The more you write, the better you become at it. It’s just like an athlete working out to keep in shape. With practice, over time, you are able to write faster, more clearly, in less time. New writers have trouble getting started, but experienced writers sit down and write everyday. Even if you don’t use what you wrote today, it will lead to something better tomorrow.

Another misconception is that you have to be “inspired” to write. Writing is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration. You have to put it the work. If you waited for inspiration to come, you’d be waiting forever to begin writing. Start writing and inspiration will follow.

My latest book is a collection of poems about my experiences with my partner who died in his sixties of Alzheimer’s Disease. It was ten years following his death that I finally got the collection together, but I persisted and here it is:

#https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

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I’m So Grateful that Literary Titan Gave Me a 5-Star Review for Touch My Head Softly

Touch My Head Softly by Eileen P. Kennedy is a heartbreaking but honest collection of poetry. The poems are a stirring reflection of emotions, both before and after, the death of her partner that detail love, sorrow, and frustration. Kennedy’s poetry portray heartbreak and sorrow in few, but powerful, words.

The opening piece to her collection, “The First Decade of the Twenty-First Century,” encapsulates the decade with not only current events like the first black president but also with events in her own personal life, like the death of her partner to Alzheimer’s. My personal favorite from her collection is “Year.” In this poem, Kennedy is vulnerable and open to what life became with her husband’s disease. Broken up by months, we are only able to get a glimpse of that pain, and yet it is still poignant. When comparing this poem to the first one, “Getting Through the Night,” I couldn’t help but tear up a little. In “Getting Through the Night,” we witness the love and connection she and her husband had, and to witness the shift in “Year” was striking. It is important to note that not all poems are dispirited, some capture a bright life in Mexico. Touch My Head Softly is a collection of emotionally-charged poetry that explore life with observant poems that will appeal to anyone who loves inspired poetry.

Pages: 46 | ISBN: 1646624076

Touch My Head Softly

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“There are dozens of unfinished or aborted projects in my files, but I can only assume they don’t get done because they’re not robust enough to struggle through the birth process.” – Grant Morrison

I have many unfinished poems. Billy Collins says five or six poems wind up in his trash bin before he gets one that’s a keeper.

The concept of being complete is an interesting one. If you are complete, you don’t have to strive to do anything else. You don’t have to reinvent yourself.

We can change as we develop new skills, new experiences, new outlooks. That’s what makes the writing interesting. We adapt to new circumstances and overcome limitations. This affects our writing.

I wrote a book that was just published by Finishing Line Press:

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

After it was published, I floundered for awhile, trying to write different things, but not really liking any of the new work. Then I started on a new longer poem about the drowning earth. Here’s an excerpt:

The Boat

“Cuando sale la luna, el mar cubre la tierra

When the moon rises, water covers the earth”

                        –Federico García Lorca

I want to begin with the boat.  It was a thing of beauty.

Can one be seduced by a boat? I was.

This project intrigued me and I continue to work on it today. How do you stay engaged with your writing?

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Creating a Rough Draft

When I taught writing, I always had my students to a rough draft before the actual paper. A rough draft should include a clear direction in your paper. When you are required to submit a rough draft, it doesn’t need to be perfect, but it should be complete. That means, you shouldn’t be missing any of the major parts of the paper. 

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You should begin with a draft. Write a draft and then walk away and return again. Your second and third draft will probably be better.

When I wrote my recent poetry collection, Touch My Head Softly (Finishing Line Press, 2021,) I didn’t have a draft. The poems came slowly through the years. If I did have the rough draft of what I wanted the collection to look like, it would have gone much more quickly. It was five years in the making.

My new book can be viewed at:

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

This is the link to my book on Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3609820860https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

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How Does Weather Affect Your Writing?

Weather can be a major factor in a story or poem. If you look out your window, you can be inspired. I live in Western Massachusetts, where they say “If you don’t like the weather, just wait.” It changes rapidly from beautiful sunny days, to mist, to rain, to snow, sometimes in the same day. I usually spend some time in Costa Rica in the winter, where I am now, where there are many ecosystems in a little country, including temperate, dry, tropical, sub-tropical. There is a dry and a rainy season, and the winds, called Papagayo, blow across the Cordillera del Talamanca.

Think of all the climates in novels. British author J. Ballard in The Wind from Nowhere, creates a dystopia in which hurricane-force winds dominate the climate. Mother of Storms by John Barnes describes a catastrophic weather change caused by a nuclear explosion. Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, where the world is divided into gated communities and pleeblands where the working class lives in unsafe, populous and polluted communities. Weather in a book an be a plot motivator or scene setter.

And where would we be without nature poems. Think of William Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,”

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Photo by Andre Furtado on Pexels.com

March 2021

March has brought unusually beautiful weather Costa Rica, with sunny skies, and wind blowing cooling breezes through the mountains.   I hear the Northeast has been engaged in “glorious spring” with temperatures largely in the 60’s Fahrenheit.

Storms really are unpredictable. They can add an interesting plot twist to a novel, or line to a poem. And they can move from dangerous, unpredictable weather, to rainbows and sunshine. How does this affect your plot?

In my latest book of poetry, Touch My Head Softly, the story involves my lover who had dementia. While I see an “unrelenting grey,” my partner, in his altered state, sees “white lilies surviving frost.”

Check out my book at:

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

Or view it on Goodreads at:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3609820860https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

Esterillos Este Sunset. Photo by Eileen P. Kennedy
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Is Writing Religion or Profession?

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For me, writing is both. I have been writing since I was eight years old and can’t seem to stop. But I’ve also published three books, derived income from my publishing, which in some circles would make me a professional writer. You just have to write to make it work. It doesn’t have to be brilliant or inspired, it just has to be. You keep going.

You might do many other things besides writing to support yourself, but you still write through it. Stephen King was a high school English teacher. During this time, he wrote his first novel, Tabitha. He kept going despite his busy job.

You are the only one capable of writing your story. It is unique. It belongs to you. Even if you find similarities in the work of other authors who you read, your story is still your story.

I wrote a book of poems about my experiences with my partner dying of Alzheimer’s Disease in his sixties. I even donated part of the proceeds from the book to the Alzheimer’s Association to find a cure.

You can find my book at:

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

You can find my book on Goodreads at:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3609820860https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

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On Inspiration for Writers

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As writers, we are always looking for the new thing that is going to sprint our writing forward. The inspiration, if you will.

Procrastinating , spending more time thinking about writing than actually writing. I happens to all of us. When I get a block, I just write through it. You may wind up throwing out what you’ve read, but it will get you moving to the writing that you do want to keep.

Writing is a simple process. You sit down at your desk, and you write. That’s it. Whether you feel like it, or not. Even if you’d much rather do just something else. The professional writer keeps going, no matter what.

I wrote a book of poetry about my former partner who died of Alzheimer’s. It was a painful topic for me, but eventually I did it. I’m glad I did. It was recently published by Finishing Line Press. Take a look:

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/