Something I’m learning throughout my life is that I am the one who chooses which opportunities I will and will not give myself. I can’t ever move forward in life if I constantly sit in the same place. I am referring to sending my writing out for publication consideration. I mentioned in a previous post that it’s far too easy to assume that no one wants to read my writing than it is to try and believe in what I’ve written. But in light of the amazing rejection letter I received from Frontier Poetry, I decided to take another big step.

I’m submitting a chapbook to their Chapbook Poetry Contest.

I was talking with my mom yesterday about how I’m still reeling from that email. Honestly, I thought that the people telling me I was a poet, the people complimenting my work, were mostly just being nice. I’ve spent so much more time with fiction and nonfiction than I have with poetry. I took only one poetry writing class in undergrad. The bulk of my publishing success has been with prose. Even as I started studying poetry in my M.F.A., I thought my faculty mentors were mostly just humoring me. With poetry, I seem to exist perpetually inside of massive amounts of Imposter Syndrome. Pretty much four years of undergrad shaped by prose writing, versus maybe a year, total, for poetry. It seemed likely that I would be working hard for my poetry to really take shape.

And honestly, yeah, writing is a lifelong learning endeavor. But that doesn’t mean I can’t also submit my work. Even if none of my poetry is accepted, sometimes you can get feedback from the places that reject you. And much of the time, a rejection is really more due to timing than it is the quality of the writing being rejected. So choosing not to give myself as many chances as possible makes little sense in that light.

I put together this chapbook with some of the poems from my thesis. I gave it a title different than my thesis, since that manuscript is going to become a book-length work of poetry. And I sent in that chapbook for consideration for that contest. I don’t expect to win. But at least I’m giving myself the chance. No one else is going to reach out and offer me publishing opportunities (at least, that’s not usually how it works until you’ve gained some recognition as a writer already), so it’s up to me to give them to myself, and then learn from whatever is the outcome.

It’s exciting. Really exciting. Because this is exactly what I’ve always wanted to do with my life. And sure, maybe I’m not quite at the level I should be to get a chapbook published, but that’s for the publishers to decide, and they can’t do that if I don’t submit my work.

So here’s some encouragement today: give yourself an extra chance at something. Take a shot you wouldn’t normally attempt. You never know what might happen.