A few days ago, I took another beautiful first step in my dream of being a published poet.

I’ve been submitting my individual poems to a lot of literary journals and magazines, especially to those that are larger and more renown. I’ve also sent out a chapbook with some of my poems called Elegy of the Unbreathed to a few different chapbook contests. As far as individual poems go, the more places I submit them, the more positive feedback I get on my work. I’ve received several second-tier rejections, which is when a poem isn’t accepted for publication, but the journal invites me to submit to them again soon. These types of rejections feed my spirit because they remind me that, even among the scattered and numerous rejection letters, my poems are still reaching out and touching those who read them. Some of these second-tier rejections have been really personalized, too, which means even more.

I was in the process of sending out individual poems when I came upon a local publisher accepting full length manuscripts of poetry. I read through their submission guidelines and decided that my work could be a great fit for them. I submitted my query to their posting, sending in a cover letter introducing myself and my work, a third person bio, and a sample of my manuscript.

This is the first time I have ever actually queried a full length manuscript.

It’s a first step I have been a little afraid of for a while now. Graduating with my M.F.A. and a thesis that is long enough to be its own book of poems, made contemplating publishing my first book a forefront consideration. But it’s highly unlikely that my first manuscript query will be accepted, so I’ve known that even taking this first step doesn’t mean that the step to immediately follow will be having this manuscript published. But this first step had to be taken at some point. And it will be taken again, I’m sure.

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was in grade school. I’ve wanted to write poetry since I was in grade school. Undergrad taught me a lot about the basics of writing, the basics of revising, the basics of editing, and the basics of publishing. It was in community college that I first learned about the publishing process. It was in community college that I first sent out my work for publication consideration. And it was in community college that my first piece was accepted for publication.

But it’s been graduate school that has shown me the innerworkings of the writing process. A lot of people want to be writers. A lot of people have talent with words. But not everyone is really committed and dedicated to the writing process itself. Or rather, not everyone is committed to the unglamorous parts of the writing process. Because while writing seems romantic, and can be romantic at times, it’s also a continuous struggle, not only with one’s self, but with the piece we’re writing. Learning to trust one’s own creative intuitions and instincts, especially as regards reading one’s own work critically. Giving one’s work a chance to really evolve, even if it means letting go of the things we originally envisioned.

Graduate school taught me many things, but if I had to pick out the most important lesson, it would the importance of revision and proofreading. These are difficult and challenging steps that are vital to not only a piece’s evolution, but also a writer’s. The more we revise, the better our writing becomes. Embracing the shitty first draft is absolutely essential to getting words on the page. But seeing beyond the shit into the really beauty of what we’ve written takes time, it takes focus, it takes energy, it takes dedication, and revision is how we make that happen.

I revised my thesis at least seven times before I submitted it for acceptance to the director of my M.F.A. Two revisions came in my third semester, and the rest came in my last semester. Some poems I revised seven times, some poems I revised only three. Some of the poems in my thesis were older poems that had already been published, but most of them had been written while in my M.F.A. I struggled in my last semester, partly because I felt that these poems all had to be completely revised and polished when I graduated. And while the manuscript itself was as polished as I could get it at that time, there were individual poems that stood out to me as needing quite a bit more revision, but I was stuck. I didn’t know how to revise them. I didn’t know what they needed.

Those poems have now been completely overhauled, to the point that those that I considered the weakest of my thesis now seem like some of my strongest poems. And it took months of revision to get them there. Months of not only working on my poems, but consistently reading the poems of others, keeping a notebook full of quotes from the books of poetry I’ve been reading, setting reading goals for myself and really doing my best to think about what I’ve read, not just jump to the next book, and writing reviews of the books I read to really solidify their impact on my writing.

It’s a detailed, multifaceted, complicated process, but the results have been exactly what my mentors said they would be: better poems. More inspiration. More experimentation. More permission from myself to myself to be messy in my writing. I think it’s outstanding and poetic that every faculty mentor I worked with was a poet, even though I started the program as a prose student. It makes me think that there was always something moving me towards poetry, because I needed to write poetry. My mind needed it. My heart and spirit needed it. My body needed it.

My point in all this is to let yourself take those first steps. They are and will be terrifying, but they will be worth it. And they will likely take you places you never anticipated.