The 2024 Creativity Check-In

“Rejected pieces aren’t failures; unwritten pieces are.”

—    Greg Daugherty.

It felt like a year of rejections. I’d increased submitting my work in 2023, mostly poems. The ‘R’ dominated the accepted/rejected submissions column on my spreadsheet.

It was a pivotal point in my writing life.  I admit I pouted, my husband remarked I sounded cranky. I asked a few of my trusted friends what they thought of my poems. In general, they said my poems were understandable, made them feel something and the imagery and metaphor wasn’t confusing or trite. A good response. But I wanted my poems to be better.  I wanted to learn how to craft poetry with memorable themes, with a message, once read, would not be easy to forget. Based on the number of rejections from editors I was not reaching those goals, at least not yet. I did not want my work to be “nice”, I wanted my work to be “Wow”.

I was recovering  from a string of serious grief provoking circumstances. The loss of my job in 2019 and the  death of my first guide dog in 2020 during the height of the pandemic.  Add the emotional toll my husband and I bore resulting from  the death of my second guide dog in early 2023 and being estranged from our first-born child for the last five years. It is understandable I sought  an avenue of expression which also proved cathartic but did not achieve  the accolades I craved.

The spark of creativity fueled by the last four years of my personal journey was rich in potential themes. How to plumb those depths became my focus.  I trolled the interwebs, found poets and writers who felt equally as stuck. It wasn’t writer’s block, it felt like I’d taken a wrong turn and couldn’t exit the traffic circle.

Thankfully asking others what they might do if faced with a similar creative conundrum, through personal conversations and the interwebs, I formed a plan.

Theoretically I could  submit to as many publishing calls as I fancied but I first had to write the quality poems  editors and journals sought. The next thing was to find poetry writing workshops and focused critique groups  with good mentorship and instruction. A few weren’t the right fit. One  instructor, however, offered a structured critique group and it checked all my boxes.   The groups did not exceed six poets, it was conducted over Zoom, including written commentary and suggestions for each poem submitted and  the sessions were recorded.

During the first session of a series of workshops in 2023 I shared I felt lost creatively and I wanted to unplug the emotions using poetry. The kind and caring attitude of not only the facilitator, john, but also the other poets, lent me the confidence to focus on  capturing the emotions and crafting the imagery and metaphoric language. Being open to constructive and kind feedback from the other poets and providing my own feedback to their poems encouraged me to become more confident and adjust my assumptions regarding the messages poets mean to convey in their quest of expression within their work. What became clear to me was I could address my grief   and the losses I bore using poetic devices I’d previously did not feel practiced enough to employ. Releasing  emotions, experimenting with and validating and recording them on a document healed me from within.

By the end of  2023 I’d completed a few workshops and my writing friends commented positively regarding the shift in style and power of the messages expressed in my work. A second opportunity developed for a second more intimate critique group. Two other poets and I began meeting weekly for a generative fellowship. I loved reading their work. Thanks to their mentorship,  I practiced how to offer kind and concise constructive feedback.  A spark of hopefulness morphed into energetic motivation. I began crafting , improving and sculpting poems evident by the feedback received by both my critique group and those outside it. I was finally getting somewhere.

It’s the end of 2024 and I am happy to share the acceptance rate of my poetry submissions is much improved. The quality of my poems has also improved and my friends and colleagues have noticed. The best part of my development is I feel more in control of my creative effort and it is conveyed in my work with a confidence and flair I willingly share with both poets and those who love reading and benefitting from reading poetry. I discovered other people cared about me and my creative efforts.

John Sibley Williams: John Sibley Williams

Behind Our Eyes Writers with Disabilities: www.behindoureyes.org

Find me on bluesky:  @anniecauthor.bsky.social — Bluesky