Getting Shit Done

It's becoming increasingly difficult to get things accomplished. It's difficult when one is constantly being punched and kicked. Sure, I've been punched and kicked a lot harder and (one hopes) with more malice, but this is non-stop, from within and honestly, I'm not feeling the love, I'm feeling constant pokes in my kidneys and lord knows what else. If this keeps up, I might be the first one to take a whiz on the new furniture.

This week I caught up on a bunch of No Tell Motel submissions. I decided not to send out any "bad news" correspondances last week for fear of being the straw that broke a mourning poet's back. Last night I sent out a few "good news" messages (which are way more fun to send). There are only a handful more subs from October that we're still mulling over.

We've narrowed down our Pushcart nominations to 10 poems (I need to get this number down to 6). Hopefully a final decision will be made soon and I'll contact the authors.

While I'm on the topic of No Tell, November and December are good months to submit because we'll be temporarily suspending unsolicited submissions from January 15 - March 15 so Molly can fully recover from her New Year's hangover and complete her court-mandated community service. (I figured I might as well take the opportunity to schedule my son's birth during this time too.) This is only for unsolicited submissions, No Tell will still be publishing on its normal schedule and we'll still be responding to other correspondance. There might be a time lag with our responses. It depends if the soup kitchen and Reston birthing hospital have DSL.

Also, an editor from Poets & Writers recently informed me that there will be a brief write-up about No Tell in the Jan/Feb 2005 issue, so I expect an increase in submissions after that.

I completed and sent in my next debate poem for Vs. The debate question was decided by the last challenge winner, Jennifer Michael Hecht: What aspect of some other culture do you wish was part of yours?

The title of my poem is "Wanting to Be a Man of Saturn." You'll have to wait until it's posted on Vs. to read it. I still have Red Lobster gift certificate ambitions.

I should now probably go upstairs and start packing up our no more guest room. We're painting it this weekend. Which reminds me. I still have to order those stars and moon stencils.