Some Words from Naomi Shihab Nye

"Clay Palm Review is a stunning journal -- treat yourself"
Naomi Shihab Nye

Some general advice:

Number one: ALWAYS include a self-addressed stamped envelope with your work when you send it out -- most editors won't answer you at all unless you do this. * * * * * *

When asked "where to go and what to do" with one's poetry, how to get it out into the world, I can only suggest what I learned through experience. Scout and scour the periodical shelves at your campus or city library (university libraries are excellent for this, and visitors are welcome to look at periodical shelves) and in good local bookstores read the literary journals closely, devour them! - get a sense of who publishes what. (I consider this "doing my homework") Find out which journals you have a real, personal affinity with. There are so many of them! (If you send to places who publish what you like, it stands to reason they might be more inclined to like what you write.) I used to keep a notebook for myself in which I would write down the name and address of a journal, a particular editors name, and notes on the content - example: I might say "I love the stories they publish--full of conversation and quick wit -- but the poems seem weighty, not my type." So then I might send a story or essay to them later, but not poems. Simply getting a sense of what's out there is the most crucial key to figuring out where you might send your work.

When your work comes back to you with a "rejection slip" (awful phrase!) or, occasionally, a personal note from an editor, don't be too dejected too long! THIS IS NOT A BIG DEAL!!!!! IT IS JUST PART OF THE PROCESS!!!!! Now you may be able to look at your work with a slightly different editorial eye, imagining what someone else did or didn't see in it. Ask yourself whether you want to release it some more before sending it out again. You may not want to change it at all. But always reread it and ask yourself basic questions about it again. Also, remember that your piece simply may not have fit that publication's needs or the editor's mood at that moment. To receive it back again doesn't mean that it's "bad" - develop sturdiness of heart. When your pieces return, welcome them! Feed them a good dinner before their next journey!

Don't disregard local places - magazines, reading circles, etc. These may be some of the most important contacts you ever make.

Keep a running tally of where you send your work - dates, pieces, comments, the magazine's address. This is crucial. William Stafford kept his data on notecards - making a different notecard for each poem and writing where he'd sent it, adding on as time went by, so the card became a history of the poem's travels. Or you can keep this information in a notebook, or on individual pieces of paper. But remember where they are! I have never submitted things simultaneously - sent the same piece to more than one place at once - as this used to be taboo in the days when I was starting out. It was considered discourteous, bad form. Things have changed however and many people now do that. But it seems too complicated to me. If one magazine accepts what you have sent to 5 magazines (and, by the way, you are obliged to tell each other one of them that they are not the only place considering your work in your cover letter to them), it is then your responsibility to write to the other 4 and say, "Never mind, sorry, someone else took it."
Many editors don't like this, especially if they've just spent time reading & considering your work. I know a few writers who've had a bad experience with this. So I would be wary here. Developing patience for the wait after sending to a single place is better in my opinion - but that's up to you.

Publishing, in my experience, has been entirely a ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER experience. Many people might say, "I want a book! Why bother with magazines?" Magazine/journal publishing leads you to all sorts of contacts and little links. People write to you and invite you to send work somewhere else. Your work goes out into the world and has its own life. A Texas editor saw my early college day poems in a magazine and wrote me wanting to publish 2 chapbooks, 20 poems each, in 2 subsequent years - then an editor from Oregon saw one of them and wrote me wanting to publish a full-length book -and that's how it went, till now, one thing to another. It is impossible to predict what, if anything, happens next. But I urge you to start small and close, - which means publication of individual works.

It is crucial to make one's own writing circle - friends, either close or far, with whom you trade work and discuss it -- as a kind of support system, place-of-conversation and energy -- find those people, even a few, with whom you can share and discuss your works - then do it. You do not have to be best friends otherwise. You both just need to be writing. Keep the papers flowing among you. Many people do this on the Internet now. Consider joining or starting your own nearby writing group that meets once a month. Attend local readings. Work does not get into the world by itself. We must help it. Share the names of books that haw nourished you. As writing texts, I love Writing Toward Home by Georgia Heard, for example. Bird by Bird by Annie Lamott. All the books by Natalie Goldberg and Lucy McCormick Calkins. All the books distributed by Teachers and Writers Collaborative in New York City. If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland. William Stafford's 3 books of essays on the subject of writing - Crossing Unmarked Snow is the most recent, Writing the Australian Crawl and You Must Revise Your Life are 2 earlier great ones - all from the Poets on Poetry series of the University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor - are invaluable. I love so many of these new anthologies that keep popping up. Find them. Find the services in them that speak to YOU. There is absolutely no excuse for not being a frequent library user. I am always surprised how many people DON'T go to libraries regularly and find new resources for themselves when everything is there waiting for all of us. Let that circle of discovering be a sustenance to you and your own work. This will help you more than anything.

When people who claim to be interested in writing tell me they don't read much, I don't trust them. How can you be interested in one without doing the other? Would you trust a chef who never ate? It's all connected.

Don't imagine that anyone else has "the key" to getting your own work published.

There is so much goodness happening in the world of writing today. And there is plenty of ROOM and appetite for new writers. I think there always was. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Attend all the readings you can, and get invited in giving some, if you like to do that. Be part of your own writing community. Often the first step in doing this is simply to let yourself become identified as One Who Cares About Writing!

I don't have an agent. I never had an agent. I don't even know any agents. Many people will tell you you have to have one. Some publishing houses will tell you this, I hear. But I have not found it to be true and I know other writers who would say the same. If you are writing children's books you do not have to have illustrations in hand when you send your text to an editor. That is the editors job, to find the artist for your work.

I hope something here turns out to be useful to you. My motto early on was "Rest and be kind, you don't have to prove anything" - Jack Kerouac's advice about writing - I still think it's true. But working always felt like resting to me. Good wishes!

Naomi Shihab Nye