Draft, Edit, Submit #01: Expanding Horizons
This series will be all about the ‘behind the scenes’ poet and updates about drafting, editing, submissions, and so on. For my first blog post in the Draft, Edit, Submit series, I wanted to discuss how I’m challenging myself to expand my horizons and provide different content beyond written poetry.
Posting poems online usually excludes them from the possibility of publication in most literary journals. Sucks, I know. I brainstormed on what content I could provide, and since I have the rights to the published poems, I’ll be recording myself reading them and posting them to my Anchor. To start of this project, I started off by reading Welcome to the Sombre Days, the titular poem from my collection.
If you’ve been following me on social media or have looked at my Publications, you might’ve noticed that I’ve had a handful of poems published by several journals. Thus, I’m determined to have sufficient content to read to you. I’m extremely grateful for the opportunities they’ve given me and many other talented writers.
Unfortunately, most of them are unable to afford paying contributors; we tend to publish our pieces simply to get our work out there. Thus, I set up a Ko-Fi page and a PayPal.me to accept donations from anyone who enjoys my content and is able to provide any support. I didn’t want to put any content behind a paywall, so I wanted financial support to be only optional.
I’m determined to pay back by working hard, striving to continuously improve and provide quality content both on this blog and in publications worldwide. Moreover, as an avid reader, I support authors by publishing reviews on this blog, as well as on Goodreads. In fact, I’ve had several authors contact me directly to review their books, which I think is exciting, and I’m hoping my reviews are helping their work getting more recognition.
At the end of the day, I’m grateful to be writing as much as I can. I’ve met wonderful writers already, and am happy to be part of the writing community. I hope you join in as I continue to write more blog posts. If you have any topics you’d like me to discuss, send your suggestions in the comments below.
I'm glad to hear you are writing. And also that you're still posting here on Steemit. Seems like so many of the creatives that joined in the past year and a half have already gone on to other things. But there is a lot happening here for creative people. I look forward to your series. (And that is so smart to set up paypal and invite donations!)
Thanks! Yeah, with a bigger focus on mainstream publication, putting out poems here or on my blog is counter-productive, and it's a lot of hard work for low pay. So now I kinda figured what content I can provide for free. I think the donations is quite fair, especially as I post a lot of book reviews, and books often cost money. In a way, it helps me support other writers, as well as on being a writer myself. Thank you for your kind comment :)
That makes sense. And book reviews are a lot of work!