Some Writing Habits that Worked For Me (a list!), Publishing Opportunities, Fallen Trees, A Look Back and A Look Ahead!
Yes, it is wintering in a much too serious way here in far northern Vermont! I mean, this year was pretty broadly harrowing anyway, thus full-on snowblower weather seems just rude. The snowblower has been seeing lots of action, as has our other emblematic power tool, the chainsaw (more on that later)!
2025 for me, as a writer, has been different than other years. I think I was headed the right direction in 2024 but I leaned into the process all the way in 2025. By the right direction, I mean, truly establishing a daily life where writing is the center. I work in academia as a professor and program director, and in previous years I have not had the band width, outside of work, to, frankly, prioritize what I wanted to. I know it is a struggle for many of us. But I spent 2024 writing a new collection of poems—and in January 2025 I had a working manuscript ready to go, The Earth Clock.
I knew there was still work to be done with revising, reordering, tossing, etc. I knew I wanted to focus a lot of energy on publishing individual poems from the manuscript in literary journals and submitting the whole manuscript to publishers’ open reading periods and to contests. There are 14 poems from The Earth Clock manuscript either forthcoming or published in journals from around October 2024-December 2025, including one poem published in an anthology and another poem nominated for a Pushcart Prize. I’m happy with that!
Here’s a list of habits/strategies that helped me:
- Write every day and/or work on revising, submitting, researching your project, even if it is for only half an hour.
- Create a running, evolving list of journals/presses you respect and support and submit work to them regularly. Make sure you know and keep track of when they have open reading periods so you are ready to send them work when they’re open for submissions. It has become more common for popular journals to reach a submissions cap within days of opening for submissions, so try to send in your work at the beginning of their reading period—the first day if possible.
- If a journal responds with a nice rejection and asks you to send them more work, make sure that you do that! Mention in your submission letter what they told you!
- If a journal publishes your work, make sure to thank them on social media and to promote the journal while sharing your work. Encourage your friends to subscribe to the journal!
- Subscribe to journals you admire! Read journals widely!
- If a journal publishes your work, wait a year and submit to them again. Remind them that you were so thrilled that they published your work previously. This is something about which nobody mentored me—I admit I am not quick on the uptake intuitively about some things—but cultivating a relationship with the editors who appreciate your work is valuable.
- Keep an up-to-date submissions manager so you know where your pieces are at all times. I use Duotrope.
- Use this same organizing principle for applying for grants and residencies.
- If you attend AWP, go say hi to the editors and staff at the journals and presses that have supported you! And go meet the editors of journals you admire!
- Social media is a helpful resource for discovering contests, reading periods, new journals and presses, online readings, classes, agents, lit agencies, state arts organizations, etc. Follow everything you are interested in so you get the latest on what’s happening. This is a very helpful aspect of the internet. There are orgs like Chill Subs that collect all of this data in one place, too.
- NEVER take rejections to heart. Just keep going.
- If you’re unsure or stuck, take a class, either in your community or online. Try something new. Go to a reading. Ask a friend to meet you there.
- Read all the time, not just in your discipline or genre, but all over the place. I listen to books while I run, walk, cook, work in the yard, etc. I read in the evenings and before I go to sleep.
- If you travel, go to bookstores, attend events and readings in places where you don’t know anyone.
- Shoot for the moon. Aim high. That is, send work to the best magazines.
- You can’t win if you don’t play. Always have your work out there.
Whew! I hope this is helpful to you writers out there!
Speaking of having your work out there, here are some opportunities coming up!
The Paris Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, EPOCH, and Salt Hill all have open reading periods in January. Porter House Review’s Editor’s Prize has a deadline of 1/31/26, as do the Swamp Pink Writing Prizes, and the Iowa Writing Awards. AGNI’s open reading period begins 1/15 and so does Oxford Poetry’s.
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December is both my and my husband Larry’s birthday month (a week apart) so we always try to celebrate be going somewhere where they speak French! These days we don’t have to go far. Downtown Montreal is an hour’s drive from our house. We’d planned a weekend overnight there right after Larry’s birthday, however the night before a big storm blew in and took down two big trees in our yard, scaring the socks off of me.
Luckily, we have a battery-pack chainsaw that’s light enough for me use. The good news is that we have a lot of wood for next winter—AND nothing got damaged! The bigger tree missed Larry’s car and carport by about 8 inches. The tree I’m in the picture with bounced off the power lines connected to our house. Yikes.
While we were in Montreal, we were fortunate to be able to see the show, “From the Functional to the Fabulous: 600 Years of Decorative Arts and Design” at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Here’s the incredible Dale Chihuly sculpture, The Sun, composed of 1,200 rays of blown glass featured in the show!
2025 brought me into a new writers’ group, the Sage Creators Collective! This group is the brainchild of the amazing poet, Patricia Smith, and is a dynamic community of women writers over 50. We have an online reading coming up February 1st (more to come about that) and —very exciting—an offsite reading at the AWP conference on March 5th in Baltimore!! 4 PM at Charm City Books, headlined by Patricia Smith, whose fabulous book, The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poetry, just was awarded the National Book Award!
We’re so excited about our debut live reading in Baltimore!
I’m also working with some other poets on an east coast reading for the new anthology, Bird Brains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds, edited by Susan Rich, which features one of my poems. We’re looking at a spring reading somewhere in Massachusetts.
I’m wishing you joy and creativity in the new year! Keep reading banned books and looking out for your neighbors. Let’s help each other through the winter. Write your poems and stories! We need them! I send you peace from the hem of Quebec! xo kw