I’ve been thinking a lot about rejection lately. The literary kind. Well, other kinds too, really, but right now I’m talking about what happens 97% of the time after I send a bundle of poems off to some journal somewhere: a few days, weeks, months, or (yes) even years later, I get a terse form email or a small, photocopied slip of paper telling me no. It can be a bit deflating to feel that it took an editor six months to stick together two consecutive letters of the alphabet and then mail them to you in an envelope you addressed to yourself, bearing a stamp that you paid for. It’s like giving the head cheerleader 44 cents to laugh in your face when you ask her to prom.

Granted, there are shades of grey. Some rejections include notes on your work, some include handwritten messages kindly encouraging you to submit something else. And while a rejection received two years after submission is irksome, it’s perhaps preferable to the form rejection received mere days after you drop your work in the mail, because that is a most emphatic “no”—not so much a “no” as a “good God NOOOOOOOO”—and certainly demoralizing.

(Incidentally, The Normal School has the best rejections of all: they send you a sticker that reads “I’VE BEEN REJECTED BY THE NORMAL SCHOOL.”)

Anyway, my most recent flurry of rejections has got me thinking of adopting a new strategy: for each rejection I receive, I’ll send out two submissions and write one poem. The idea, of course, is to ensure that I’ve always got finished work circulating out there, and that I’ve got new material gestating to send out once the current crop either finds its way into print or finally kicks its little legs in the air and dies of exhaustion and shame.

I’m not sure I can keep up with that pace; before long I’ll probably wind up dropping the whole concept like a New Year’s Resolution in mid-January, but for now I’ll give it a whirl. It’s important to keep moving.