Open Mouths Get Fed!

A Follow-Up

The other week I wrote a little thing about daring to dream- to arrogantly quote myself:

Dreams do come true, but only if you dare to actually dream them. Therefore, I am going to start by putting my dreams out there: I want to be a published writer, I want to have a community of readers on my substack. I want a friend group that feels like home. I want a family. I want enough money to never have to worry again. I want true love.

This is not to brag, only to show you the importance of actually dreaming loudly. One of them is going to come true soon. I have been writing poetry for many years, admittedly: very bad poetry. But I had a passion for it, letting my emotions flow into rhymes and verses, crafting tiny snippets of text that mean nothing to anyone besides me.

I wanted to be able to write stronger texts and actually convey what was moving inside of me instead of just what was possible for me to convey through my very limited abilities. The first step of me dreaming loudly was attending a practice seminar for writers: Hell, even associating myself with the term “writer” felt like blasphemy and I think it will continue feeling that way for a long time. Stupidly, I was scared to even sign up.

But there is one thing I was taught: Fear is there to show you what you can’t do yet, therefore nothing more than the marker of a great learning opportunity. The seminar was nice, though not explicitly about poetry. I wrote one poem there, and I wrote a few others after class, all of varying quality. I would share them here but I tend to write in my mother tongue instead of English.

Those days, I saw a post of a young woman that publishes her own poetry magazine. I had sent in a few poems the last time she had called for submissions but I was (rightfully and understandably) rejected. Rejection is redirection, and that rejection was one of the factors that led me towards more practice. By the time that she was posting about beginning work on the third magazine, I felt I had something new to offer. I wrote her an e-mail.

This was about two months ago. I had kind of given up on hearing back from her, had marked that door as closed, but yesterday, she actually wrote me back!

Ich würde mich riesig freuen, deine Texte in die dritte Ausgabe des … Magazins aufzunehmen. 💌⭐ (= I would be thrilled to include your texts in the third issue of … Magazine.)

And just like that, one door had opened for me after going around and knocking and knocking on every door that even somewhat resembled the one I wanted to enter. This leads me to my message to you: Do not be discouraged by rejection, take it as “not now” instead of “not ever”. Knock on doors, even to houses that you think you deserve no place in. Open your mouth and tell the world what you want, over and over again. At one point, you will find someone willing to make it happen.

Yours truly,
Annika (soon-to-be published “poet”)