Turning Brainstorms into Pitches

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As much as I have loved prioritizing the work of the press during this time of growth and beginnings, I’ve also tried to maintain an ongoing commitment to my own writing. Over the past year, this has taken several forms: leaving an MFA program that didn’t fit me; “completing” my first full-length poetry manuscript and starting the arduous process of shopping it around; writing a poem every day for a month (toward a new manuscript) as part of the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project last spring; getting published in various outlets while going months without writing a new word. Recently, as my Submittable queue dwindled, I started sending out new pitches for essays (I still can’t quite figure out how to poem right now, which is probably another post) and to my pleasant surprise, had a few accepted. I tend to go all or nothing with the things I care about, so I thought I would share a little more about how I have learned to approach the pitch as a key part of my own writing process.