Hivers, poets, and aspiring published authors, the rumors are true! No matter who you are, where you are, or your background, if you write (a.k.a. finish what you’re writing), you can get published 😍
I sure didn’t expect it to happen to me so early on in my “writing career”.
If you’re interested in how this province bumpkin (me 😊) signed a deal, keep on reading. My thoughts here will range from how I started writing poetry and finding my poetic voice to reaching out to a zine submission.
What is a zine?
Well, it’s not so simple to define. According to the University of Texas Libraries (2022), it’s a shortened term for “fanzine” – any original publication with texts and images for a small circulation.
Basically, it can be anything from art and photography zines, literary zines, social and political zines, music zines, and the list goes on.
In my case, it’s a poetry zine composed of 10 free verse poems entitled ‘Children Stuck In Adult Bodies’. The title suggests that we all have an inner child that is either wounded or a wonder child. The former means we sustained emotional injuries growing up that are now why we feel like our emotions are in overdrive or we’re numbed out as adults.
Figuratively, I’d like to imagine there’s a wounded inner child that "takes over" when we feel triggered. You’ll explore different metaphors and imagery about this in the zine.
My background in poetry
I have always been creative in nature. As a little kid, my playtime with my siblings looked like drawing contests, going on adventures with our toy figurines, and playing pretend. Our activities almost always involved some sort of storytelling.
I was pretending as a teacher once and made lesson plans for my younger sister. Then there was role-playing as an evil witch who took the eyesight of a cute princess. Unfortunately, this changed when I experienced deep sadness before I turned 10 years old. To this day, my mind is still piecing together what happened, but I know for sure a looming dark cloud stuck above me.
In grade school, I learned about poems, and how you could write a poem about a tree and the stanzas looked like a tree. I was fascinated with the use of rhyme to convey a feeling or experience. It became a way to express my creativity.
Until such time it became my way to express my emotions.
Due to poetry’s nature of masking what you really want to say with images, sensations, and metaphors, I found a safe place to filter my sad and negative thoughts. Cue my 2014-2015 Tumblr phase.
What saved my cringe era? Entering college and following my older sister around campus. Like me, she is a published poet, but at that time, she was a member of our college’s publication.
During one of my visits to their office, their adviser saw one of my poems. He had an interesting look on his face, and the next thing I knew, I was part of the organization as well.
It kickstarted how I matured in my poems – at first, I was like a kid at a carnival, picking whatever word feels right. Through our workshops, I learned to refine my language and to keep my child-like wonder. There was an important lesson to learn: Know when to hide and to be vulnerable.
Getting published
Now, here’s what we are really looking forward to. How did it happen? I kid you not: It was a stroke of luck. My sister and I were looking for a writing challenge in 2022. We had gone through hell and back, so why not pursue a far-fetched dream of getting published?
One morning, my sister saw a post from 8letters, a publishing company in the Philippines, saying that they are open for poetry submissions. If you send them a manuscript and they accept it, it will be published as a zine. Amazing, right?
So we pushed ourselves to write one poem every day until we got around 10 to 15 poems. Thankfully, we accomplished the daunting task and sent our manuscripts.
On September 30, 2022, they emailed me (see photo above), “We love your poems—hands down! It would be an honor to carry your zine on our shelves.”
I think my soul left my body when I read their statement. I just couldn’t believe it! ‘Children Stuck In Adult Bodies’ became real!
If you wish to have a copy and exchange thoughts about it, you may find the link here.
Otherwise, if you’re near Lipa City, we can meet and I can hand it to you personally. The link is right here.
I’m thrilled to share this with you all here in Hive. If you’re looking for a sign to finish that novel, story, or poem, here it is!
My only advice for aspiring authors is to keep on writing. Someone out there in this world would be so happy to read your work, count me as one 💜
Thank you for reading! I hope you have a healing day ahead 🤗