I submitted a packet of ten poems for the Ruth Lilly Fellowship. I had planned to apply, then planned to wait until next year (when I would hopefully have better material), then decided to apply after my dad said he'd been praying so hard for me and essentially he won't accept any reason I have for not applying. He reasoned that if they offer this every year, and it's free to apply, I might as well go for it. It's 15 grand, after all. So I scraped together ten poems, some old, a couple still in the revision phase. This is why I don't have high hopes. But, who knows. After reading a Ploughshares article by Christine Sneed about how long it takes to get any recognition as a writer, I realized I need to get started now. I have a long life of rejection ahead of me. Fellow writers will understand this as realism, whereas everyone else will think I'm being melodramatic and pessimistic.