Skip to main content

Literary Ops


My first story in Jersey Devil Press was about literary wish-fulfillment.  The idea was that, if someone loved literature enough, it would literally come alive whenever a book was opened.  As someone who has always wanted to have a published novel, this was the most guilty pleasure I could imagine.

For those of us who write, everyday reality can often be painful.  We work jobs whose sole objective, on most days, seems to be to crush the very creativity from us.  I awake inspired every morning, and return from work each day completely emptied and dispirited.  Life, but not as we know it.

“Literary Ops” was a story of profound hope.  Although the protagonists awake each day to various, historic world empires attempting to destroy their home (let the reader who has eyes to see understand) they may rebuff attacks by knowing just which author calms the marauding hordes.  In my dreams, life is that simple.

In today’s business-driven world, there is no place for those of us who would rather just sit, think, and contribute through ironic observations, a mirror against which society might compare itself.  Such an entrepreneurial society prefers to smash such mirrors—you can always buy another one.  Writers like us are, literally, a dime a dozen.  Most of us do it for free.



Even so, my published work is a mere fragment of a much larger whole.  I was showing my writing partner Fantasia the large collection of my literary output.  She was impressed, expressing surprise at just how much I have written.  How much remains unpublished, read only by a snarky editor or two who patly dismisses it.

“Literary Ops” is a profoundly hopeful story.  It is a world in which those who, against all odds, manage to get their literary voice recognized, can literally change the world.  That is something of which I still dream.  And each morning I awake inspired, but I know what will inexorably happen by the end of the day.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Maybe Okay

  A couple pieces of encouraging news, perhaps, dear struggling writers.   I had a couple short stories accepted for publication in recent weeks.   As a fellow writer recently said, “You've got to keep trying.  Somebody will like what you wrote.” That’s a bit of sunshine.   And it’s likely true.   But the stories:   “The Crossing,” about two men in a boat trying to cross the Atlantic, was accepted by JayHenge Publishing.   JayHenge is a small, but paying publisher.   I was flattered when they wanted it for their Masque & Maelström: The Reluctant Exhumation of Edgar Allan Poe anthology.   Being associated with Poe in any way feels good. The second story, “St. Spiders’ Day,” had been brewing in my mind for years—yes, this is a long game!   A friend pointed me to The Creepy podcast.   Since the story hadn’t been written, I followed their guidelines of what they wanted.   It worked. I recently heard a successful wri...

Working Through It

  The thing about being a working writer is you don’t have time.   Between working nine-to-five and trying to eat and sleep, and write, of course, the week is shot.   Weekends are spent doing the errands that you can’t do during the week. I should probably have known better than to join a local writers’ group.   Their meetings, although only once a month, are all-day affairs on a Saturday.   I generally don’t have all day Saturday to spare.   I work all week and I need groceries and the occasional Target run.   And I haven’t yet learned to go a week without eating. This is actually the third writers’ group I’ve joined.   One was not too far from home, but not terribly helpful.   They met on Saturdays, but in the morning only.   Nobody seemed interested in what I was writing, so I stopped going. The second one was about an hour away.   They also met on Saturdays.   Their big thing was having lunch together after the meeting. ...

Creative Righting

  Rejection of my writing is a rejection of my imaginative world.   That’s why I was cheered by the acceptance of one of my stories this week.   That makes number 31. I’ve been working on a lot of fiction lately, even as nonfiction book number 6 is going to press.   The ideas are still there, and bizarre as ever, but publishing venues just aren’t welcoming. The other day I had lunch with a professor whose wife is also a professor.   She just had her first novel published, and so he pointed me to her indie publisher.   I went to their website to learn that they’re closed to submissions.   I have to admit that my latest accepted story, “Creative Writing Club,” was probably given the green light because I know the editor.   That seems like a pretty dicey way to get any notice, doesn’t it?   You have to know the right people even in the low circulation world. My fiction is difficult to classify.   It’s got speculative elements to it.   ...