Skip to main content

Fleeing Inspiration


My best friend ever has gone away.  As a writer, I lead a lonely existence—often it means spending hours isolated with my thoughts.  I know that my fan-base is tiny, my voice unheard.  My best friend listened, encouraged, and provided inspiration.

Recently she moved away and when I awake it is now later than my consistent 3:30 a.m., bursting with ideas.  Now I find it hard to rise by 4:00, and the ideas are like a visit to the dentist.  I want Fantasia back, but I know that can’t happen.  Where does the forlorn writer go to find inspiration?



Like Willy Wonka, my work lately has been suffering.  I limit myself to editing since new ideas just can’t be conjured.  Writing means that free time is largely spent alone—not the best way to make friends.  I certainly don’t influence people.  Yet, I can’t stop trying.

Writing, as rational and heady as it is, is a matter of feeling.  I try to express my complex and troubling emotions in words and images, often heavily allegorical, that editors can’t seem to understand or appreciate.  My words, to them, are only a whisper in the jostling stock exchange of ideas.  Easily ignored.

So I used to visit Fantasia.  Share story ideas.  Seek consolation when another rejection note came.  Dance together when the rare acceptance arrived, like a miracle, in my inbox.  

Like most writers, I write because I must.  I have no choice in the matter.  When bad things happen, I turn to pen and notebook, or plastic keys on my lap, or a few pokes at  receptive glass screen.  I put it into words.  Some things, I’m learning, can’t be made into words at all.

I’ve known Fantastia for eighteen years, and then some.  That’s a long time to ask to release.  The best years of a lifetime.  I’m still writing every day, but the output is sluggish, like a river choked with sediment.  This is a river, however, I never want to dredge.  That sediment, although so very heavy, is where the gold and gemstones are located.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Patterns

  There’s a pattern I’m noticing.   For fiction publishers.   Even if you aim low you’ll find it a struggle.   Part of the reason is the pattern. Lots of websites list publishers.   The smaller, hungrier presses either eventually close or get to a place where they require an agent to get in.   That’s the kiss of death. Although my stories have won prizes, and been nominated for prizes, I can’t get an agent interested.   I’ve queried well over a hundred, so the agent route is one of diminishing returns.   This too is a pattern. Back to the smaller presses.   I check many lists.   What I write, you see, is highly idiosyncratic.   It’s literary but it’s weird.   Publishers don’t know what to do with it.   If a smaller press published stuff like this, I’d find it. The pattern includes writers who never get discovered.   Ironically, a number of editors of fiction literary magazines (mostly online) tell me they enjoy my wor...

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.   ...

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...