Manic Submission

Every year about this time I begin to panic. The myth of perpetual growth suggests that each year should lead to more publications than the previous one, and by November it is clear that I’ve started to slip from my previous lofty goals. I have reached a total of 18 published stories now, in a total of eight different venues. Have I grown as a writer?

September saw the panic start. Some journals, particularly those run by college or university departments, only open for submissions with the start of the school year. A family crisis the first week of September set my plans off kilter for a couple of months. Now that I’ve regained my footing, it looks like I’ve fallen behind.

Over the holiday weekend I was able to send out five of my multiply rejected stories for yet another sortie against the established publishers. I’ve been working on building my Twitter following in the meantime, but my fiction writing has been suffering. Every now and again I need a bit of good news to buoy me up.

The election of Donald Trump feels like a blow against the creative lifestyle. We artists draw our inspiration from unorthodox sources sometimes. Shuffling about in depression for two weeks also takes its toll on the ability to string words together in an ambience of muted optimism. It looks like a long way until we’ll be able to be openly creative again.

Spending the day anticipating a feast can mean many different things. I know simultaneous submissions are the way to get ahead but it still feels slightly unfair to me. I’d like to think that my work would be accepted on its own merit. Not only that, but there seem to be few places that publish my brand of whatever it is I write.

I’ve missed a couple of weeks posting on my blog. Now I’m back and as manic as ever.

Comments

Dusty

My, this thing is dusty. My fans—hi, Mom!—perhaps believe me to have perished in the pandemic. No, it was nonfiction’s fault. Since the pandemic began I’ve had two nonfiction books published and have written a third. With a nine-to-five job something’s got to give. Unfortunately it’s been fiction. Well, the groundhog didn’t see his shadow yesterday, so it must be safe to come out. I shuffled away the rejection notes and began submitting again. I’ve got a backlog of weird stories and maybe some new publishers have emerged? The thing is, don’t you just hate it when you’re in the mood to submit and some lit journal has its window for submissions firmly shut? My last story, “ The Hput, ” was published about three years ago. Oh, I’ve submitted since then, but with no traction. Well, it is winter. I’ve got a lot of stories lined up. I’ve been sending them out again, dreaming of making a dime at what I love doing best. When you’ve been writing for half a century, you l

The Same Old Story

After a story is rejected from a literary magazine—a rather frequent occurrence—I always revise it. For stories rejected half a dozen or more times—a rather frequent occurrence—the stories can shift substantially. In a version of the old saw that “this is the axe used by George Washington to chop down the cherry tree; it has had five new handles and three new heads,” I wonder if the story is the same after such revision. I write in the flush of inspiration. The story comes to me roughly complete. The literati say “no,” and I assume the fault must be my own. I knuckle down and start trying to revise to their liking. The action changes. The ending changes. The characters change. Is it the same story? Is the fault that my addled brain seems to have trouble telling a story someone wants to read? Is it the curse of an internet that makes writers of anyone with fingers to type? I started writing fiction four decades ago. If I’d tried to start publishing then, perhap

Neglectful Parents

If I was a parent I’d be accused of neglect. I have to say 2017 was the least published year of recent memory. Not that I’ve been neglecting my fiction, but I had a non-fiction book accepted and I work full-time and commute to that job—you get the picture. I’ve also had a personal epiphany. If you can write, you should get paid for it. I know a publicist (not my own; I don’t have one) and she says she won’t let her authors even write an op-ed if they don’t get paid. I guess I’d never get published then. My Medusa novel had a flicker of hope for a few moments. A publisher actually wrote back asking for the rest of the manuscript. That’s never happened before. Then the editor disappeared. Even called me by the wrong pseudonym. I’ve gotta wonder about that because the second half of the novel’s even better than the first. While looking for an agent for my non-fiction (couldn’t find one of those either) I came across several who said they liked quirky ficti

K. Marvin Bruce

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