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.

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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. ...

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. ...

K. Marvin Bruce

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