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

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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...

Creativity

Maybe you’ve noticed this too. When you step away from fiction writing for a while, your creativity becomes flaccid. I’ve had to step away from this blog for a while because I was writing my sixth nonfiction book. God, I’ve missed fiction! Now that I’ve entered that phase of waiting for publishers to respond, I’ve turned my limited writing time back to fiction. I submitted a couple of stories this week and am waiting to hear about those as well. When you’re a writer, waiting is a way of life. Opening my software where I store my fiction stories, I was amazed by how many I found. Some of them are bad—so bad that they’ll never (rightfully) be published. Some are surprisingly good and have been sitting around while I finished up my nonfic. The vast majority, however, are unfinished. Some years back I realized that when I’m writing in the heat of inspiration but don’t have time to finish a story that I need to write down where I...

K. Marvin Bruce

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