Skip to main content

With Ulysses

Perhaps the most difficult thing about being a working writer is deciding how to spend the limited time you have to write.  Since I had a completely non-lucrative life as a non-fiction author while working in academia I have found those who decide whether to publish you or not often consider your last book and its sale track.  That can be bad news for those of us who were once college professors.

It’s not impossible for an employed professor to become a novelist.  Vladimir Nabokov was an entomologist and yet because of literature professor after writing Lolita.  Umberto Eco was an academic when he broke out with The Name of the Rose.  Carl Sagan published Contact.  The list could go on, but need not.  You get the point.  It may be difficult, but not impossible.

I’ve written five novels since earning my doctorate, and three non-fiction books.  Of these only one has been published, and it is my least favorite of all.  That’s the way the publishing business works.  It may not always represent your best efforts.



Over the past several months I’ve been working on non-fiction.  I can feel the creative pressures building up inside as I deny their release day after week after month.  My non-fiction publishing was growing before then—I had short story number 20 published earlier this year, but since then the rejection letters have been rolling in and I haven’t had time to retaliate.  Such is the life of a working writer.

My pseudonym is my armor.  I’ve been writing for over four decades.  While in school my submissions always earned A’s in the real world they come back F’s.  Kind of makes you stop and think who’s writing the standards here.  I have yet to go the self-publishing route.  If nobody wants to hear what I have to say, I can accept that.


Both in fiction and non, it’s been a tough slog.  Those who bother to know me encourage me to keep going.  What else can a do?  What is a writer unless s/he writes?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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.   ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more