The Corner Bar

This is the feeling that keeps me writing.  The email that accepts a story for publication.

Although it might not seem like it, I’ve been writing fiction since about 1974.  Those first stories, scrawled on a school tablet, were my way of coping.  After my mother’s remarriage, a move, and a verbally abusive step-father came into the picture, I began writing.

My first published stories (which I don’t count) were in my high school newspaper.  I won a state-wide essay contest.  I’d been bitten by the bug.  For reasons I can’t go into here, I stopped submitting fiction until about 2006.

Now I’m trying to catch up.  Literary magazines have a backlog.  So do I.  A story I’d tried to publish a couple of times, “Friday before Senior Year,” has just been accepted by The Corner Bar.  I’m thrilled and pleased.

You see, I’ve been working on a continuation of that story.  Not the main character, but a secondary character who came to life after this story was finished.  Fiction’s adaptable in that way.  That particular story, according to my records, I first submitted in 2014.  Did I mention I have a backlog?

The funny thing about all of this is that literary magazines need material.  I’ve got material.  Trying to match them up is like an enormous puzzle.  You’d think that maybe if someone knew you were productive they’d come to your door.  But nobody’s watching.  That’s why I write existential horror.

What now with the coronavirus people are isolating themselves.  Welcome to my world.  This all started when my mother remarried.  In a new town where I didn’t know anyone I began to make friends with paper and pencil.  Some of those old stories, now yellow and brittle, are in my attic.

I sit each day with my head in my hands at work.  It lasts for hours and hours.  When it’s finally over I can write.  Or at least head to The Corner Bar.