The Shock of Success

With a shock I realized it had been months since the last time. Months! I write every day, and yet I hadn’t submitted anything for publication since the spring. I had several stories ready to go, and although my skin is getting more reptilian, each rejection still hurts (nobody’s allowed to say that, by the way).

A couple weeks back, then, I took three stories that have been gathering electronic dust, and sent them out. The first, a prose riff on Whitman called, “O Driver, My Driver,” was turned down by a journal that had published me twice before. I’m incredibly busy so I just took the pain and went to work.

A decided to send it out again—it really is a good story. I will discuss it more, once it’s published. That’s why I started this blog. Long ago a friend warned me not to try to publish fiction on a blog. Of course, some people do, and become best sellers.

Did I say it’s going to be published? Oh yes, thank you Exterminating Angel Press!

Despite fiction being my first love, I have a paltry job that pays the bills (barely). For a guy my age, that’s a little embarrassing to admit. I should be shucking up retirement funds ready to bask in late middle age on the shore of a lake somewhere. (I told you I write fiction.)

In the course of my life outside of fiction I ran into Exterminating Angel Press. Naturally, I thought of my story “Angel Hunter.” It had already been published in the excellent Deep Water Literary Journal, and I don’t regret that. I just thought our titles indicated similar sensibilities. I’d done a couple of reviews for Exterminating Angel Press and decided to see if they’d like my fiction.

Some time in the future, I’m happy to announce, “O Driver, My Driver” will be published in their magazine.

What I noticed immediately was that although yesterday was dull as Hell at work, I was happy all day. The reason was, quite simply, news of acceptance. I’ve been getting a lot of pinhead letters for jobs that look better than mine. Being published, even if it’s far off in the future, validates me. That’s the way with adult children of alcoholics.

Who knows? If EAP likes my work I may find a home for one of my six novels yet. Meanwhile the daily grind goes on.

Comments

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...

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

Search This Blog