One of Those Years

Did you ever have one of those years? You know the kind I mean. The kind of year when your best laid publication plans get shunted aside by the specter of life itself.

Many months ago I began posting a novel I've written here (The Space between Atoms). The idea was simple enough—it gave me a regular source of material for weekly posts on this blog, and it might provide a chance for a reader or two to be drawn into the story. One of the characters actually appears in my published story, "Friday before Senior Year."

The disc drive that holds all my files has gone bad and although it happened months ago, I haven't had the time to send it to a disc repair place. Many files were lost and I simply haven't had time to recover them. How do you find time for publishing in such a situation?

In December of 2020 I prepared eleven stories for publication. I only sent out two and they've both been rejected already. I haven't had time to send them back out again. I don't struggle to write; I struggle to publish.

Ironically, I read quite a lot of fiction that isn't that great. My guess is that the writers don't have failed disc drives. Perhaps they trust the cloud more than I do. Maybe they have connections.

Thankfully, among the files that live on my regular hard drive are the current stories that haven't been published. (All the published ones now reside on a defective disc.) Life is full of bottlenecks like this—time when time prevents the effective use of time.

Morpheus famously said, "Time is always against us." As we make our way in this Matrix world you just have to wonder what the sentient programs have in mind. I'm sure they haven't backed up onto a single external hard drive.

Comments

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. When you’ve been writing for half a century, you l

Neglectful Parents

If I was a parent I’d be accused of neglect. I have to say 2017 was the least published year of recent memory. Not that I’ve been neglecting my fiction, but I had a non-fiction book accepted and I work full-time and commute to that job—you get the picture. I’ve also had a personal epiphany. If you can write, you should get paid for it. I know a publicist (not my own; I don’t have one) and she says she won’t let her authors even write an op-ed if they don’t get paid. I guess I’d never get published then. My Medusa novel had a flicker of hope for a few moments. A publisher actually wrote back asking for the rest of the manuscript. That’s never happened before. Then the editor disappeared. Even called me by the wrong pseudonym. I’ve gotta wonder about that because the second half of the novel’s even better than the first. While looking for an agent for my non-fiction (couldn’t find one of those either) I came across several who said they liked quirky ficti

Too Much Writing?

Has this ever happened to you? Have you written a story that you’ve completely forgot? Not only completely forgotten, but made unfindable? I play games with my stories and sometimes the joke’s on me. Okay, I suffer from graphomania. I write constantly. I do try to keep organized—I use a spreadsheet that has all my submissions on it. It has rejection/acceptance dates (mostly rejection). Lots of information. I decided to list on it every story, whether finished or in process. There are far too many (mostly in process). When I finish a story I often submit it. If I get burned, I’m shy about resubmitting. I often rewrite at this stage. Then, when I feel brave enough, I try again. The spreadsheet is color-coded. There, in the color that indicates finished and ready to submit is a story cryptically titled “The Password.” I don’t remember this story. I can’t recall what it was about or why I thought it was ready to publish. Looking through my electronic files,

K. Marvin Bruce

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