Ingratitude and Other Successes

The Thursday thing from the prior post still hasn't happened yet. Nnnghh.

A lot is going on for me. I'm stravaging along in freelancing, but I badly need a new website if I want to make a real go at that. I got turned down for a writing residency in the oddest and most encouraging way, such that I don't really know what to make of it. I spent several hours on Sunday writing a long political piece that I don't expect to be received well, but which I think will be read a lot. Lots of fear there. Also on Sunday, I got two acceptances, which were nice, but which - I can't believe I'm saying this - didn't mean a whole lot to me.

Lemme talk about that a little more. Five years ago, any acceptance would've been cause for me to buy champagne and dance about, but at this stage, some acceptances mean more than others. There's a hell of a lot more traffic going through my inbox, for one thing (pitches by the dozen, several regular submissions every month), and that means that instead of a lot of rejections and one or two acceptances, I get a metric ton of rejections and a handful of acceptances.

Plus, I'm aiming at very different targets than I used to. I've been keeping this conclusion to myself for a while, but I'm just going to say it now: trying to get literary short stories published is a horrible way to spend your time on this earth. I'll grant you that my short stories are not, on average, as good as my book reviews, which is probably part of why I've had more success with the latter than the former. But there are a few stories that I'm still trying to get out there, and the process is just so savage compared to reviewing and writing nonfiction essays. You spend months on a story, you submit it, and then you wait for six to twelve months for a publication no one aside from writers has heard of to say no. Or, if they say yes, you wait another several months to get your contributor's copy and no pay. This is normal. It could be worse.

Tom Gauld

With a review, you pitch them, and if you haven't heard from them in two weeks, the answer is probably no. You might hear from them in a couple of days, or even same-day. If they say yes, working with them to make your review better is, more often than not, fun and interesting.

The two acceptances on Sunday were for a piece of lovely smut that I wrote years ago, which has racked up so many rejections that I long ago detached from any emotional investment in it, and for a nonfiction piece, a list, written in Santa Fe last fall. I knew it was good, so I felt no surprise that it was accepted by a litmag that posts weekly lists. It'll be great to see these things in print, and for one of them I'll get a little money. But I'm waiting to hear on essays, stories, and pitches that matter a hell of a lot more to me than either of these pieces. That hierarchy has always existed, but until recently, the stuff that matters has always been a no. Now that there have been yeses for some of the stuff that matters, yeses for less important stuff don't feel as good as they used to. (Like taking ecstasy too often, I suppose.)

Which is extremely ungrateful, right? I should be happier than this for people liking my work enough to say yes. But it's kind of like when your teacher pins up your least favorite drawing and doesn't look at the other ones. Yay! (...?)

So much changes in this journeyman part of the journey. I wish I'd known. But I suspect there's no good way to tell people that they are going to feel and think differently a few years into doing something. If it could be communicated, it wouldn't be learned.

Out in the world:

My Columbine post from this blog was reprinted last week in the Big Smoke. I'm really pleased about this.

I reviewed Silver Girl for the Millions. It was a phenomenal book. At the time I read it, I'd read three or four debut novels in a row, and the different feeling of this one, which is not a debut, was a bit of a balm. Debuts seem to buzz a little bit with their own newness, and this was surer, slower.

I interviewed Natalie Singer for TRUE. I adored her book, California Calling.

A story I've been trying to place for five years or more, "C-a-l-l-a-s", came out in Luna Station Quarterly. I have many, many thoughts about this, but I think they'll have to wait for another time.

TL;DR Reading in Public Is Fun But Weird

Prior to March of this year, I had read my work (aloud) in public zero times. As of Saturday, I have done so twice. Here is video of me reading from my essay, "This is Not a Safe World", at The Last Bookstore on Friday, April 24th.

I am not as short as I appear to be.

You can find the entire essay in the 2015 issue of the Southern California Review, which I know you can purchase in person at The Last Bookstore and which I'm assuming you'll soon be able to purchase at this website, although the new issue's information doesn't appear there just yet. Like I said in the last post about it, the essay's very personal, trigger warning, yadda yadda. I'm not ashamed, I just don't want to make you uncomfortable.

I can't tell you what a weird, heady, impossible experience it was to do this reading. In the car on the way home, I yelped "I'm confused!" more than once in trying to explain to Matt how I felt and thought about it.

The prior reading took place at CSUN on March 20th and was in honor of the spring Northridge Review's release. Even though I'm happy that the story appearing in that issue finally found a home (it's the oft-rejected story that guest-stars in this post), I failed to blog about that reading or promote it here. Now I wish I had, because the two experiences were quite different.

Evidence

I hesitate to write this, but it's something I can't not talk about on a blog like this, which lays bare the creative process of a writer who has only small successes to call her own. A number of people reading are in a similar position, and I want to help. So here this is.

If you go to this page, you'll see that my work has been appearing online and in print for about eight years. I am actively unhappy with very little of the work you see linked there. A lot of it feels immature to me, and some of it was altered by the publication in ways of which I didn't approve, but by and large I wouldn't link to it unless I was pleased with the work and - critically - with the venue in which the work appeared.

Last spring, a new friend visited my website and then, the next time she saw me in person, she said "You've been published in quite a few places." I kind of went "Yeah," and cleared my throat and looked away. I don't feel that comfortable with the sense of myself as "published in quite a few places." Mostly the reason is the obscurity of the publications. I've never been in Harper's or The New Yorker. When people ask me if I've been published anywhere they might have heard of, I could confidently say "yes" about those places. Not so much about my actual publication record.

I'm not disparaging these publications by any means - in part because they were kind enough to print my work (and were usually staffed by very nice, very smart, very accommodating editors), and in part because I simply don't intend disparagement. I don't know if I can say that strongly enough, that I am perfectly happy and proud of the sites and magazines that have published me, and the last thing I want to do is dump on them. I'm talking about prominence, not quality. Just in factual terms, Theaker's Quarterly Fiction is a UK genre magazine with a small circulation. It isn't the New York Times Magazine. I love the Cocteau Twins, but I'm quite clear on the point that not everyone has heard of them. It doesn't diminish them.

I mean, maybe you should have heard of them, but it's not for me to judge

So I retain the feeling that I haven't really published much. Consequently, I usually sometimes feel that my writing isn't worth all the trouble and heartache and expense and so on that I go through, because I've been at this for almost a decade and I have so little to show for it. "Successful" means something different for everyone, but I know what it looks like for me, and it isn't this. In the kindest interpretation of that publication page that my brain can achieve, I'm on the way to successful.

I'm coming toward the point, I swear. Up until this month, every one of those acceptances, every one of those "we love it and we want to put it in the next issue" emails that you see reflected on that page of publications, was accompanied in my head and heart with two intertwined reactions: "Yes! I'm awesome!" and "Well, yeah, but here are half a dozen reasons why it's not a real accomplishment." Every last one. My brain has invented interminable excuses and justifications about why all those publications, all those acceptances, are actually meaningless, and offer no evidence that I write well. Oh, it's not a big deal, it's not even an American publication. Oh, it doesn't really matter, it's just online. Oh, it's nothing, it's only got a readership of a few hundred people. Oh, it's meaningless, it only pays about $20.

This is what my brain does every damn time.

Which is why the acceptance I got for "To-Do" mattered so intensely when it came this fall. Not because the accepting publication is so well-known - it, too, is obscure as wider culture goes - but because there are no cracks around this accomplishment into which my brain can seep in order to tear it down. What I mean is, the publication in question is a long-established literary magazine, associated with one of the best universities in the country, a member of CLMP, with an alumni list that includes plenty of well-known writers and a lot of people with MFAs. The story didn't get in because of its gimmicks, because it's really short or has an unusual form of narration or whatever. It's just a short story, and it had to sink or float on its ordinary merits.

When I got the email, my brain scrambled for even more reasons why my work might have been accepted by this magazine, reasons that did not include writing ability: they needed a woman writer for statistical reasons that month; they needed to say they pulled a certain number of people from the slush; they needed a story of that length or some aspect of that subject matter, irrelevant of its quality; you get the picture. I was able to turn to my brain for no, I'm not kidding, the first time ever, and say Shut up, I got this because my story was good enough, and please fuck right off.

That was a pretty good feeling. 

In mid-January, just before "To-Do" appeared, I got an acceptance I can't tell you about yet, but it was equally legitimizing. I was actually dumbfounded when I got the email. It was the result of one last wild shot in the dark before I trunked the piece for good, after many many many rejections, and this fairly fancy litmag that I was certain would reject it accepted it instead. For the second time ever, I said hey, brain, STFU. This is the fruit of my work and I deserve it. 

Since then I've gotten four rejections for other work, so, you know, the writer's life. 

Ultimately, this attitude of my publication record being not a big deal, having all kinds of excuses made around it for why it doesn't really matter, is not an attitude I can maintain any longer after this spring's appearances. What do I do with the record as it stands now? How do I position myself toward my writing, when not just my faith but the evidence indicates that it doesn't suck? 

I think the answer to this question is that my position is no different at all. I'd believed that positive evidence would make a difference to the quality of my faith in my work, but it doesn't seem to. Every time I sit down to the notebook I'm pretty sure that what I'm doing is pointless, but could be good, and that I have something to say, even if I probably won't be able to say it right. I don't think that finally gunning down Mean Brain once or twice, no matter the backup I have with me, is going to change that. 

Links to Real Good Stuff!

Some good luck scattered across 2014 is coming to fruition in quick-time harch this month. Today, my short story "To-Do" goes live on The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, which is frankly a personal triumph for me and a pretty nice thing professionally as well. You can read it here for free. I hope you like it.

Also this week (!), Kzine, a Kindle-only genre magazine, publishes its 11th issue, which includes "On Conti Street with the Kintner Dame," by yours truly. This story has about as much in common with "To-Do" as two-toed sloths have with Picabo Street. It's a lot of fun, though, and it sits in good company in the magazine. The issue is available at Amazon here. I think it's a free read for Prime members who have a Kindle.

In case you're not convinced enough to click through, here's a little bit about each story. "To-Do," which I've called the grandma story once or twice on this blog, is, in brief, about a fairly awful woman biting off more than she can chew.

You go, little turtle! (You're not endangering children, like Lily is.)

Writing about her was challenging and satisfying, as was writing about the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts many years after I lived in it. I tried to make the story slightly different than the norm visually, and to (maybe) trash some reader expectations for the rhythm of a 3,400-word piece. Other than that slight push toward experimentation, I haven't got a lot to say about this one. I worked hard on it, but writing it wasn't a mystical creative experience.

"Conti Street" came out of a dream I had about a band composed of zombies. When I wrote the dream down in my notebook, I thought of just doing a throwaway line in some story about how if zombies formed a shoegazing band, no one would even notice they were zombies. But then I had another dream about a strange silver coat with magic powers (which I as dreamer never quite sussed out). My determination to write a goddamn noir story already formed a chemical reaction with those ideas, and Jean-Jacques McHugh was born. I want to write another one with him, but I haven't written a lot of genre stuff lately and I'm kind of discouraged from the get-go. I loved writing "Conti Street," and nearly everyone to whom I gave it loved reading it, but I had a hard time placing it. Most noir magazines today, I discovered, want gritty-ass modern noir instead of old-fashioned Philip Marlowe stuff. Me, I love Chandler, but it's possible that I love parodies of Chandler just as much

, and I hope "Conti Street" walks the line between the two as lovingly as I intended.

If either of those stories has brought you here, welcome! Make yourself at home. Leave a comment. Have a drink. The bar's open and I can be pretty talkative.

From Me to You: Everything Means Nothing, or a Primer on Rejections

Welcome, one and all, to the fifth and final-for-now From Me to You digital pamphlet. There may be more topics for me to cover in the future, but my download folder is nearly out of favorite images, so it's time to say adios. I wish I'd posted these every two weeks instead of every week, because I think we're all getting a little fatigued, but if wishes were horses, those wishes would all run away, shrieking and bucking, terrified of a great unseen evil.*

You're still not listening to Welcome to Night Vale, are you? 

The first pamphlet regarded looking up markets to which to submit your work. Then I explained about little details in the submission process, followed by cover letters. Last week I ranted about bios and discussed the patience required in waiting for an answer. This week, a survival guide for rejections and acceptances.

From Me to You: Much Ado About Cover Letters

Welcome to the third installment of From Me to You. Thousands and thousands of words expended upon how to submit your work if you're a total n00b. We've gone through researching markets and minding your Ps and Qs when submitting. Today! Cover letters!

Margaret Atwood drew this. I'm sorry for her and me and everyone who feels this way, but
TODAY WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT COVER LETTERS. 

Please know, right away, that the philosophy on cover letters varies greatly. (And please keep that in mind as you read every single sentence that follows.) Please also know that I'm specifically talking about cover letters for literary magazine submissions in this post. Cover letters for book submissions and pitches for essays or features have different rules.

Some author advice websites and columns will tell you to write something in your cover letter that makes you stand out. Some will tell you to be completely neutral. Some experts will say that you should list every last credit you've ever had, while others will say that looks boastful and/or is boring. The advice is just all over the place, totally inconsistent.

From Me to You: How to Be Punctilious When Submitting

Last time on From Me to You, we started talking about submitting your work. The only thing I managed to cover was how to research a market, and how to determine, through largely circumstantial evidence, whether it's the right market for your work. I feel the urge to repeat one of the things I said in a slightly different way: finding the right market for your story is more important than finding the market that will accept your story. After half a dozen rejections that offer no clues as to why your story "didn't work for us," you might start to look for markets that seem to take any old thing, just to feel redeemed. Avoid this urge. A market that's not discriminating, or that doesn't have a coherent policy about what it publishes, is not a desirable one.

If no markets seem right for your story, write something else and look again. That doesn't seem like very good advice, but it's the advice I've been getting for a long time and the more I write and submit, the more I think it actually is good. It could be that your work is just that radical, and that's why you can't find a market that seems right, but...it's unlikely. The more likely answer is that you need to write better, which means you need to write more. (I've had to accept this myself, so I know it's not easy.)

As before, the rest of the pictures in this post are going to be irrelevant.
This one is so relevant to me that it hurts to look at it. 

Anyway. This time, as the title of this post indicates, let's talk about some nitty-gritty details of submitting.

From Me to You: Finding Markets

Today I want to talk about a practical matter - finding markets to which to submit work. A crucial note, before I do: I don't position myself as an expert. I have writer-friends who have had work published in serious magazines, print anthologies, and prominent online markets; writer-friends who self-publish on a regular basis with success; and writer-friends who've never had anything appear anywhere. I'm not claiming to know more than any of them. I'm just sharing what I do know.

The reason I'm doing this is that yet another person has recently asked me probing questions about submitting work. I say "yet another" because new friends and strangers asking me questions about submitting is more common than I ever expected when I started telling people about my blog/website/attempts at being a writer. I felt, well, what do I know? I'm not in Harper's. But this keeps happening. So in case there are more of you out there, here's this post: what I know, what has worked for me, full stop. Not "what you should do with your work" or "how to get into magazines" or anything similar.

I had the hardest time ever finding pictures that worked for this post, so this will be the only one that's relevant. The rest of them are just some favorite pictures from my download folder. 

The number-one question I get asked is how I know where to submit. The answer to this question ran so long that it's the whole post. I'll do more of these posts if this one is popular.

Dreaming My Way to Work

Most of my big ideas come from dreams. The central ideas for both the Greenland book and the time book came from lengthy, specific dreams that I wrote down and fleshed out. Other dreams have been used either as a starting point for something that wandered far afield from its source material, or as filler for a central idea that I attained elsewhere.

Dreams are bizarre; everyone knows that. I write them down, and then look at them a week later and go whaaaat? Dreams that are insanely engaging as I experience them might turn out to be useless either from a story perspective or a symbolic, figuring-out-my-life perspective. But the notion that a dream by which I am still fascinated months later is too bizarre to shape into a story...I finally decided this week that I can't truck with that. Some of the stuff I'm proudest of writing in the past year has seemed too odd for public consumption at the outset, and I've written it anyway, winding up with the opposite of regret.

I keep returning to Jim Henson at moments like this. (I feel like I've written about this before, but I can't find it on a blog search, so at the risk of repeating myself...) The idea of a prime-time variety show for adults starring felt puppets must have been, to understate the case, extremely hard to sell. But he worked really fucking hard, and he did it. And he created something unforgettable. It inspires me that he did this (and it especially inspires me that his success didn't really get going until he was 40), because his ideas were just weird, but it turned out that a lot of people loved them anyway.

Yesterday I wrote the first draft of a story about a boy who lives on a garbage scow. In the big picture, the story is supposed to be about the cruel limits of charity, but ever since I had the dream that inspired the story, I've shied away from developing or writing it. I kept rereading that set of notes and thinking "boy who lives on garbage scow...nah, too weird, no one will believe it" and turning the page. Yet I'm growing tired of doing throwaway work I'm not especially proud of, and I decided to try writing it anyway. Maybe I can frame it as a fairy tale, I thought, and make it more of a genre story.

It didn't come out that way. It came out in a first-person roughneck pidgin, set vaguely in the Victorian era, veering into a narrative structure which I think I'll have to pitch and rewrite. But it felt good in the doing. It didn't feel like a waste of time. It felt like something new, something weird but inspired. We'll see, after it's done resting, if it goes in the drawer or out into the world.

I also wrote a poem yesterday. I virtually never write poetry, because I don't understand it well and I doubt I've grown at all as a poet since I wrote angsty teenage junk. But I feel quite good about this one - good enough to seek feedback and maybe even publication, once it's been redrafted a couple of times. I was inspired by reading three issues of The Sun nearly back to back over the past two weeks; the magazine publishes poetry that agrees with me in small doses. Although I find it pretty unfair and unrealistic, there's something to magazines' insistence that you read a few issues before you submit work to them. I only just feel like I have an idea of The Sun's mood and intention now that I've held a subscription for six months.

On Tuesday, I sent a query package for KUFC to an agent. Please cross your fingers for me.

Worth Its Weight in Work

So, the story goes like this. A journalist named Nate Thayer wrote an article that caught the interest of the Atlantic's freelance editor. She offered him the opportunity to distill it down to 1,200 words and have it posted on the Atlantic's website. He asked about payment, and she said the only payment would be exposure, because she had spent all the money in the freelance kitty for the moment. He said (politely enough, but with what felt like major fury under the words) that he is an established journalist and doesn't work for free, and that was that.

And then he posted the exchange on his website, without censoring names or other details. Eeek. Go read it, it's more interesting than my own summary.

The Atlantic then fired back not one but two articles on this matter. One of these sort of generally discusses journalism in the past and now and tries to explain and break down the math...honestly, I skimmed that one, because I didn't like the writer's voice and it seemed a defensive, poorly organized, and hastily written piece to me. The other piece was far clearer, and takes something like the opposing view to Thayer's: working for exposure can be valuable. That's a good 'un, really good reading.

I found this whole exchange extremely interesting.

A couple of years ago, I was talking to my mother about blogging, and - I'm distilling a complicated conversation - she said it seemed foolhardy to write my blog for free, to give away my words, when after all I'm trying to make my living from words. Her profession is very different from mine, but she also makes a living from words, and she noted that she would never, ever write for free. Doing so devalues your work, she said, and that means that the next person to try and buy your work has evidence that she can get away with paying you less. If you don't value your work, she pointed out, no one else will.

Just Eat the Dang Chocolate

Phew, that's over. The secret project is completed, and I am so happy to be able to stop worrying about it until the spring.

I went back and read the urn story on Monday. The first half isn't working, but the second half really, really is. I think the contrast is between a half where the narrating character interacts with another person, and a half where the narrating character is mostly inside her head. I put in the bit with the other character because the rules of writing told me I sort of had to, couldn't write a story that was all internal, but it so clearly isn't working that I'm wondering if I'm supposed to just stay internal for this one.

My plan is to write the beginning a few different ways and see what fits, although I haven't put my money where my mouth is in that regard just yet. I was thinking it over in my thinkin' chair and I began to wish that I had a sort of twin writer-companion. Someone 100% available whom I wouldn't feel bad about nagging on a regular basis, someone with whom I could knead out the whole stinking thing through all its drafts without guilt for taking him/her away from his/her own life. "Do you think this adjective is better than that one? What if I strayed from grammar here? Is the sardonic thing working or is it just weird?"

No one has that. I just have to do it on my own. I mean, I could audition people until I find the right one, and then kidnap her and keep her in my closet, feed her gruel until her spirit is broken and she accepts her new role as my revision slave.

It provides thoughtful commentary or else it gets the hose again.

But there are laws against that sort of thing and I suspect I'd feel even guiltier ruining her life than I do about asking my friends to read my work and get back to me when they feel like it.

Yet I seriously considered sending the draft at this stage to my miracle reader and asking him if I'm right that the first half isn't working. I've found in recent months that I am a pretty crummy judge of what qualifies as The Good Stuff in my own work. People tell me that stuff I tossed off and don't care to revisit is the stuff they remember; they tell me that a character I felt eh about moved them more than the one I am devoted to. So maybe the first half of the story is working and it's just not particularly what I like about the story.

I dunno.

The other problem is that when the urn story is finished, I'll have four literary stories that I'm sure are ready for submission, and only vague ideas of where to send them. I have two markets in mind, but my confidence is super-duper-low and my brain's playing this dumb game where I'll "ruin" the markets if I send them the work. It's the same old hoarding instinct: if I use up the market by sending it a story and I get rejected, which feels inevitable, then the possibility of that market is gone. I know intellectually that this is stupid and the only way to enjoy anything is to participate in it - i.e. eat and appreciate that delicious chocolate you were "saving" before it gets chalky and bad - but it's a very old emotional habit and hard to break.

I don't mean to gloat, but I am so happy not to be traveling during this Thanksgiving, or putting on uncomfortable shoes, or awkwardly answering questions about myself, that I could break into song. I love my adopted family very, very much, but I've never felt connected to Thanksgiving and would have been just as content to stay at home in my PJs and eat leftovers like we did when I was younger. And this year I get to. Although I did buy a frozen turkey-and-stuffing entree from Trader Joe's, and have to go out today to get gravy. That'll be fun and stress-free, I'm sure.

Next Up: The Egyptian Theatre

Got a very lovely piece of encouragement from a friend the other day that's going to get me back to my [writing] desk at last. I hope. The friend basically told me to shut up my whining and insecurity and just work. So I hope to carry out this excellent advice sometime in the near future.

When that sometime will be, I don't know. Matt's parents were in town this weekend, so I did no work, paid or un-, from Friday to Sunday. I did get to see some fabulous stuff in Los Angeles, but it's at the cost of having to buckle the hell down this week and make some Benjamins. Or, you know, Lincolns.

One of the things I got to see was Grauman's Chinese Theatre. I've been wanting to see it for, oh, 15 years? Maybe a shorter time than that, but with enormous desperation. It was pretty much just as awesome as I'd dreamed it would be; it's an elaborate palace devoted to cinema, nothing more or less. I wanted to meander around in it for hours, dreaming about the people who'd sat in those seats and the glorious things they'd seen on that screen. Yet that whole part of Hollywood [the district], I learned, is given over to tourist trappiness, and I get kind of stabby around tourists, so it wasn't all fun.

We also went to the Getty Center, which was extremely cool. That one is theoretically a palace devoted to the advancement of art, but it seemed to me that it was more devoted to ostentation of the mighty Getty fortune. Still, it's brilliantly situated, the architecture is miraculous, I saw some interesting art (and some amazing illuminated manuscripts, which are just so inspiring), and the views were incredible even despite the overcast day.

I finished Stardust yesterday, and adored it. It's just what a book should be. I'd seen the movie and really liked it, and although I wouldn't trade the experience of reading the book for watching the movie, just as in Coraline I thought the movie kind of re-upped the great stuff in the book and made it even more Gaiman. (I could be wrong about that, I'm not him.) I wonder why so many movies do the opposite to writers' work (King movies spring to mind) and yet all the Gaiman movies I've seen have been just wonderful.

I bought a subscription to The Sun a couple of months ago and finally got my first issue last week. It's good. Not 100% what I expected in a good way. I also bought copies of Tin House, The Paris Review, and Zoetrope: All-Story when I was at various B&Ns this weekend. I don't expect to love all of the stuff in all of these - and I've already seen from the tables of contents that they, too, do that male-writers thing that high-end litmags have been depressingly proven to do - but I bought them more for research than pleasure and it'll be nice to stretch outside what I like a little bit.

That's all for now, folks. I have Lincolns to pull in. Bacon to bring home. Etc.