A couple of weeks ago, I opened my mailbox to find a familiar envelope—my name and address printed neatly in the center, a Forever stamp in the upper right corner, and no return address in the left. The dreaded SASE. I try to submit by email or web upload whenever possible, but some contests and journals still only accept mailed submissions and, inevitably, they send their rejections via slips of paper stuffed into self-addressed, stamped envelopes. An SASE in the mail is almost never good news.
Except this one. It contained a check. THEMA bought my story. “The Matlin Women Can’t Resist,” a slightly creepy, surreal story, will appear in the March 2010 issue, themed Put it in your pocket, Lillian.
I’m excited because the publication of this story will represent two aspirations achieved. I think of aspirations as different from goals. Goals are concrete, quantifiable objectives I set for myself. Achieving or not achieving them is generally entirely within my control. Aspirations are hopes. They’re things I’d like to see happen and things I can work towards, but they’re not things I have immediate control over. This year, I aspired to publish in a print journal and to place a story longer than flash fiction length. “The Matlin Women Can’t Resist” just happens to be a full-length short story. And THEMA is a quarterly print journal.
It’s going to be a long nine months before I finally have a copy in my hands, but I can wait. Who knows what the rest of the year will bring?
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
It's Not Easy
So… May.
I worked on the novel almost every day in May and yet, looking back, it almost seems as if the month didn’t happen at all. I only finished about half the editing I was aiming for, mostly because the two chapters I worked on turned out not to be editing at all, but rewriting. Or, more accurately, just plain writing—mostly new material in service of a new, clearer vision of what the book was meant to be.
At least, I think that’s what it was. It might also have been tinkering and waffling and generally dragging my feet over text that will likely never be as good as I want it to be. It’s hard to tell sometimes.
I have draft manuscripts of eight different novels. That’s somewhere along the line of half a million words. I’ve think I’ve proven to myself that I have the discipline to write in quantity. Still, the idea of finishing a novel, of having a polished manuscript ready to send out to agents, seems like a Herculean task. In part, because there’s a very real possibility that, after all that work, it might not go anywhere. There’s every chance that my completed, polished manuscript could go from agent to agent, editor to editor, and inspire love in no one at all. It’s one thing when that happens with a short story, but a novel? As often as I tell myself to just keep writing, just keep sending things out, always keep irons in the fire, there’s a point where being rejected eighty or ninety or ninety-five percent of the time becomes soul-searing. What’s to keep it from being one hundred percent? Every publication comes with the dread that it might be the last.
If I were the kind of blogger who wrote to offer advice and inspiration, I’d spout the old standards. I’d say the only way to ensure failure is to stop trying. I’d say that you have to write for love, not money or glory or fame or any of the other things very few writers ever achieve. I’d say that sometimes you just have to sit down in front of the keyboard each day and put in the sweat equity. I’d say that the road is different for everyone and you just need to follow your own path. I’d say those things, and sometimes I’d believe them. Sometimes, I do believe them. After all, you believe what you have to in order to keep going.
Outside, the sun is shining and there’s a gentle breeze rustling through the (out-of-place) aspens. It’s June. I’m at a cafe table with my laptop and a coffee cup (empty, except for a constellation of black grounds) on the table beside me. I have five more months until my self-imposed novel deadline. I got two rejections last week (four, if you consider that one place hit the “no” button three times). The manuscript file is open, waiting, right behind this window.
Once again, I’m going to choose to believe.
I worked on the novel almost every day in May and yet, looking back, it almost seems as if the month didn’t happen at all. I only finished about half the editing I was aiming for, mostly because the two chapters I worked on turned out not to be editing at all, but rewriting. Or, more accurately, just plain writing—mostly new material in service of a new, clearer vision of what the book was meant to be.
At least, I think that’s what it was. It might also have been tinkering and waffling and generally dragging my feet over text that will likely never be as good as I want it to be. It’s hard to tell sometimes.
I have draft manuscripts of eight different novels. That’s somewhere along the line of half a million words. I’ve think I’ve proven to myself that I have the discipline to write in quantity. Still, the idea of finishing a novel, of having a polished manuscript ready to send out to agents, seems like a Herculean task. In part, because there’s a very real possibility that, after all that work, it might not go anywhere. There’s every chance that my completed, polished manuscript could go from agent to agent, editor to editor, and inspire love in no one at all. It’s one thing when that happens with a short story, but a novel? As often as I tell myself to just keep writing, just keep sending things out, always keep irons in the fire, there’s a point where being rejected eighty or ninety or ninety-five percent of the time becomes soul-searing. What’s to keep it from being one hundred percent? Every publication comes with the dread that it might be the last.
If I were the kind of blogger who wrote to offer advice and inspiration, I’d spout the old standards. I’d say the only way to ensure failure is to stop trying. I’d say that you have to write for love, not money or glory or fame or any of the other things very few writers ever achieve. I’d say that sometimes you just have to sit down in front of the keyboard each day and put in the sweat equity. I’d say that the road is different for everyone and you just need to follow your own path. I’d say those things, and sometimes I’d believe them. Sometimes, I do believe them. After all, you believe what you have to in order to keep going.
Outside, the sun is shining and there’s a gentle breeze rustling through the (out-of-place) aspens. It’s June. I’m at a cafe table with my laptop and a coffee cup (empty, except for a constellation of black grounds) on the table beside me. I have five more months until my self-imposed novel deadline. I got two rejections last week (four, if you consider that one place hit the “no” button three times). The manuscript file is open, waiting, right behind this window.
Once again, I’m going to choose to believe.
Labels:
Monthly Goals,
novel-writing,
Rejection,
Things Between
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