Category: Writing About Writing

Writing About Writing

Sweet Acceptance

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Last summer, I got my first short story acceptance. The feeling of “oh my god, they like me” was so overwhelming that it actually kept my ego churning along at a healthy clip for several weeks. Because let’s be real. After several years of submitting stories without any responses of “yes we like this and want to buy it” well, it can be hard to keep the faith. Such a small thing, acceptance for a short story. Just a little story. No big deal. But it was a big deal. It is. It still is. And since then, I’ve had one more acceptance. And now one of those two accepted stories has been published. It exists in the world on a printed page in a tiny journal that only a select group of readers and writers have ever heard of and I could not be more thrilled. I’m so fucking proud of my little story. And I’ll be proud when the other one comes out, which hopefully will be soon. And I’ll keep sending in my little stories to little magazines because this is how it works. Being a writer in today’s world.

Decades ago there were many fewer little magazines. And they were not so little. They had huge audiences. But there was no internet. And maybe fewer writers. Definitely fewer writers in terms of absolute numbers. The whole damn population was smaller. We’ve really outgrown this space we take up. But here we are, still writing. Still trying to get published.

I sometimes envy the writers of “back then” but then I think, no, I would have probably lived a very different life as a woman during those earlier times (pick your pre-internet decade). With fewer choices. Probably with several children that maybe I did not really want. Finding the time to write and submit stories to the few magazines out there would have been a luxury that I could not afford.

So despite the low pay and the vast numbers of other writers and the unlikelihood of ever actually being able to make a living doing this thing I love, I’ll keep going. And if I can just get one of those lovely “yes we like you” notes now and then, I’ll be good.

Oh…here’s where you can find the now-published short story, which, by the way, is called “Did You Pay for This Room?” It’s a horror story about a bitter middle-aged woman on a train and the strange child she meets there, and appears in Not One of Us, Issue #78.

Old door, Tribeca, NYC, 2018
Writing About Writing

Rejections Are Opportunities

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Old door, Tribeca, NYC, 2018
Photo by Pamela Weis – Old door, Tribeca, NYC, 2018

It’s not that it hurts so horribly, getting a rejection, or a “decline,” which I think is a bit softer, but it does sting a tiny bit. I appreciate the kindness of the letters I have received so far, and there have been only three, so it’s not like I am racking up tons of “NO”s just yet, but I know it’s coming. I will inevitably have a huge email folder overflowing with gentle rejections. Hopefully those will be semi-balanced by a handful of “YES”s. I believe they will. Eventually. The doors are not closed to me forever. And there are many doors from which to choose.

Finding the right fit for my writing is one of the most difficult parts of this process. There are so. many. journals. Some have been around for decades, others are new and eager to discover new authors. I have no vanity about where I am published. I’m happy to try whatever feels right. While it would be nice to have a “recognizable name” on my list of credits, that is not why I am doing this. And that is something I need to remember. It’s easy to get caught up in the process of submitting, revising, submitting, revising, submitting. It’s easy to focus on where I should plant my flag. It’s easy to read short stories by others who are published and say, yes that is something like me. Or no, that is nothing like me. Or, how in the hell did that get published? Or, how can I ever write that well? I sometimes have to remind myself that I am doing this–the writing part–because I love it. It makes me feel whole. It is not helpful to compare my writing to that of anyone else’s. And most of the time I am good at pushing those thoughts out of my head, but they are sneaky. A writer will produce a particularly gorgeous sentence or paragraph and I think, damn, I wish I’d written that. Could I have written that? No, of course not. It did not come from my brain. What are the odds of the exact same sentence, phrase, or paragraph coming from more than one person’s brain? I mean okay, if it’s something like, “I ate dinner,” or “Life is hard,” then sure. But if it’s something like, “The nose on that man reminds me of a ski slope I crashed on a few years ago,” or “It’s best to check your vegetables halfway through roasting to make sure you’re not turning them into shriveled bits of carbon,” it’s unlikely anyone else would write those exact same words in that exact same order. I don’t know the odds. I’m not a statistician. I studied theater and anthropology. The point is, we each have our own voice. Part of this process is not only finding that voice, but embracing it. Loving it. Finding comfort and challenge and inspiration in it.

I keep writing a new short story every week, more or less, so I don’t have a lot of time for more revisions and more submissions, but that’s okay. I don’t want to get too caught up in that aspect of being a writer. It’s important, of course, and it is a goal, but it’s not what drives me. I suppose it’s different for everyone, but for me the most important part is just doing it–every day, even if I feel distracted or frustrated or if Shuri cat is crawling all over me and I have to type with one hand. It’s worth it.

Art by El Anatsui, Brooklyn Museum of Art
Writing About Writing

One Short Story per Week

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Photo by Pamela Weis – Art by El Anatsui, Brooklyn Museum of Art, August 2013

Someone in the Slack group I belong to posted a Ray Bradbury quote awhile back:

“The best hygiene for beginning writers or intermediate writers is to write a hell of a lot of short stories. If you can write one short story a week—it doesn’t matter what the quality is to start, but at least you’re practicing, and at the end of the year you have 52 short stories, and I defy you to write 52 bad ones. Can’t be done. At the end of 30 weeks or 40 weeks or at the end of the year, all of a sudden a story will come that’s just wonderful.”

Per LitHub, this is from “Telling the Truth,” the keynote address of The Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University, 2001.

I love this idea, and on a semi-conscious level began doing just that about four or five weeks ago—writing one short story per week. So far, so good. I have managed to more or less complete the task each week. I might be a day late now and then, but I have done it.

This week, I am on vacation. Or “staycation” I guess since I am not going anywhere—partly because of COVID, partly because I want to be home. I am pretending for this week that I am a full time professional writer. Or at least I am trying. It’s hard to be super disciplined about it when all I really want to do is lie down on the bed with an ice pack and fall asleep. Our A/C is on the fritz and it is HOT in here.

But for the most part, I am doing alright with this plan. And since I am pretending to be a full time writer for the week, I am also upping my weekly short story goal. Just for this one week, I will write two of them. I will also spend time editing and submitting to literary journals. (Did I mention I received my first rejection letter recently? I think that means I’m a “real” writer now. It feels like a rite of passage. I suspect I will have many many more.)

This also happens to be the week of the second, shorter, #1000wordsofsummer for 2020. Good timing, totally unplanned. So that challenge is definitely helping me with the inspiration and discipline as well.

As for the quality of the stories I’m writing, I hope Bradbury was right. That it’s impossible to write 52 (or 53) bad short stories. I actually think some of mine are pretty good. I’ll find out soon enough if anyone else agrees.