Tag: Short Stories

Writing About Writing

Sweet Acceptance

/

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

/
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.

Nyxie the cat sits on a laptop
Writing About Writing

Time of the Cats

/
Photo by Pamela Weis – Nyxie takes over the work laptop

I started writing this post when it had been just over four weeks of doing my day job from home. That was in March. Obviously, I did not finish that post and now what I have to say has completely mutated into something else.

Working from home is great. The cats have certainly enjoyed my constant presence. Contrary to popular notions of cats wanting their humans to get the hell out, our cats spend much of our new quality time together goading me to play with them, sleeping on my desk (or work laptop), and crawling all over me while I attempt to work. Yeah, they like having me home. I know I am not alone in this, and I have mixed feelings about their attentions. I love our cats as if they were human children and relish the extra time with them, but sometimes I do wish our apartment had another room…with a door.

Photo by Pamela Weis – Shuri insists on being the center of attention

Amidst all of this upheaval, I have struggled to maintain a regular writing schedule. I actually have more time – about 45 minutes more each day. Yet somehow, I am writing less during my morning writing sessions. Not because I sit there and type less or because I am struggling to get the words out, but because I either sleep too late or spend more of that extra time on social media. It’s probably not healthy.

Nevertheless, I have written a fair amount of new stuff since March. I finished another novel (another first draft, that is). And I submitted a short story to a journal. This was a huge leap for me. I fully expect it to be rejected, but we all have to start putting our work out there at some point. I will keep doing that no matter how scary it is.

I’ve also been editing the first novel I finished. Editing is satisfying. It doesn’t provide the same creative outlet as writing something completely new, but it appeals to that part of my brain that likes digging into messy details and making them neat and tidy.

The funny thing about all this stay-at-home-ness is that I feel much less stressed and anxious. I am more content in general. I like being home. I like not seeing other people. Of course I miss friends and family and even my work colleagues, but it would take much longer than 3 1/2 months for me to miss them so much that I would go out of my way to make contact. And I am really hoping I can talk my boss into letting me work from home indefinitely. That doesn’t make me a bad person. It makes me an introvert. It also makes our cats very happy.