unpublished writers

Rejected Again. This is Becoming a Bad Habit.


Well this is starting to be a running theme. The Pike’s Peak Flash Fiction Contest I entered back in January got back to me with very nice comments on the two pieces I entered but basically – I didn’t win or place or even show. That leaves, I think, only two other writing contests I am currently still waiting on. One should be decided soon but the other is part of the CanWrite workshops that take place in July at the University of Alberta. Since we are going to be here now that we’ve passed on the Texas, I am thinking I will try to attend. I have to check the dates again because Katy and I are going to be in Iowa for a while after her school gets out. My mom is overburdened with care-taking and I am going to help out for a bit. Not anxious to jump back into that mode. Every time I have visited since my late husband’s death little things have brought back the memories of taking care of Will at home for those first 15 months of his illness. Oddly the biggest reminder is the towel my Mom keeps wrapped around the base of the toilet to catch the “dribbles”. Between his unsteadiness and dimming eyesight, Will couldn’t hit water standing up and wouldn’t sit down. I was always mopping up pee when I wasn’t stepping in it. Dad is the same way and when I see the towel I remember to check for wet spots to avoid sopping up anything with my socks. Urine soaked socks. Now there is a memory.

I sent out another two pieces last night and today. One a reworking of the tooth-tooth blog for the Globe and another on how Rob and I met for Ladies Home Journal. I really hate entering contests when I can submit for free to publications, but it’s not easy finding opportunities for basically unpublished writers. Magazines are asking asking for clips (of previously published work) with queries and submissions. The big Catch-22. 

The flash pieces are going to be resubmitted to a web-based site called Quick Fiction which specializes in the mini-genre of fiction 500 words or less. Mine had to be 100 or less for the contest and so are on the ultra short end of Flash, but it is a fun and exacting exercise in creativity. 

So all in all that will be seven pieces out for consideration between contests and magazines (still waiting to here on my sci-fi and should probably send an e-mail soon.) Oh no, wait – I resubmitted The White Boots at FailBetter. Eight of my babies are out on the street corner trying to make mama a name. 

I Got my Work Permit


My Canadian work permit arrived on Friday. It’s somewhat of an anti-climatically thing however since the move to Texas appears to be back on – in theory anyway. We will know more next week after Rob chats with the man in charge of bringing all the project elements together. 

The first thing I did upon opening the envelope from the CIC was to glance through the Fort Record to see if there were any jobs of interest. A pointless activity as I have no intention of getting a job until my daughter is in school full time and even then there are more things that don’t interest me than do. Teaching for example is only of slight interest and drops to negative interest levels when I ponder the prospect of teaching in Texas. I turned down an offer from the Houston Independent School District long ago. In Iowa we are taught to believe that any school south of our own border is teaches Genesis in place of Darwin and a twangy version of English grammar. Besides when I was offered the position back in the late 1980’s it was well-known that Texas schools were just looking for new hire straight out of college fodder to plunk down in the worst schools. Socially and economically disadvantaged kids grew on trees in Iowa then too and I didn’t see the point of being underpaid in an expensive place to live when I could do the same thing in Iowa within my meager means. Anyway, I have a very negative view of the American education system right now. It stifles good teaching in favor of bad policy. And it’s not fun. Why would I want a job that is joyless to perform? Even if I am good at it. 

I sent out emails back in January, when I thought Texas was a surer thing, soliciting letters of recommendation. I got four positive replies and assurances I would have the letters by March at the latest but now we are into the second week of April – no letters. Hmmm. Whenever I have been asked for a letter and committed to writing it, I have them to the requester within days. But that is just me. And I wrote letters for anyone who asked really regardless of their work for me. The way I saw it was even if the person (a student usually) didn’t do much for me wasn’t any indication of how they would fare somewhere else. A lot of what we call “underachievement” is really just due to bad fits. Of course some people never find the right fit and that is another matter all together. Anyway I don’t have the interest in tracking any of these letters down, so I will just let it go but for this blog piece. C’est la vie.

So I have no letters, but I have one published writing credit to my name and about three rejection letters. I think that makes me a writer in most people’s eyes, but I don’t think you are allowed to include the rejections on your resume. I had a Technorati authority of 15 but it dropped a bit of late. Someone unlinked me I guess or the link expired. They do that. I don’t really understand the whole blog ranking thing. It’s a bit of a puzzlement and probably doesn’t mean much unless you are actually engaged in advertising on your space. In terms of writing resumes, blogging doesn’t count for jack even with that curious prohibition many literary outlets – paper or virtual – have on self-publishing.

Dilemmas. Dilemmas. I have a work permit. Now what do I do with it?

Drunk on Writing


Over at Mommy Needs Coffee there is a Ray Bradbury quote on the header that says “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” That was me as a teen and young adult. Reality crushed me and my imagination and writing sustained me. While it has ceased to be that for me as I don’t find real life the scary place it always seemed to be, writing is still as important as air or water or food even. I can’t imagine a life without writing. Without words. But lately I feel as though I am drowning in my own words. I can’t get to the keyboard fast enough and when I do I can’t keep up with the flow of my own thoughts or the pace a which ideas for blog entries, short stories and even novels are flying at me, but nothing looks on the screen like I hear it in my mind or see it in my mind’s eye.

I took my daughter to the pool last Thursday. She loves to go swimming, and we have a very nice little indoor aquatic center in our town. It consists of a zero depth entry pool for all ages, a warming pool area that attracts parents with wee ones to pre-schoolers and a deep area for diving and such. We were in the warming pool when the life guards suddenly kicked everyone out of the zero entry section and began dumping buckets of chemicals in and hauling out the pool “toys” to hose them down in a way that reminded me of Meryl Streep in Silkwood. Someone had vomited. And instead of reacting with the common sense I know I possess and vacating the pool (because it is indoors the normal level of chlorine is just at maximum tolerance for me as it is, any increase in chemicals should send my asthmatic self running for fresh air), I began creating a story. A horror-ish  sci-fi thing that by the time I got us home was a companion piece for the inter-related shorts I am working on already. Everything becomes a blog piece or a short story idea anymore – even my latest rejection email has prompted an idea –  and when it doesn’t, I think – there’s a novel there, maybe.

Recently I was talking with a writer who found me through my blog. She is a real writer. Does it for a living. Books, magazine columnist. She’s been published, and it doesn’t get anymore real than that. In a follow-up email to our conversation, she wrote something that finally brought a problem I have been having with the novel I wrote last November for NaNoWriMo clear to me. It needs to be non-fiction. The novel I have is essentially a fictionalized account of me in widowhood and a bit about Will’s illness and death. For some reason I just haven’t been about to make it work, and the reason is that I have to tell it from closer up. I have to be me. Warty and decidedly non-Lifetime for Women movie-ish. I cannot be Susan Sarandonized and that makes the project so very off-putting because I so dislike the me of the caregiving and widow days. Like most people I grew up with this idea that adversity makes us noble, self-effacing and ready for sainthood. It doesn’t do that at all. Surviving and taking what you learned from hard times to make a better life and a better you does those things, if that is even possible. So if I am going to write my story it has to be my story. But it seems to me that every widow I know, or have heard of, is/has written about his/her journey, and I am just one more wanna-be (and a fairly bad widow example at that). If I do tackle it though, I know what I have to do and that is something. 

And then there are at least two novels from long ago, one done and another a few chapters done but completely outlined that I know I could finish up.

I am writing as fast as I can and can’t keep up with myself and I don’t think what I am writing is all that good. A wonderful thing? I guess it is. There was a time not long ago when I wondered if I would ever be the word machine I was as a teen when I carried a notebook with me nearly all the time like Harriet the Spy. I am almost her again. Now if I could just harness myself a bit, I might make a real writer out of me yet.