Submitting Stories While Blindfolded

So I wonder if I should include a little disclaimer on my cover note when I send out my next batch of story submissions:
If you’ve already seen a version of this story—or, worse, have it in your slush pile and haven’t gotten around to rejecting it yet—please forgive me. My hard-drive died and I lost [...]

Bug in Your Eye

I was walking east toward Broadway—a light wind, a rising sun, just minding both my own business and the occasional garden hose washing the beer off the sidewalks—when I turned the corner and had this uplifting moment of clarity. It was about writing, and not. About life, and more. A perfect moment, really, in which [...]

One Last Bite

My other half, who knows me better than I know myself, has pointed out that I have this quirk while eating—cute? wasteful? just plain annoying?—in which I never finish what is on my plate. I always leave a piece of lettuce, a fallen bit of broccoli, one last bite. It’s just something I do, I [...]

Hooks

I was told by a literary agent (not this one, another) that my short story collection, once finished, would need a bigger hook in order to sell. Story collections do these days, she said sadly, which made me wonder if I needed to be a one-armed orphaned albino circus freak from Macedonia who writes all [...]

Story Salvaged, Workshop Awaits

The story found its way—I feel sure that the revision I ultimately came to is far better than what I lost when my computer died and ate it. Does that mean my computer was meant to die and eat the story so I could write an even better one? Let’s hope not. I don’t want [...]

More About Short Stories? Always

I admitted before to my near-obsession with short stories. Now I just randomly happened upon this thread about stories that “blew you away” on the Poets & Writers Speakeasy (I think you have to sign in to read it). There are so many stories mentioned that I haven’t even read!
But this comment about children’s books [...]

How Many Stories in One Story?

In an hour of desperation, I caved and just wrote a new first paragraph.
It is entirely different from the paragraph I lost. Unrecognizable! It takes the story in a whole other direction, opening up new worlds and possibilities, or at least sentences to have on page 1, which (this is just how I write) will [...]

Have You Seen Me?

Lost:
One Brilliant* Paragraph

Black type. Times New Roman, 12 pt.
Approximately 3/4 page in size.
Last seen on the morning of a computer crash. If found, please call.
* At least, in memory, I think the paragraph was brilliant. In reality it was probably more passable than brilliant. Probably it was just decent. But I don’t care—I want it [...]

Why Not?

Early this morning, when I stumbled out of the bedroom all bleary-eyed second-guessing my idea of getting up before the sun has come up, I sat myself down at the table to check my email. It’s a little maneuver I do to keep from going back to sleep on the couch. This morning my email [...]

AWP Day 2

I am too worn out to come up with a better title for this post, that’s how much happened today.
The AWP conference this morning started early, too early for many, I imagine, seeing as how my first panel was sparsely attended for such a huge room. This was “On Adapting and Being Adapted”—about novels being [...]

A Day of Books, Stories, More Books, More Stories, and Long Lines (AWP Day 1)

I’ve been at the AWP conference all day. So many writers. So many choices. Such narrow escalators. Book-fair tables for miles. Only three stalls in each women’s bathroom, talk about lines! Let’s just say it’s been a jam-packed day.
The first panel I attended was “Shaping a Short Story Collection”—first thing in the morning, in a [...]

The Writing Meme

I couldn’t help myself. Here’s the meme seen on Charlotte’s Web and Writing Under a Pseudonym:
What’s the last thing you wrote?
For an assignment: a movie tie-in is keeping me in shape this weekend. Don’t laugh—this thing pays almost twice as much as my raise at work for the entire year, and it will take a [...]

Outcome? Foggy

I did try. I got the answer yesterday. Though technically I think it’s a no, it is a no that leaves some options open. It’s a no that could turn into something, if I kept my head up and kept working at it.
Of course, initially, all I heard was no. And, of course, the news [...]

5 Writing Strengths, Minus 1

I have to take #1 back.
I said I could handle revision. I cannot. I can handle revision only when I am facing my own notes or only when I don’t care so much anymore, which takes time, loads and loads of time. In order to handle revision, I need some amnesia. It comes, but not [...]

Simultaneous or Bust

My submissions have been sent out into the world.
Yesterday, I tried four Kinko’s copiers until I scored and found a decent one. Last night I printed cover notes, stapled, sorted, SASE’d, and addressed envelopes. There was a satisfying stack at the end of this—made smaller by the few magazines that now accept online submissions—and I [...]

Collecting Short Stories

I have two pitches to complete in order to answer two separate, and exciting, invitations. I have other projects awaiting my attention. A novel brewing. An old novel wondering after its fate. Yet… I keep getting pulled back to my short story collection. I tell myself it’s so totally impractical and can’t I do something [...]

Latest Story Theories

1. First sentence. It all rides on the first sentence, so go all out. Do not start with the long, extended description of the train. Start instead with the sentence that had been on page 2 (the belly shirt, the blowjob bracelets, the gum). This is the sentence that started the story in the [...]

Saturday Struggles

I have a proofreading job that I left till the very last minute. I have the first draft of a short story I want to finish. I have a new book I want to read. Who will win this tug-o-war?
JOB: I realize I bore you silly, but I am due Monday morning and you [...]

The Moment After

I was in the expected table at an expected Starbucks this morning, reading a short story: “The Shape of Water” by Mark Slouka, from his book Lost Lake. Distractions abounded. A girl with ash on her head stared vacantly in my direction. A man with a bike and an old boom box danced on the [...]

Crossing the Line

I am often in danger of crossing the line with my fiction, I know this. It’s not that I write shocking things, or play with form or genre too much. It’s that my fiction isn’t always all fiction. Sometimes it’s semi-real. I often have to change identifying characteristics. I don’t know why I’m inspired by [...]