What I Will NOT Do in the Next Few Days

Here’s what I will not do over the next few days, or even weeks:

I will most emphatically and deliberately and stubbornly not read over the short story I wrote for a 9/30 postmarked deadline. No way. Because when I read it — which I will, but just not in the next few days or weeks — I will find typos and I will find horrendous prose and awkward transitions and plot flaws plus faulty character motivation ambiguous turns of phrase murky backstory…

The thing’s barely a second draft, but I submitted it anyhow. How’s that for silly?

Here’s how it went down:

Friday night, 9/26: Re-met various workshopping friends, one of whom recently acquired a small press. Said small press periodically publishes themed anthologies. The current theme: addiction.  I hear: Lisa, surely you have something sitting around that you can submit. Lisa, anything can be an addiction.

I dismiss the thought because I have nothing addiction-related sitting around.

Saturday, 9/27: Yet, I can’t help myself: I ponder…addiction, addiction. Perhaps retool that cool novel scene, the one between mom and daughter in a hair salon? You could say the daughter is addicted to her misery…nah, stupid idea.

That night, I feel a glimmer of something. A brand-spanking-new idea. Something a little twisted…

Sunday, 9/28: Glimmer is now a spark. Could be, could be. Sit at a picnic table with my trusty index cards and brainstorm until I have a semi-solid grasp of the story — at least I know the ending. That’s always a good sign. If I’m going to write this thing — feeling the pressure now because all of sudden I must make deadline — I must forgo further canoodling.

Write the first five pages that day. Don’t sleep well that night. The story needs at least another ten pages. Yikes!

Monday, 9/29: Hammer out the rest of the story in 11 pages. I’m a mad fiend at the computer. Don’t eat all day. Worrying that the story is over-the-top and unrealistic in a bad way because that’s what happens when the verbal does its vomiting. And what is it with my protagonist who turned into a Romanian immigrant? I let the worries go because, well, I’m just about out of time.

Stay up too late in bed with a printed copy and jot initial revisions.

Tuesday, 9/30: Deadline day! I must be nuts. I work through my revision notes which compel other revisions all the while eyeing the clock and ignoring the dog scooching her butt across the carpet. Don’t eat all day again. Doing my best here with cuts (not enough I’m sure) and rearrangements…And then I force myself to stop with that and read the story aloud because that’s what really helps. I leave time to read the story aloud a second time because that really helps. Feeling the stress now, the second read-through is too fast, know I’m missing things — and typos — yeesh, typos! — but I have to quit now.

Arrive at the post office with 30 minutes to spare (darn, did have time to slow down over the last scene after all) and want to melt I’m so relieved.

Aaaaaaah. Did it! And the challenge was good for me. Just what I needed, get the blood boiling, shake myself up…aaaaaaah.

Afterwards? Wine and bubble bath? Beer and friends? Wish I could say so. Instead, off to the vet to get the dog’s anal glands expressed. Ah well, perhaps a fitting end to a day in which I’d attempted to grow a story out of a “shitty first draft” (to quote Anne Lamott).

Quick Petition for Advice

Sometimes I receive writing questions that I feel unqualified to answer. In this case, the question comes from a high-school buddy. He wants to know if I have suggestions for getting short stories published.

A basic question, isn’t it? But I don’t have a great answer!

The truth is, I don’t write many short stories so I haven’t plummed the depths of the literary-journal world. There are tons of them out there, I know that much, but how to get their names? Is there a central clearing house on the Net or elsewhere that lists literary journals?

So, short-story writers out there: How do you go about researching literary journals and their submission criteria? Do you send out multiple submissions? Any other tips?

WW, if you’re reading this: I do know that to begin with, I’d check out the 100 Best Short Story, Pushcart Prize and other annual short story anthologies — they’ll list the journals that originally published the stories. I’d also check out various writing magazines for listings. (I’d also read the short stories in those anthologies.)

My Difficulty With Short Stories

Sure, I’ve had a few short stories published, but in reality I’m not an adept short-story writer. In fact, I find them curiously difficult to pin down. Limit me to a few characters and a moment in time, and my brain freezes.

A few weeks back, I came upon a quote by Man Booker Prize winner Anne Enright:

I like living in a novel — there is great company in it for the few years it is in your head, and I feel a real sense of loss when I come to the end. Short stories are, for me, a more instinctive form. They come or they don’t come, and I don’t spend lots of time figuring them out.

Instinctive? By Jove, there’s my difficulty: I don’t have a short-story instinct. Which is to say that I don’t read enough of them. Some years ago I subscribed to The New Yorker magazine so that I’d at least read its short stories, but now I’m thinking the stories the magazine likes to print aren’t the kind I like to read (and therefore to write). So, that hasn’t been helpful. These days, I browse the magazine for its articles. (Wait, where have I heard that one before?)

Now I’m staring at five short-story collections that have been sitting on my nightstand for awhile.

I ought to read them.

Unfortunately, I seem to remember that in this post, I vowed to lower my nightstand piles by reading only nonfiction until further notice…The piles, alas, remain.

 

 

Practicing my Shameless Self-Promotional Skills

Earlier this week I Google-searched the title of the anthology that will contain one of my short stories. It’s called Two of the Deadliest, and I hoped to discover its publication date, originally set for 2008. You’ll see I’ve updated my sidebar: April, 2009. Sigh.

Besides the pub date, my search also returned results for many well-known novelists who have mentioned their short stories on their websites, only they do a better job of promoting themselves and the anthology than I do. They actually mention the titles of their stories, for one thing, and maybe a sentence or two about their stories. This got me thinking…

Self-promotion: A skill that doesn’t come naturally to me.

End result, I need to exhibit a little shamelessness. It’s not like I have oodles of fiction credits under my belt yet. I mean, really, the following tidbit is big news for a newbie like me:

Elizabeth George, New York Times bestselling novelist, sent me an email asking me if I’d like to write a short story for her anthology, edited by her. I’ll be one of a few newbies included in a section entitled “Introducing….”

Very cool, yes? I ought to fling the news about for the whole world to view. Look at me! Look at me! Which is what this blog post is all about (all the while feeling uncomfortable even though I can be as full of myself as I wanna be on my blog!).

Self-promotion: Not for the faint of heart.

The funny thing is that for the seasoned novelists, the anthology is probably not a huge deal. I imagine most of them pumped out their short stories in under a week while I worked my fanny off over quite a few months to get mine right. Once again, sigh.

Here’s the scoop on Two of the Deadliest: It will be an all-female collection of mystery and crime stories centered around the themes of lust and greed — “two of the deadliest” sins. My story is called “Paddy O’Grady’s Thigh” and features an inexperienced journalist, two Irish Travellers, and one dug-up corpse.

There.

Self-promotion: Not so bad when I cringe and do it anyhow.