No wonder there are literary hoaxes…

I mean should we all be slaves to the publishing industries and write what they tell us to write. I really do not think that is fair. Is anyone going to be a publishing industries bitch? These industries poison the mind of the new writer to write in a certain way or to tell a story in a certain way. Some people are called to write novels and others short stories. While I am constructing new stories I’ll be busy sending off the rejeted ones. And, if worse comes to worse I will just publish it myself. Many people love and read short stories since we live in a fast paced age. Though the rejection hurts and I am still mending my wounds, this is how I feel.

And I don’t know, what I write I am always an outsider.

There is another way you can look at this too–you can start working on the novel while also taking one or two of your best stories and trying to revise them for publication in journals (if you haven’t already). Publishing in a lit journal, particularly a top or near top-tier one will give you legitimacy for your novel as well as for the collection of shorts if you end up shopping that down the line.

But I sympathize with you; I really do. I stumbled in here because I just found out I lost a contest, and I’m being quite silly about it. As Theresa says, there are no guarantees, and this can be a very thorny path.

A number of people reminded me that I need to separate publishing from writing. Whether I am published or not, I can still enjoy the actual craft. After all, if (on some level) I don’t love writing, then what the hell am I doing? I do love writing, and I do love telling stories, and I love the occasional touches of poetry that I find in my prose, and I have to remind myself that it’s okay to fail.

In thinking about my depression, I realized that I have to take some of the pressure off myself. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to be ok with my life the way it is right now and stop comparing it to some potential life. I am not homeless or hungry or sick. I have a happy family and some good friends and a chance to sneak in some writing every now and then. It’s not a bad life. Of course, this is easier said than done. Part of what drives me to write is an ambition to produce great work that others will share (I know this seems grandiose, but- come on- that’s part of what drives you too, right?). This ambition is fueled both by negative and positive emotions. I would be a liar if I didn’t admit that, while part of my motivation in writing comes from love and positive emotions, another part of what drives me to stay up long past bed time to scratch out a few pages of my novel are darker emotions: jealousy, fear, and an almost comically selfish notion that, yes, it really is all about me, me and me.

So for now I have my new mantra. My life is ok the way it is, and let’s see how things play out.

I also wanted to follow up and say I liked reading JSB’s suggestion about the spike. I appreciate Kristi Holl’s recommendation of Ralph Keyes’ Writer’s Book Of Hope. Thanks Theresa for the tough love. I agree with most of the commenters who mentioned that the short fiction market seems to be dying out and that I really need to just keep grinding away. I think Will Entriken touched on an interesting idea by suggesting that the literary fiction market is oriented toward selling to stories to writers rather than selling to readers although, to be fair, I’ve always thought of literary journals as the equivalent to tiny art and photo galleries, and it’s okay for artists to support the arts.

Happy 2008-

Armand

This was a couple years ago now. What did I do? I started writing a novel.

My feeling on short fiction thesis is this: you may have a great manuscript and some amazing pieces, but the reality is that there isn’t the readership for collections. I look at putting together my stories as a learning process–finding my voice, working hard to write the best I can, but also understanding the publishing context in which we live. It’s true there are the select few amazing writers who write exclusively short fiction and can make a living at it, but for every one of those, there are a thousand of us (at least!). Even those really excellent writers I read who are writer-famous (i.e., not household names, but known and revered among the MFA-volk), pretty much have teach at universities to get by.

For the rest of us, there’s the real world and nothing but your courage and maybe a community of commiserating souls to pull you through the slumps. Write something new, read something new, and keep your chin up. Far easier said than done, but it’s really all you can do.

I have to say I’ve been all over this myself. Following my MFA I had a collection of stories, and I had every intention of revising and shopping them around. Then when I think of the process, the rejection, the fiction that I read from a number of outlets that I don’t really appreciate in the first place… Well, the collection is at is was and I’m finding lately that I’m enjoying writing my screenplay way more than I did with fiction. Why? It could be because I don’t feel that same pressure I gave myself to get published and I’m just immersed in the craft and the story. I’m hoping to infuse that mindset in my short fiction writing and that novel that is still percolating.

Anyway, thanks again for starting another good conversation. And for those who are paying attention, I hope to get back to regular posts in the next week or two — holidays and a new job have been pushing idle Internet time way in the background.

Plus, it’s nice sometimes to just be quiet when you don’t have anything to say.