Because of a plague of spam I had forced all comments to go through approval before going on the site. I didn’t realize people had actually been saying stuff I would have loved to have seen. Damn spam.

Thanks again, for the comments on my last taking stock post. Big thank you for the thoughts and encouragement.

Things are still as busy as ever, but I hope to start writing a bit more on here in the future.

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

“The proper manner of calligraphy is nothing other than not being careless, but in this way one’s writing will simply be sluggish and stiff. One should go beyond this and depart from the norm. This principle applies to all things.” — “Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai,” pg. 42

View all my reviews.

I have to admit that I’ve been fairly lucky as a writer. From time to time, I’ve been favored by flashes of good fortune, but the possibility of not selling my book is starting to get to me. I’m beginning to question my writing skills. I’m questioning my timing. I feel like my short stories must be too long. I feel demoralized. I’m afraid I’m going to run out of agencies, contests, and publishers to submit to. I check my inbox all the time looking for some sliver of hope. I realize the short fiction market is small, but that’s little consolation. I feel stupid for not having written a novel instead of a short story collection–I mean why didn’t I get a clue? Nobody buys short fiction anymore. I wonder whether I wasted all those nights writing a collection of (I think) thoughtful and well constructed stories that will sit in a drawer (well, not even in a drawer but on an external hard drive) until I die.

I feel stuck between things: on the one side a homeless short story collection and on the other a novel that probably (if I’m good and productive) won’t be finished until 2010. Yep, I’m officially depressed about writing.

So I turn to the awesome After the MFA community. Any thoughts? Anyone feel the same way I do? Any suggestions? How do you deal with the constant flow of rejection? How do you deal with frustration?

Cheers
Armand

Carlson guides us through the writing of one of his stories, “The Governor’s Ball.” He describes where the initial idea came from and then walks us through the process of completing the first draft.

The book is only 112 pages, but in those few pages Carlson uses his obvious, and proven, storytelling skills to construct one of the most engaging explorations of the writing process I’ve read lately.

What makes the essay/narrative so effective is Carlson comes back to a number of specific ideas about writing. Here’s a few that stuck with me:

• Stay in the room.
• Slow down, be specific, don’t stop writing.
• Solve your problems through the physical world.
• Stay there until something happens next.
• Introduce a character by considering the least likely thing he or she may do. How can the character surprise us?
• “My job is to have been true enough to the world of my story that I was able to present it as a forceful and convincing drama.”

The idea that stuck with me the most, and I suspect the idea that Carlson was really trying to emphasize is, no matter how much you want to stop writing after that first good sentence or page or scene, keep going. Stay in the room even though your coffee is cold. Stay in the room even though the phone is ringing. Stay in the room to write your first draft. And maybe even more importantl, when you’re stuck, when you don’t know where the story is going, stay in the room inside your story. It’s there in the physical surroundings of your fictional world that you will find what you’re looking for. And Carlson goes on to prove all that using his own first draft as evidence.

At the end you realize it’s all so simple—yet we know that more often than not keeping your butt in the chair is probably one of the most difficult things to do. This book serves as a useful reminder how important it is to, no matter what, stay in the room.

This is what I’ll remember next time I want to get up and refill my coffee cup (or wine glass):

“All the valuable writing I’ve done in the last ten years has been done in the first twenty minutes after the first time I’ve wanted to leave the room.”

Morbidly, I watched and learned about a brilliant writer from the Iowa Workshop, who published a first novel in 1972 called “The Stones of Summer.� The novel receives a handful of reviews, they are mostly strong.

We later learn that the Mossman burnt himself out writing his first novel out of grad school. “The Stones of Summer� isn’t published by one of the big houses. Mossman doesn’t promote the book. Then novel winds up filed on the Obscurity shelf. The writer goes on to a life of anxiety attacks, 20 years of welding, and caring for his elderly mother before the film director tracks him down.

All of this is woven around the discussion of one-hit wonder novels, from Harper Lee to Joseph Heller (sort of) to J.D. Salinger (technically) to a few other writers I had heard of but haven’t yet read. Now many of those books are on my Amazon list and I somehow, strangely, feel more charged (or thankfully just as charged as I did before) about keeping up with my craft.

I could have shuffled off to bed after watching “The Stone Reader� feeling like the game is tricked against me and so many of us post-MFA writers. I could have looked at the view of the publishing world as the driven-by-chance, cannibalistic venture that it appears to be. There’s plenty of testimony to that effect. In the moview, the writer’s teachers, colleagues, even his agent add evidence to the fact that Mossman was an inevitable victim of the writing and publishing process. But — and here’s the rub — for all of them he was also that brief champion of art, unforgettable yet forgotten, burning like fire, and yet ultimately dimmed. We could all end up like this. But the trying, the effort, the possibility of one person reading that book and feeling something… It’s all worth it.

Check out the film, if you haven’t. Let me know what you think.

“Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” — Kurt Vonnegut

On submitting

What follows are suggestions for submitting your stories and/or excerpts to small literary journals.

Build an extensive list:

I have a list of just over 100 literary and electronic journals that I submit to, and that’s a fairly small list. One guy I met told me that he had a list of 240 (where he found the other 140 journals—I don’t know).

The least number of times that I have submitted a short story before it was accepted was about 12 times. The most was about 65, so I’m of the opinion that you will have to submit a short story—even a well written one—to many journals before it will find a home.

If you don’t have a list you can start with mine (see ‘THE LIST’ below) and edit as needed.

About the list

This list is a little bit of a mess (and highly personalized—I tried to take out my personal comments, but I might have missed some, so if you see some notes that don’t make sense, just ignore them).

Tiers

Entries are divided into 5 tiers according to my (and other folks’) sense of the importance, relevance, circulation, and payscale of the journals. In addition to five tiers, there is a sixth tier for contests. I usually submit to contests between the times I submit to Tier One and Tier Two.

My advice is to start submitting at Tier One, then go on to contests (if you are so inclined) then work your way down to Tier Five.

By dividing the journals and e-journals into tiers, I don’t mean to insult anyone. There just has to be some way to account for the fact that I would rather have my story rejected first by the New Yorker, then rejected by Bat City Review before finally being rejected by threecandles.org You gotta have publishing priorities.

Word Count

Throughout my list you will see things that look like this: 2,000-8,000 words. Other times I might just write this: 10,000 words. These are all indicators of the word count that the journal will accept. This is pretty straight forward. If you just see one number like 6,000 words, that means the journal will accept stories of up to 6,000 words. Any length means that the journal appears to have no limit on the word count. Any length could also mean that I was unable to find out whether the journal had a word count.

When you can submit (reading periods)

As many journals are published from colleges and universities, they often have schedules that correlate with academic semesters. Many small journals will not accept submissions sent outside their reading periods, so (unless you like wasting postage) it’s important to know when they are open for submissions.

Again, these notations are fairly obvious. I have attempted to note inclusive date ranges like Sep-May. Year round either means that the journal is open for submissions year round or that I was unable to find information as to when they accepted work. Year round? (with a question mark) means that I guessed that they accept work year round, but in truth, I have no idea.

To contest or not to contest

It is my impression that people are divided about whether you should enter contests or not. This is because—many of you probably know this—most contests hosted by literary journals involve some sort of fee. Some writers believe that contests are a good way to strut your stuff and have editors take a closer look than they might have under other circumstances. Other people just think they are a big rip off. In the end you have to decide whether contests are right for you. For many years, I refused to enter my stories in contests—mostly on principal. Last year, however, I changed my mind. I have come to view contests as a chance to have my stuff taken a little more seriously than when I send unsolicited submissions. And I’ve done okay for myself in that area. So a few years ago, I regarded contests as a waste and now I’m sending them $20 checks. Go figure.

Always update your list

Whether you use my list or make one of your own, it’s important to remember that the literary journal scene is constantly changing. Journals move, shut down or change their submission periods. Additionally, there are new small journals cropping up from time to time. I try to add about 6-12 new journals to my list each year by checking Newpages.com, The Writers Chronicle, The Writer’s Market, and other sources. This helps balance out the small journals that have shut down over the years which I’ve had to remove from my list.

Another excellent tool for keeping track of changes in small journals are rejection notes. Rejection notes will often note changes in address or reading periods. For example, for the longest time, I thought that The Iowa Review’s reading period was from Sep-May. Last year however, I got a rejection notice saying that they only accepted work from Sep 15 to Dec 15 (short window). So I updated my list and resent the story after Sep 15. It was promptly rejected, but that’s beside the point.

Tarry no longer—here is the list [Ed. Note--Armand’s list is so extensive, I have included it here as a PDF rather than posting it all online]: Armand’s List (PDF 164kb)

“Every man has his own patch of earth to cultivate. What’s important is that he dig deep.� — José Saramago

“I’m drawn to failure. I feel that I’m contending with it constantly in my own life.” — Joyce Carol Oates

Maybe that’s not a sign of a pro, as I’ve seen it described in books like “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. When you’re a pro, maybe you don’t worry about whether you can do it or not. You just do it because you have to.

And I’ll admit, I’m the type of writer that feels like every project is my final proving ground. If this fails, I say, I’m done. Until the next idea comes along, that is. The ideas keep coming for me, and I can see the patterns that lead to completion, so I don’t know if I’m a pro or not. I just know I always fear the outcome, but keep pressing on in one way or another.

In 2006, I worked on a novel. It didn’t come to life. I could see the beginning (multiple versions of it, in fact), and I could see the end. Unfortunately, the all-important road in the middle was a lonely desert highway in my mind. So I deserted the project. Despondency ensued. A few days later, still lamenting the untimely death of my creative dreams, I found an outline for a another novel, something I had been beating around in my head for around 10 years.

All of a sudden I’m excited and energized, and so on…

By contrast, projects don’t usually die on my professional watch. At least, not because I gave up. It’s typically something else that derails momentum at work. A company reorg, a new priority, the sheeps of Wall Street baying at our doors.

While I can be ploddingly consistent at work I’m also vulnerable to the throes of impatience and emotion in my creative work. So, is there a solution in sight? I hope there is. It’s all about breaking things down. Make the insurmountable mountable. I have to remind myself that I’m on a creative project for a reason and commit. The road to becoming a pro entails commitment. I think I’ll put that up on my wall.

In the meantime, I’d like to know if others live this double life? How do you deal with it?

Me, I’m going to reread “The War of Art” (I read it over the New Year and came out with some good nuggets), and put up some graffiti over my desk.

Slightly related link: Left-Right Left-Right of Writing @ West Pier Words