Small Press Publishers, the Tiny and the Mighty

Recently I've had the pleasure of appearing on the Odyssey Writing Workshop's blog in a "Graduate's Corner" post, discussing the merits and might of small press publishing. The small press doesn't necessarily have the reach or the flashy . . . well, the flashy anything, but it can take risks on niche titles that might not be as well-represented by large publishers.

You can read the whole blog post on the Odyssey Writing Workshop blog, where I praise Chizine and Small Beer Press (of course I mentioned SBP, because I'm a total Small Beer Press fangirl), as well as discuss some of what was important to me as I built World Weaver Press from passion into press.

It's out!

Issue 29 of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet is out now! Including, among other awesomeness, a short story by me right there on page 20.

You can get paper copies or ebooks at the website for Small Beer Press and LCRW.

Perseverance, part one

There are many forms of perseverance needed in the writing game.  And one of them is to keep submitting our work to new editors.

I, apparently, have an unusually thick skin when it comes to submissions and rejections.  But here's what I know: C.L. Moore submitted her first short story, "Shambleau" -- the first short story she had ever written -- to Weird Tales in 1933.  It was her favorite magazine.  They accepted it, and subsequently published almost all of her early fiction.  Moore, in a candid essay in the back of a 1960s edition of her collected early stories, said that if the Weird Tales editor hadn't accepted her story on the first try, she probably would have stopped writing.

I'm not C.L. Moore.  You're not C.L. Moore.

And I don't say that meanly -- Moore's work is intriguing but there's a reason she occupies an important space in the history of science fiction and not in the literary importance of the genre.

I say I am no C.L. Moore because I have sent out one story.  And it was rejected.  And I did not stop there.  I sent it out again.  And again.  And again.  And, on at least two occasions, I'd given up on a story or poem and then had an editor contract the work.  I am no C.L. Moore because if the editor doesn't accept the story on the first try, I don't stop trying.

And that is why I encourage everyone reading this and hoping to make it as a writer to not be C.L. Moore.

Last summer, I was encouraged to make 100 submissions.  Be they short fiction or novel queries, I was to complete 100 of them.  It was suggested that 100 was a reasonable goal; that if you set your sights for 100 it was a high enough number that you would be in the mental game for the long haul while also likely to achieve some sort of publication before reaching the 100th submission.

The next day I was asked to give a goal for the upcoming year, so I said 100 submissions in a year! Meaning: I want to be published by this time next year!


That's when I made this little chart on the outside of a file folder and tacked it to the wall over my desk.  100 Submissions by July 15, 2011 it says.  The white area is a 10 x 10 grid to which I affix a star (or a hello kitty sticker) every time I send a story out on submission.

Below is a manila envelope for the rejection slips.  Seems practical.  Don't be depressed by rejection slips.  It's like being depressed by dog poop.  You own the dog.  You enjoy the dog.  You have this bond, this friendship.  It will, at some point, poop.  You can't be a practical person and a dog owner if you are depressed by poop.  Likewise, you can't be a practical person and a writer if you are depressed by rejection slips.

If you haven't already noticed, it's June and my chart has a lot of white spaces on it yet.  There are only 15 stars (save you the trouble of counting).  But I'm proud of those 15.  And there will be more before July 15.  Progress is progress -- progress is perseverance -- and I love my chart.  I also love the square that I colored in yellow in the top row.  Yellow background means the submission got published.

This chart hits several motivating factors for me: it's prominently placed so that I see it every day, it's colorful, fun, and it is interactive.  If not sparkly star stickers, what motivates you to keep going?

Short story published today!

Appearing today in Enchanted Conversation's Rumpelstiltskin issue, is my short story!

Titled "Garbage-to-Gold Spindle! On Sale Now!" the story is a humorous bout of correspondence from a mail order catalog to one Mr. Stiltskin.  At only 1,800 words, it makes for a quick read.

Actually, brevity is the name of the game for this issue of Enchanted Conversations.  None of the ten pieces published in the issue are longer than 2,000 words.

Reading over the issue, I have to say that I was impressed with the poetry (which I approached with unnecessary skepticism as I've often seen folk lore meet poetry in unflattering ways).  Particularly impressive was the quiet and soulful poem "Other End of the Tale" by Gerri Leen.    I was also impressed by another quiet and thoughtful tale, the opening short story "Little Rattle Belly" by Mae Empson.  There's even a nonfiction essay on spinning and the history of linen toward the end of the issue, "Straw Into Gold," written by Elizabeth Creith. Also enchanting was the final story of the magazine, "The Duchess's Boy," by Louise Quenneville, wherein a gnomish duchess wisely states, "I know about making bargains with humans, and they are not to be trusted to keep their end of the agreement.

Tell me! -- No! Shh, don't tell!

There is a lot of literature on the web about how to self-promote your writing.  Particularly how to build a platform and use it to shout across the web.  Sites like Kristen Lamb's Blog (which I find fascinating) explain how to use social media to your advantage -- effectively, she instructs you on how to do the digital equivalent of enunciating when you speak.  But for as much noise as the make-noise-brigade, um, makes, there is a quiet backlash of people who don't want to tell anyone that their publications even exist.

This weekend, Dinty W. Moore posted a fab little article on the blog of his online magazine BREVITY.*    Moore is also a faculty member of the Ohio University graduate program in creative writing.  He's noticed recently that he has students who won't tell people their work has been published.  It's not that they're shy wallflowers -- in Moore's story, he was the one offering to make the announcement, he just needed specifics from the student -- it's that they don't want to share.

I understand some of the backlash.  There is such a thing as overkill.  Or being tactless.  I don't want you to spam me about your new book, but I do want the opportunity to find out about it.  Publications are not CIA agents, they do not need to blend in and accomplish tasks that only a select few will ever know of.  But neither do we want our publications to be politicians or Paris Hiltons, always looking for the photo op or thinking about what they could do to get a sound bite on Entertainment Tonight.

Moore points out that Facebook can be nice, or it can lead to spamming.  It's all about tact.  I've read blog articles because someone has multi-posted the subject and link on Facebook and Twitter ... but I've also been put off when a find a person's entire feed is them posting links to blog entries again and again (as in, multiple links to the same entry, or suggestions to "catch up" on their old blog posts).

I got frustrated last fall when no one in the department knew that I'd gotten two short stories published because the publications had happened over the summer.  Their "not knowing" didn't bother me as much as them behaving like I was still unpublished.  I had an awkward conversation with a faculty member who told me I'd feel much better about myself once I got something published.  Awkward because I didn't feel like I could interrupt her to explain I was published, and awkward because I didn't feel any different before my publication than I did afterward.  But more to the point: we had that conversation because she didn't know.  In fact, she couldn't have known.  I wasn't cray-cray girl running around telling everyone that I had a story pubbed, but neither had I exercised the channels in place for department promotion.  Because, to be honest, I didn't even know those channels existed!  So run out and do that now: locate the person in charge of your department newsletter and find that email address.  A quick blurb will tastefully disseminate that information without being cray-cray girl.

To make it more palatable to those who would otherwise stay silent, Moore breaks it down into "sharing" vs. "promoting," with "promoting" being the creature that maybe you don't want to ride to the finish line.  He also points out that often publications (particularly independent presses and magazines) don't get bought without word of mouth sales.  "Sharing" your publications contributes to those publications audience base.

Here are Moore's six rules of sharing:

1.     Self promotion is when you spam all of your friends and those who are barely friends and repeatedly say “buy my stuff,” or “look at my stuff.”  We don’t need daily updates.
2.     Self promotion is NOT when you share good news with fellow strugglers (like grad students in your program, or the faculty who are rooting for your success).  That’s just being part of a supportive community.
3.     To my mind, even a link on Facebook, or on your blog, or as a signature line in your e-mail (subtle, not blaring), is NOT self promotion, at least not the bad kind that folks want to scorn and avoid.  Certain people wish to know your good news, or read your poem, or buy your book, so it is fully acceptable to tell them that the work is now available.  It is, in fact, inconsiderate not to tell them.
4.     Tell them once, of course, not fifty times, and give them a clean link rather than e-mailing PDFs of everything you’ve ever written.
5.     If you assume your friends would hate you for your success rather than be pleased for you, maybe it is time to look for new friends.  Or look at yourself.
6.     Writing is not bad.  Publishing your writing is not bad.  Don’t treat it as if it were.

If you're interested, I recommend the full article.

Oh, and btw, I just got a story accepted at Enchanted Conversation! (eeee!) That was an excited noise.  And I will be posting when the issue goes live.

* I love BREVITY's nonfic mini-essays ... I just wish they'd publish one of mine.


Photo credit: Sasha Wolff at SashaW

Story published in SWINK today!

"The Apology" was published today by SWINK online magazine as part of it's Dead Letter Office.

Finally, the piece I wrote and performed as part of my senior thesis project has found a home.  (Read now)

Story in print today!

A short story of mine titled "Color, Patter and Fantasy," hits the web today as part of The Northville Review's Summer 2010 Celebrity-themed Issue.

All of the stories in the issue are themed to include celebrities in some fashion. In my mind at least, that skews the issue toward having a bit more humor and lightheartedness -- something I readily endorse in lit mags, if only because of its rarity. 

I started writing the story in 2009 at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and the piece has since taken some twists and turns. It's short and sweet, coming in at about 1,700 words, and (hopefully) you'll find several humorous moments.

For those of you who know me as having a fantasy/urban fantasy/magical realism penchant, you should be warned that the "Fantasy" of the title falls more along the line of day dreams than fairies. ...Not that I've ever attempted to write about the fey specifically, come to think of it.

Since it's a celebrity themed issue, my bio on the site contains a little known factoid (depending on who you are) about my former celebrity crushes.

Published today: "Color, Pattern and Fantasy" in The Northville Review online.

New Fiction!

Blogger (and frequent commenter to Speak Coffee) Wrtsmith has a short story (flash fiction? flash-ish?) coming out today, "The White" with Every Day Fiction!

From his blog, Blue Serge Suit:

This is a site I’ve been reading every day for the better part of a year, and have for the most part enjoyed almost every story I’ve read. They send you a short short story every day to your inbox. I highly recommend the site. To give you a nice introduction, check out this piece that was published on Mother’s day, titled Saving Darth Vader. You cat lovers should have a special connection to this one.

In Print

Yesterday I received my two contributor's copies of the North American Review issue that features my tiny little poem "Fireworks." I am a published poet now!



But little did I know that I'd been a published poet for the past nine months. The poem appeared in the May-Aug 2009 issue. Oh. Didn't know that.

But it's a very pretty cover isn't it?

NaNoWriMo: Post Mortem

Some people refuse to let go of their NaNoWriMo energy and come December 1, they immediately embark on NaNoFiMo (National Novel Finishing Month), where those pesky little things like endings, transitions, and all of chapter five are written.

Others engaged in NaQuRejMo and immediately query agents about their brand new NaNoBabies

My biggest goal at the end of any crazily intense period of writing is to keep writing consistently even if I'm not writing at the previous quantity. It's been a goal I had to abandon this month. With the end of semester, the holidays, and all the things I put off in November [edit of earlier post where I said December although it's beginning to feel like a Freudian slip], I had no choice but to plunge back into real life and take care of shit before shit took care of me.

I'm saving up my thoughts and hopes and energy for writing starting the week after Christmas/January. I have many a writing friend who has decided that 2010 will not only be the start of a new decade but the beginning of a new chapter in her life: publication. I too am throwing my hat in the ring and going for it with gusto.

Yes, I've been submitting short stories regularly for the past eight months, but, as of yet, nothing has come of that. What I plan to work toward in 2010 is seeing a short story in print and getting a novel to the point where I can query it ... and the agent can, of course, say yes!

I am also hoping to rid myself of my proclivity to using exclamation points in blog entries and responses.

Those are my 2010 goals -- not resolutions, but goals. Although, truth be told my one 2009 New Year's Resolution -- to read 52 books this year -- has almost been fulfilled! 44 books read and nearly two weeks of vacation coming up before the year ends. :)

[edit: as of Sunday night, 45 books read so far this year.]

The Saga of the Gimmick Ends ... or does it?

A few weeks ago I posted about the interesting ways people are going about publishing and promoting their work and making the distribution as much about art and creativity as much as the novel is. Here we have an update from Mike Heppner:

Mike Heppner announces the winner of the Man Talking contest: Dan Pope!

Dan Pope of Hartford, CT, has won the Man Talking contest by correctly identifying the secret phrase from Heppner's two novels, The Egg Code and Pike's Folly. As the winner, Dan will receive a single-copy handwritten edition of the final section of the Man Talking Project, "Talking," plus signed copies of the other three sections, "Talking Man," "Man," and "Man Talking." A short documentary of Mike meeting Dan for the first time and awarding him the prize will be shot in the weeks to come and posted at mikeheppner.com. Go to mikeheppner.com to see the secret phrase revealed.

Mike Heppner's Man Talking Project, an original series of three novellas and a coda, has been written about in the New Yorker on-line, the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, Conversational Reading, AdFreak, Maud Newton, Media Bistro, the Millions and HTMLGiant. Clare Dudman (98 Reasons for Being) calls the project "...a brilliant piece of writing... innovative, interesting, and absorbing..." and Neil Peart (Road Show) raves "...an artful examination of modern life, and modern love, with perfect dialogue, wry humor, (and) psychological insight." An essay about the history of the project appeared in the Sept/Oct '09 issue of Poets & Writers.

The four sections were written between 2007 and 2009. One cannot find all of them in a single location, however it is possible to collect and read the project in its entirety.

Part One, Talking Man, was published in September 2008 by Small Anchor Press. Small Anchor Press is a Brooklyn-based independent press specializing in finely crafted handmade books. Talking Man can be purchased exclusively at SA's website, smallanchorpress.com. A second printing came out in February 2009.

Part Two, Man, was released in December 2008. Five hundred photocopies have been left in random locations across the United States for readers to find and comment on. Some of those comments can be read here.

Part Three, Man Talking, the third in the series (but the first to be made available), can be read for free at mikeheppner.com. Over seven thousand readers have visited since Man Talking went on-line in April 2008.

Part Four, Talking, was a contest that ran from March to September 2009. One winner received a single-copy edition of Talking, entirely handwritten by Mike Heppner, plus signed copies of Talking Man, Man, and Man Talking. The winner was the first person to correctly guess the secret phrase found in one of Heppner's two full-length novels, The Egg Code and Pike's Folly. Dan Pope of Hartford, CT, won the contest in September 2009.

ACCEPTED!

Last night, I drove to my father's house for a last minute visit. I got in and my father greeted me, asked how the drive was, told me where my pile of mail was, asked what I'd like for dinner.

I went to the pile of mail and there was a large envelope from some university in Iowa. Dad said he wasn't sure if he should have kept it and I joked that it was probably an advertisement from a law school (yep, they're still sending me those). Instead I opened it up to find nice quality paper with a letter that began Dear Eileen, we would very much like to publish ...

Eeeeeeee!

There's no date for publication yet, but North American Review wants to publish a poem of mine sometime in the near future! *squeal!*

This particular poem had been out for so long (over ten months) that I assumed the magazine had rejected it (and its packet of friends) without even dropping my SASE back in the mail to let me know the gig was up. It appears I should have been more patient.

I'd come to assume that my first publishing credit was going to come from online newbies that paid only in karma*, so acceptance from someplace like North American Review is really flooring.

*more squealing* Eeeeeee!

(*Not that I'm going to stop submitting to those journals or hoping that I get published in them, just saying this is pretty damn cool.)