The Wait

Here's the thing I forgot about writing and submitting short stories (or any kind of fiction/poetry): waiting.

I remember rejections well, and the oldest wounds, the first ones I suffered back in 2007 when I first began this journey, healed so well--I have a nice, thick layer of scar tissue. Rejections haven't bothered* me in a long, long time. They are part of the game, and if they bother* you, stop submitting.

But waiting... man. I forgot about the waiting. Some markets are lightning fast, especially a few pro-paying venues like Nightmare and Clarkesworld. But chances of appearing in those venues is slim. I'll submit to them when I can (i.e., I have a story which might, just might slip by the first round of reads), but they are the whitest of the white whales. Most publications have wait time well over a month or more.

Tick... tick... tick...

And then the inevitable rejection letter--or, sometimes, an acceptance.

Here's what I know now: I'm writing and submitting because I want to tell stories. Lots of stories. Big, semitrailer truckloads of stories. And some of them will be good.

Aaron, you say, you could just post your stories here. You could just upload them to Smashwords and Amazon KDP. 

Yes. I could. But I want to tell the best stories I can--and the submissions process has been good to me. I've learned and become a better writer because of the wait, the rejections, the occasional feedback from editors, and the sweet taste of acceptance. I've become a better writer because I've worked with editors. I've become a better writer because I try to listen to advice, sort the good from bad, and take what works back to the word processor with me.

So I'll take the wait. I'll keep writing. This is what I love: writing and telling stories, the best stories I can. This is the path I've chosen because of how it fills me, not because of any reward on the other side.

Dream on. Like this guy (and listen to an amazing interview on NPR):

* Edited to add... Here's what I mean by "bother": if you get physically ill, want to throw a tantrum and/or respond in a negative way to a rejecting editor, or find that rejection affects your ability to write (after the requisite "rejection hangover") then you need to find another creative endeavor in which to engage.

Giant's Robes on a Dwarfish Thief

Neil Gaiman won the inaugural Author Blog Award for his use of Twitter recently, and to quote him:

“Use your blog to connect. Use it as you. Don’t ‘network’ or ‘promote.’ Just talk."

Now, like a number of fledglings, I want to be Neil Gaiman. No, not for the obvious reasons (fame, bestseller status, etc.). I want to be him for reasons which lie firmly in my control. I just want to be me. Just talk. Sometimes it seems hard, though.

The infamous Interweb^TM overflows with advice for fledglings on what to do with a blog, Twitter, Facebook...on and on. Giant's robes on a dwarfish thief, me being the thief. I've not read a thing which rings more true than Gaiman's simple "Just talk."

With all the focus on "Branding" a fledgling author can easily loose themselves. I labored too long to add a tag line to the flag at the head of the blog. Yeah, I write pulp, only it's not sawdust anymore, it's made of electrons. And fantastic horror? No, that doesn't mean fantastic as in great; I'm using fantastic in the grand, old-school Weird Tales tradition (Weird Tales of the 1930s, that is). Me? I'm a Bella Lugosi/Boris Karloff/EC comics from the '50s/Twilight Zone hybrid who was scared shitless by the slasher horror of the '80s when I grew up. I'm thirty-five and still afraid of the dark. I choke up when I read a really kick ass poem aloud, even in front of my class full of students. Sometimes I'm too introspective for my own good, and self doubt starts to entrench in the darker corners of my brain. I believe words hold power, even when they're cobbled together in a piece of pulp-fiction horror. I'm not ashamed to admit any of that. It's me.

Just talk.

I'll try.

Splitting Hairs?

After writing yesterday's post, I did a quick Google search for "dark magical realism". I wanted to be sure I wasn't misusing the term or lost in literary left field. The search produced 127 hits (that is with quotation marks around the phrase...the only way to find that exact search string).

Huh?

One of the sites referred to a book about Neil Gaiman's work on Sandman. Okay...not exactly what I think of when I use the phrase "dark magical realism". Gaiman's Sandman work leaned heavily on mythology. The first two sites on the list didn't even refer to the phrase intact. (e.g. a sentence ended with the word "dark" and "magical realism" started the next sentence)

Now I know the modifier "dark" isn't necessary. Magical realism has become a large enough literary umbrella that it has plenty of space for darkness. But I do think there is an important difference between a story like Julio Cortázar's "House Taken Over" (what I would consider a seminal work of dark magical realism) and Márquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings". One instills a quiet sense of discomfort; the other, wonder.

Some argue that magical realism doesn't exist at all...it's just another name for fantasy. (Terry Pratchett was quoted as saying "[magic realism] is like a polite way of saying you write fantasy.")

I disagree. Fantasy means something to people, even in rule-bending contemporary fantasy. Personally, I expect fantastical creatures or worlds or at least the suggestion of those things. Magical realism doesn't go so far...at least not in my understanding. It is more subtle, and in being so, more strange. I can suspend my disbelief just that much more when a story makes subtle changes to my real world. When those changes are dark, I find it even more unsettling. Vampires don't scare me. Having something never mentioned by name take over my house, does.

Maybe I'm just splitting genre hairs. Mostly, the lack of "dark magical realism" hits on Google surprised me.