Publication Goals 2019, Mid-Year Report: Numbers and What Really Matters

Every January, when I think about my upcoming writing year, in addition to working on one big work-in-progress project, I envision what I’d like to see happen with publication of short pieces of work. I’m usually pretty consistently writing and sending off short memoir, essay, and nonfiction narratives (in the 100 to 2500-word range) and it’s motivating to have some submission and publication goals in mind.  

This year, I knew that by early summer, I’d want to begin my next book—and that is indeed underway…slowly. I’m having fun getting it off the ground, writing some crappy rough draft pages, making plans. (More on this in a few months, as its still in early infancy, and since it’s an experiential project, I first have to do the stuff I want to write about!)

In early 2019 I set the goal of getting 12 short pieces published—roughly one each month—in print or online, in literary journals, mainstream media/sites, anthologies. Mostly I picked that number/frequency to keep myself motivated and on track with writing and revision, and to keep filling the submission pipeline.

Now that we’re just past the halfway mark in the calendar, it’s time for me to evaluate progress. Over the years, I’ve gained a lot from peeking inside other writers’ goal-setting and progress reports, so I’m sharing it with you.

First though, I had to ask myself, how do I define “success” when it comes to this goal? Is it hitting the mark of one piece appearing each and every calendar month? Or just 12 publications by year’s end? Is it more logical to measure success as submitting enough work to reasonably attain 12 acceptances? (Some folks measure submission success in numbers of rejections, figuring that each rejection brings one closer to an acceptance. They have a point, but I don’t like measurements based on negativity myself.) Perhaps success is producing, over the course of the year, enough quality polished short works that are ready to go, even if, by December 31, they didn’t move all the way through the pipeline from submission to 12 acceptances yet?

Well, all of that matters—or at least a little of each of those things, I suppose.

The tally for publication (and one acceptance, w/publication forthcoming) of short pieces in 2019 so far stands at six for creative work, plus one article and one guest post, and looks like this:

-       - An essay on a mainstream website covering couples and relationships. (February)

-       - An essay on a website that focuses on spirituality and mindfulness. (March)

-       - An essay in one of Medium’s edited publications. (July)

-       - A short nonfiction piece in a popular mainstream print anthology. (August)

-       - A piece of flash nonfiction in the online portion of a literary journal. (August)

-       - Another work of flash nonfiction in a specialized online literary journal. (September)

-       - An invited guest post on memoir craft for an educational venue’s website. (April)

-     -A Q&A interview w/a fiction writer about her new book, on a cool literary website (May)

- 

My (exceedingly exhaustive, multi-page, bordering-on-obsessive) submission tracker spreadsheet tells me that at the moment, I have four completed pieces out on submission at a total of 11 venues. That’s not a lot, and a bit short of my usual making-the-rounds total. Twelve publications (not just acceptances) might not happen by year's end.

While the little Post-it list on my desk that lists works still-in-progress says there are three more almost-ready pieces that should make it into that submission pipeline over the next few months, with the teaching semester getting underway in three weeks, that’s perhaps doubtful. (Then of course, there's life, interrupting and insisting on my attention all the damn time!)

Funny thing about writing/publishing goals though, at least for me. Seems that whether I get close, or achieve the goal, or fall just a little bit or a long way short, the result is often the same: I usually feel just fine about it. Because no matter what, I learn something, sometimes something important—about my writing process, my subject matter, myself. 

And especially, I learn more about what it means to move personal nonfiction stories out into the world—and how, when, why, and where I want that to happen.

I’ve learned that by the time a piece is published, it sometimes means something different to me thing than it did when I first wrote it. With some pieces, some stories, simply sharing them with readers is deeply satisfying. With others, the satisfaction comes from having brought a treasured now-gone relative or friend back to life on page or screen, or from sharing a cherished experience with the world, even if that world is a relatively small number of readers who care about true, personal stories.

And in the end, regardless of numbers and goals and keeping track, that’s very often enough.

Did you set a publication goal for this year? How’s it going?

You can find some of the above-mentioned pieces via the links in the left margin of this blog. The latest is “A Grave Duty,” over on Flash Glass, the online home of Glassworks journal from Rowan University (which, in a cool unrelated but fun twist, is where one of my sons is now a student!).

Image: keyboard with petals - Marco Verch at Flickr/Creative Commons

Keeping it Simple: Memoir Finds a Publisher.

Of all the ways I considered announcing this, simple wins out. Here goes.

My memoir, tentatively titled Every Loss Story is a Love Story: The Father Daughter Reunion, will be published by University of Nevada Press in Spring 2018.

If you don't know, the road here was anything but simple, and under the calm simplicity of that sentence, I'm actually screaming with joy, dancing in gratitude, and exploding with a mixture of relief, incredulity, affirmation, and humble pride. 

(Because everyone was out and busy when I got the final news at six on Monday, I had a simple solo dinner. But there was wine (and a nice card) a few hours later when some of the menfolk got back. Yes, hubby owes me a celebratory night out!)

I have a zillion people to acknowledge and thank. For now a blanket thank-you will have to do, to everyone who has and continues to help, by cheering me on, listening to my ideas, reading my pages, offering feedback, sharing publishing advice, telling me plainly when I'm wrong, and of course, by commiserating and celebrating.

Though I've published hundreds of articles, essays, and short memoir pieces over the last couple of decades, and though I've contributed essays to several anthologies, and even though I've ghostwritten chapters and manuscripts--this already feels quite different: my name alone, on the spine.

It feels like my book found its perfect (and, in retrospect, logical) home at University of Nevada Press (more on why in a future post). I'm looking forward to working with the enthusiastic professionals there, who have made me feel like a warmly welcomed and respected artist, from the day I first chatted with the press director at a writers conference this past winter.

I hope you will follow along in my journey from here to next year's published book. I'll try to share useful information that in turn may help other writers. 

In a few days, I begin revisions the publisher wants in a few weeks time. Today and tomorrow, I'm working on completing my author questionnaire and organizing notes with my ideas for PR and marketing. (I did after all, spend 12 years in public relations!)

Here goes.

Guest Blogger Anna Whiston-Donaldson on a Paperback Release after the Hardcover

Lucky for me, I met Anna Whiston-Donaldson at the Hippocampus conference for creative nonfiction writers last month. While I very much enjoyed her company over a shared meal, as is so often the case after making new acquaintances at literary gatherings, it wasn't until I came home and began learning more about the people I'd met (hello, Google!), that my interest in her work and appreciation of her accomplishments soared.

Anna was already a popular blogger who wrote about family foibles, furniture restoration, and fun thrift finds at An Inch of Gray, when tragedy befell her family. What she did with her grief, on the pages of a memoir, and in many other essays and articles, is a gift to others struggling with loss. 

Please welcome Anna Whiston-Donaldson.

Yesterday, September 8, was the paperback release of my memoir, Rare Bird: A Memoir of Loss and Love. It was also the fourth anniversary of the day I lost my young son in a freak flash flood. I had no choice about the odd date coincidence, but I decided to roll with it. Having something else to take up some of my mental space on that horrible “crapiversary” turned out to be a gift.

When I think about it, the theme of “rolling with it” seemed to surround the entire paperback release.

This was a stark contrast to the focused preparations that led to the initial hardcover release one year earlier, when my publicist landed a full page article about my family’s story in the Washington Post, and we tried to harness that interest in a variety of ways.

I treated the hardcover release like a full-time job, mailing Advanced Reader Copies to fellow bloggers, experts in the grief world, and other memoirists. A friend helped me rally 50 bloggers for a blog tour of reviews. A twitter novice with few followers, I set up a Thunderclap campaign where hundreds of people signed up to send out a pre-written tweet about Rare Bird on release day, reaching many more people than I could have on my own. I had articles ready to drop on other sites such as The Daily Beast, Time, and in Woman’s Day Magazine. My publisher offered free books to bloggers in exchange for honest reviews. We also had a video book trailer to share on social media.

All of that preparation, on my side and that of the publisher, meant a strong launch for Rare Bird. The book was on the New York Times Bestseller list for two weeks and was selected one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2014.

This time, however, my head was in a different space. The languid days of summer seemed to last forever, and my teenage daughter didn’t go back to school until the paperback release day, which kept me distracted and distanced from what I needed to do until it was upon me.

Have you ever seen an actor giving a press interview about a movie that was made years before, and he or she is clearly over it? I wasn’t OVER my memoir during the paperback release, but I was ready to think about what might be next for me as far as writing and speaking goes, and was able to let go of making sure each aspect of the release was exactly as I would have chosen it to be.

My baby was already out in the world, so a lot of the anxiety and anticipation about what that would mean had passed.  And while the year before I’d worked like crazy to ensure it had the best possible introduction, now the baby felt like a toddler, and if that toddler wore purple and orange striped socks and wanted to strike out on its own a bit? So be it.

Paperback/Audio cover

 

Original Hardcover

For example, my agent loved the audiobook cover (done by a different company) so much she proposed using it for the paperback. I could not have loved my original cover more, but I felt like…rolling with it.

If a new cover had more mass market paperback appeal, then I was fine with it. It looks gorgeous, and I am grateful to even have a paperback release and the opportunity to get my story into more people’s hands in this way, as I know that is not a given. 

I also didn’t hear much from the publishers or my agent during this time. Due to an office restructuring and move from Colorado to New York, my publicity and marketing team was completely new and didn’t know as much about me as the original team did. We had one conference call, a few emails, and that was it, so while they were working behind the scenes trying to set up interviews, etc, I wasn’t in on the details.

So what did I do for the paperback release? I reminded friends and followers on social media that the paperback was coming. I shared the new cover and a new video on one of the topics from the book. I ate ice cream. I waited.

I don’t know how the numbers will shake out, but I do know that something a fellow writer told me is true: no one cares more about your book than you do. The good news is there are many strategies for getting the word out about your writing. I am happy to have learned a great deal about these during the hardcover release, and I hope that my more passive approach to the paperback release does not mean that my book won’t get into the hands of those who could benefit from it.

Having a sustained focus on getting my book out there meant a great deal of time spent away from the practice of writing. Before long, I began to doubt I had one more thing to say, or that I could ever put another good sentence together. They say that writers write. My own life hadn’t reflected that in over a year, and by the time the paperback release came about, I was ready to let go a little, slow down, and try writing again.

Note from Lisa:  Anna would like to talk to you, if you have any questions about her writing, publishing, or grief process. Just leave them in the comments HERE, and she'll *stop by* the blog over the next week and respond.  She'd also like to send one of my readers a signed paperback copy of Rare Bird. To enter, just leave any comment here at the blog; or tweet this post, tagging @LisaRomeo, by midnight on Friday, September 18, 2015. A random winner will then be chosen. Must have a U.S. Postal address. Be sure to also visit Anna's website, and  follow her on Twitter or at Facebook.

Guest Blogger Shaun Hunter On Going Public With Her Memoir Manuscript

Shaun Hunter's personal essays have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies, including Embedded on the Home Front: Where Military and Civilian Lives Converge (Heritage House, 2012). Soon, she'll be contacting literary presses about her memoir, Under the Skin. Shaun lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where there are only 100 frost-free days per year. But on one of her trips south, we met at the Welcome Table Press essay symposium in New York City in 2011, where Shaun was one of the first writers to flag me down at a conference just to tell me she read my blog. Right then, I invited her to contribute a guest post, whenever she was ready. She's ready. 

Please welcome Shaun Hunter.

“You finish the book,” Janna Malamud Smith writes in An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Mastery. “It is time to reenter the world… It is tempting to turn around.”

I perch on this new place in my writing life: toes millimeters from the latest cliff edge, tempted to turn around. My book-length manuscript, five-plus years in the making, is “finished.”

I have completed other manuscripts – a graduate school thesis, and five biography books written for an educational publisher. Finishing those projects, I felt depleted, yet rewarded: deadlines met; degree conferred; contracts fulfilled. On to the next thing.

Not this time. After making the last edits to Under the Skin, a memoir about mothering, maternal legacy, and malignant melanoma, I thought I would feel buoyant, fired-up for the next leg of the journey. But the view from the edge of the cliff – a murky expanse fraught with rejection and indifference – is terrifying.

“Going public with your art,” author and psychotherapist Janna Smith explains, “is adulthood writ large: There is excitement, satisfaction, praise; there is also criticism, disappointment, and embarrassment.”

A mixed bag. The full meal deal of being a grown-up. A few weeks shy of my 52^nd birthday, I’ve been around the block. I can usually spot the bright-green shoots of my own illusions and prune them back. I have thickish skin. Why is the prospect of going public with my memoir so paralyzing?

Last summer, my twenty-year-old daughter went hang-gliding on a backpacking trip in Europe. I heard about her adventure on Twitter, hours after she flung herself into a Swiss valley. At the time, I was relieved she hadn’t alerted me to her plan in advance, and glad I found out after she’d landed safely, unscathed and exuberant.

I went paragliding today! It was by far the most incredible thing I’ve ever done.

After the news sunk in, I realized that this determined, self-aware daughter of mine had checked off yet another fear on her list toward becoming an adult.

           

According to Smith, when it comes to artists going public with their work, many finish but proceed no further.

What about me? Am I going to be content with letting a completed manuscript sit in a drawer, or am I going to do what it takes to get this 200-page memoir to market? I’ve toyed with the idea of giving up, “living as a civilian” as the poet Shawna LeMay calls it. Like LeMay, during this long Alberta winter I have considered “surrendering in the same way a person who has hypothermia wants to go to sleep in the deepening snow.”

Bury the manuscript in the drifts of paper in my office. Hole up and write only for my own pleasure, sheltered from the snow squalls of rejection. Suss out another line of work. I know in my bones that none of these options is viable.

For years, I have been inching toward going public: workshopping essays in classes and critique groups, and publishing a few; reading my work to strangers; and most recently, pasting my shining face on my first website that identifies me as a writer.

I know that ego is going to push me -- and my manuscript -- out the door. After a decade of trying to absorb Buddhist ideas about egolessness and impermanence after my cancer diagnosis, this is uncomfortable to admit. But Smith’s book about the psychological dimensions of art-making emboldens me: I want to be seen. I care about being heard. It’s not a fantasy about being famous, but the pressing human need to be recognized and valued. “Few desires,” Smith writes, “are as primal.”

Of course, a publishing contract would be sweet compensation for my years of labor on this book; I will settle for active, visible participation. In a society caught up with “showing and spending,” as Adam Gopnik writes in a recent New Yorker article, I want to be part of a community of artists “devoted to seeing and making.”

Janna Smith assures me I can learn how to navigate the gaping canyon between private and public. Cultivate your saleswoman self, she suggests. Clothe your emotions in Gore-Tex. Summon bravado.

Get in the game.

After my daughter’s trip, she showed me the picture she snapped in mid-glide: her feet in a pair of borrowed sneakers dangling a hundred meters above solid ground. I could feel the mountain air press against my face, hear the snap of the nylon wing above me, sense panic gusting through my gut. In that glimpse into my daughter’s adventure, I imagined what it would be like to soar.

I have finished my manuscript. It is time to reenter the world. I will resist the temptation to turn around. I will strap myself to a sturdy, wind-worthy sailing craft, and step off the cliff into my adult life.

Again. Always.

Writers and the artifacts of publication: Who needs clips and copies?

When I was a teenager, writing for the school newspaper, I couldn't get my hands on enough copies of the final, printed product. The same held when I began writing for magazines and newspapers. Today, when an essay appears in a book, I want at least one copy. Ditto for literary journals; and for the work which appears only online, I want a nice print-out. (Yes, I have links to everyting that's link-able, but that's different.) On my bookshelves, in my file cabinet, and in my basement and attic (where they have not, I hope, been chewed by mice or mold), copies of almost everything I ever got published, reside. It's not that I take them out and reread them, and now that we're long past the days when postal-mailing photocopies of clips to editors was essential to getting new writing assignments, I still just like knowing they are there.

I thought this was what all writers did, post-publication.

But maybe not.

Recently, two experiences have reminded me that not every writer needs to have something tangible in order to savor the writing they've completed and sent out into the world. The first reminder came via a very frequently-published writer friend (16 books, thousands of magazine and journal pieces), who nonchalantly confided she often never bothers to secure copies of the magazines and journals her work appears in; that she must have a printed copy of books number two and five around somewhere, but maybe not; that she's just too busy to spend time or energy collecting and storing "that stuff."

Huh. I found this interesting, but it was also easy to discount, in the vein of…well, if I were as frequently published as she, and had a multiple-book contract, and had just optioned a novel for TV, and was routinely invited to write for major media outlets, I could afford to be that coolly casual too. But since those things don't apply to me, I simply can't understand.

Then, there's this: During the school year just ended, my elder son wrote two lengthy articles for his high school newspaper, both wrap-ups of a sport season. He reviewed coverage of past games, interviewed coaches and players, dug up (and calculated) many statistics, wrote several drafts, and worked hard to revise and polish (and only asked me to weigh in once, maybe twice).

On deadline days, he attached his story to an email to the newspaper's student editor, and hit send. I haven't seen the articles since. Oh, they appeared in the newspapers, he got some compliments (or so he said), and my son saw each of the newspapers. Once. But then very quickly, each edition landed in that mysterious place in every teenage boy's life (and backpack) where physical things go to die. And that's just fine, as far as he's concerned.

Not me.

"Don't you want to have copies to keep?" I've asked. (What I really mean, of course, is don't you want to show me and Dad and have us be impressed? Don't you need/want to hear us say how great they look in print? Don't you want me to make multiple photocopies to send to Nana?)

"It doesn't matter," he's said.

"It does," I try to convince him. I talk to him about clip files, an online portfolio, college applications, wanting one day to get an assignment to write for a college newspaper. Or even if he never writes another thing, I ask why he doesn't want to just have them, have something to show for his work? How will he feel in 20 years when he wants to show someone and has nothing to show?

It does no good.

Here's how he responds: He had a blast writing the articles. He worked hard. He loved doing it. He thinks he did a really good job (I think so too). It was fun. But it's just a few issues of the school newspaper, Mom. Get over it.

I think I get what he's telling me (and maybe what my writer friend above, was saying too): It's not about the publication, or at least not ALL about the publication.

It's about the process. The writing, as in writing-as-an-act, not writing as work, or writing as prelude to a product.

It's a useful reminder, and I get it. I do.

I still want those school newspapers, damn it.

I could send an email to the newspaper's faculty advisor. I could. With tremendous restraint, I don't.

Write. Publish in Good Company. Read.

I was updating my writing/teaching CV, which turned into a half-day project; not because I have so many interesting new accomplishments to add, but because each time I pulled a magazine or journal off the shelf to check the issue date in which my work appeared, and every time I clicked to verify that a link to published work was indeed still working, I would find myself reading the work of fellow contributors.

How often do writers take the time to read what surrounds our own work – whether in a print or online venue? Certainly we make it a practice to read a magazine, journal, or website deeply before submitting to be sure it would be a good fit for our work. But how about after, when the piece actually appears? Do we read all, or at least a good portion, of the other material which appears in that issue?

Sometimes I’m guilty of only checking on my own work – are the final edits correct, is my name spelled right, does the writer bio appear, are links working, is my work where and how I expected, what do I think of the photos or illustrations chosen by the editor? Sometimes I admit, that’s the extent of it. Then I either put the journal, anthology, or magazine on a shelf (for safety, I tell myself), or bookmark the link into my published work file, and call it a day.

Not always. I’ve spent hours reading the other essays which appear in the anthologies to which I am often fortunate enough to contribute. I discover new-to-me writers, revel in the work of writers I already admire (and sometimes know personally), and usually find myself marveling at how such an assortment of good writers have found so many interesting angles from which to approach the same theme.

When it’s a magazine in which my work appears, I might leaf through quickly, put a sticky note on pages I want to read later. Then I get busy and forget that. For work that’s online, I’m more apt to notice interesting titles of other work, or bylines I recognize, and usually click right away. But when I get there, do I read the piece through to the end, or do I email it to myself to read later, and then lose it in the abyss of the email inbox?

A few months ago, I decided that when a literary venue of any kind is interested enough in my work to publish it, then I’m going to “return the favor” and make a more conscious effort, when the piece appears, to read more of the other writing within its pages. By doing so, I’ve read wonderful work, some of which I’ve studied closely for craft and structure, learning a few things in the process.

I’ve also gotten several ideas for future work, connected online with at least three new writers whose work intrigued me enough to visit their websites or blogs and reach out. I’ve been entertained, informed, and pushed to more thoughtful consideration of important issues. This makes so much sense. If we like a media venue enough to want our work to appear in its print or online pages, wouldn’t it mean that we respect the editors’ choices? That we will find, likely not more than a few pages or a click away from our own work, other writing to inspire, challenge, and take pleasure in?

The other surprising advantage of doing this, I’ve noticed, is perspective. I realize my work is just one small part of a whole, no more or less important than what surrounds it; that as independent as writers are, we are also part of a team which makes that particular issue of that particular literary venue work.

Occasionally I’ve read a piece of mine in print and agonized, “how awful.” But when I read pieces on the pages before and after, they seemed so good, that I had to reason that if my work is swimming in the same waters, then it’s likely better than I think. On other occasions, I’ve read something of mine and smugly thought how good it was. Then I skipped around a bit, read some other pieces which seemed far, far better, and decided how lucky I was to even be in that kind of company. Then there were the (very few) times when I found my work surrounded by other work which seemed on a lower skill and craft level, and then I knew I had probably undershot when I made the submission. No matter, I just chalk it up to the learning curve of submissions.

So, fellow writers, if our work appears side by side, adjacent, or nearby, from here on in, I’ll be reading.

Now, back to that CV. And the worry that it’s not as impressive as it could be. Too bad there’s not a section on it for reading. Now that would take up some pretty impressive space.

Self-Promotion 101 for Writers: Point Readers to Your Work. Check.

Time for a bit of shameless self-promotion. Since I do it rarely on the blog, I don't feel guilty about it one bit.


One of my personal essays is running in Skirt, a print and online magazine. This one's especially dear to me. Although it recalls a time in my life that was particularly painful, by looking at that period through a particular lens, I came to an understanding of an elemental truth beyond the current misery.


Here's the opening.....

When my first child, Sean, was nine months-old, I regarded myself as a failure at motherhood. My husband, Frank, would come in from work each day to find me at the kitchen table, sobbing. I would explain it all again: I am miserable. I am no good at this. I do not know how to be a mother.
I needed to know I could do something right. A quilt seemed like a worthy project. Systematic. Sequential. One square after another...

You can read the complete essay here on the Skirt! site.

Tomorrow, we shall return to our regularly scheduled (non self-promoting) programming. Thanks for reading.

Writers, Make Peace With Submissions

Submissions are fun, right? Okay, not exactly. But does the whole process of submitting one's work have to be such an angst-ridden, anxiety-producing activity for writers? Or is there a way to transform the experience -- the submitting, waiting, interpreting the feedback, and yes even the rejections – into a more creative part of the writing life?

I think there is.

During my workshops, I mention this from time to time when the subject of publication comes up, but tonight I'm making a presentation entirely on this topic.

So I found it quite fitting that when I sat down a few hours ago to get my final notes in order, I took a quick detour to my email inbox -- where I found a rejection from a magazine editor in response to an article idea I'd queried about.

I don't know this editor and have never written for her magazine before, but I'm pretty sure the first paragraph of her note was pretty standard; that is, short on specifics, one of those mixed efforts at tact and firmness. But the second paragraph, in which she talks about my idea in specifics, and includes a piece of personal information which tells me she not only read and carefully considered the pitch, but also has some personal understanding of the topic, seemed to me an encouraging sign. If my query made her think, caused her to deliberate, and to call up her personal connection to the idea, then perhaps I'd gotten in the vicinity of her (and hence her magazine's) editorial radar. In other words, as rejections go, a pretty good one.

Not more than an hour later, I retrieved my postal mail. You know what's coming, right? Another rejection, this one from a literary journal to which I had submitted an essay a few months back. Again, the standard preprinted thanks-but-no-thanks two-sentence form, but at the bottom, a hand written note from the nonfiction editor (whom I met once at a conference), explaining exactly what he felt this particular essay lacked, suggesting how I might revise it, and inviting me to send it again if I choose to rewrite.

Now, as rejections go, a fabulous one.

Don't worry, I get plenty of the normal "bad" rejections, too. I especially growl at the emailed one-liners: "We're going to pass. Regards, The Editors." Okay then.

Over the years, I have developed coping mechanisms for what otherwise might be considered the drudgery of dealing with rejections, with never hearing back from publications at all (my favorite), with the stalled inertia of a submissions drought, and the (rare but occasional) acceptance flurry.

These include mental gymnastics such as understanding that although one may amass a dozen or more NO responses, it only takes one YES to get published, and that theoretically the more rejections one accumulates, the closer one gets to that singular yes. (Math and statistical wizards -- in case I’m a bit off base here -- please don't disabuse me of this notion; it keeps me sane.)

Then there's the old-fashioned physical pleasure of crossing a publication off the scribbled list I keep in the front flap of the file folder for each essay, and also the fun of strolling over to the shredder and inserting the rejection into its sharp teeth. On a bad day, I've even been known to print out an emailed rejection just so I can put it in the shredder and hear that grinding whir. Listen, on some days, we writers need these small acts: take that, editor!

On a more serious note, I am adamant in my opinion that a robust submissions strategy can complement the craft side of the work. Marketing is not evil; it's a must for every writer. Rather than avoiding it, or only tolerating it, why not integrate the submissions process into the writing life in a welcoming way?

One important shift is to create a highly personalized submission plan that takes into account not only which piece to send to which publication, but also addresses the nuances of why. For example, Why this publication? Not in general terms that apply to any writer -- "because this journal has a great reputation and would look good on my CV"; but Why this publication for my (current and future) writing career? Why for this piece at this time? Those answers will vary for each writer.

For example, the answer might be, because this piece is set in the southwest and this particular journal is published by an Arizona university and often publishes material with regional themes. Or, because this journal pays well and right now I need to generate more income from my writing. Or, because I respect the editors of this journal and want to see how they react to my work. Or, because right now I need more publishing credits and even though this publication is not as prestigious as I'd like, it seems like exactly the right home for this particular piece, so my odds are good.

In other words, if a writer can integrate the goals of their submission plan with the goals and needs of their writing career (current and future), then the odds of having a submission practice that feels like a creative aspect of one's writing life -- instead of a pain-in-the-neck part -- greatly increases.

There's a lot more to it, of course. I'll be coming back to this topic again. Because there is one thing I hate more than a bad rejection, and that is hearing a writer say, "Oh I hate sending my stuff out. It's all just sitting in my computer (or desk)."

Because guess what? If that's where your work is, you've already rejected it before anyone else can.

Guest Blogger Christin Geall on Writing in Heaven and That Other Place

In a new situation, surrounded by people I've never met, within a short time I'm usually able to point out those with whom I am likely to strike up a friendship. Then there are those unpredictable friendships that take me by surprise. That's the way it was when I was befriended by Christin Geall during my first MFA residency three years ago. On the surface, Christin was – is – so many things I am not: in her 30s, gorgeous, intelligent and highly educated in several languages and varied disciplines, comfortable writing about sex, diplomatic, relaxed at parties, spontaneous, and succinctly forthright (here's what I mean – when I asked for a bio, she sent this: Christin Geall writes nonfiction from her home in Victoria, British Columbia. A Stonecoast MFA grad, she has an agent, a lover, a son and a dog, but she still isn't sure if she's lived the ending to her first book.).

One thing (among many) which I admire about Christin is how she is able to claim the badge of writer, regardless of what her publishing status may be at any given point in time. She's been a newspaper columnist and magazine feature writer, but more recently has been less published, yet also more sure of being a writer. Me, I seem to keep needing that affirmation of frequent publication, yet I keep hoping that my friend's belief in her right to call herself a writer--with or without frequent publication--will rub off on me.

Please welcome Christin Geall.

A writer dies. She goes to heaven. At the pearly gates she meets St. Peter who asks, “Would you like to stay here for eternity or would you like to take a look at hell first?” The woman, thinking what writer never wanted a glimpse of hell, replies, “Sure. I’ll take a peek. Thanks.” In hell, the woman sees a forest of tall fir trees, densely packed, their bases burning, the air gray with smoke. “You may want to look up,” St. Peter suggests. Atop every tree the woman sees a person typing on a laptop. Chains glint in the light. “What are they doing there?” She asks. “They’re writing.”
“I think I’d like to see heaven.” St. Peter takes her up through the clouds, opens the pearly gates and they again enter a burning forest of tall fir trees. On top of every tree sits a writer, chained to a laptop. The woman turns to St. Peter. “I don’t understand. There’s no difference.”
“Well,” he says, “the only difference is that in heaven you’re published.”

Janet Burroway told this joke in a chandeliered ballroom in Chicago last week at the annual conference of The Association of Writers and Writing Programs. In the room sat a couple hundred people, mainly women, curious about the lives of those in ‘heaven’ - the women with multiple books, essays, professorships, prizes and invitations. These ‘women of a certain age,’ as the panel described them, also included Hilda Raz, Alicia Ostriker, Linda Pastan and Rosellen Brown.

I must reveal at this point that I am not a journalist by trade so my notes are sketchy. I tend to draw in my margins. Nevertheless, between the scrolls, I captured a few pithy one-liners about the writing life, (attributed where possible):

· The two most difficult things to write about: 1. Your mother 2. Yourself.
· Beware the twin imposters: success and failure.
· Do a writing program, but remember -- you have to figure out how to make writing a continuing part of your life after you are done.
· Ego will always demand more – money, prizes, prestige. So just focus on the work.
· Invent a discipline. Sit down for a few hours every day, no matter what. Eventually you’ll get so bored, you’ll write something.
· ‘If it’s any good, it will sell’ is a capitalist mantra and frankly, not true.
· Work is its own cure. You have to like it more than being loved. – Marge Piercy
· We get the children we deserve.
· Kill your censor and write what you are afraid to write.
· Share your work in a community.
· It’s fear rather than time that prevents us.
· Keep a low overhead. – Grace Paley

I’m neither young nor aged, but I’ll take hindsight over foresight any day. Writerly wisdom is too rare and I’m not in heaven yet. Sure, I’ve been published here and there, but I do not have one book. Not one. I sense this puts me in writer’s purgatory, between heaven and hell, where I am destined to smolder atop a tree of anxiety and ambition until my agent says, “You’re done.” This could take years; I once read it takes five years, on average, to get that first book out. And then? The pearly gates open to a new forest of writers, typing atop their proverbial trees.

No wonder you gotta love the work.

Writer Q & A: Tables Turned

I like doing question-and-answer interviews here on this blog and as a freelance assignment when I'm asked to interview an interesting person. The other day, the tables were turned.

I was interviewed yesterday over at Freelancedom.

Steph Auteri's questions had me remembering (mostly happily, if a bit nostalgically) some of the earlier, more unusual, stages of my career. They also made me think about what's going on now and where I might go in the future -- all signs of a good interviewer. Even if I did get a little squirmy when I had to answer.

Feed Me! - When Writers Can Dish, Including Me

It doesn't get any better than this. One of my essays will appear in the same collection as pieces written by two of the excellent faculty mentors I had the pleasure to work with during my MFA program, Ann Hood and Joyce Maynard. (Okay I guess it could be better; it could be my very own book. Still.)

The collection, due out next week, is Feed Me! Writers Dish about Food, Eating, Weight and Body Image, edited by Harriet Brown, from the Ballantine Books imprint of Random House. Besides the work of Hood and Maynard (and little ole me!), the book features the strong voices of Susan O'Doherty, Sari Botton, Diana Abu-Jaber, and many others.

I've got lots to say about the book, its core messages about body acceptance and how American women think about and behave around food, and the powerful and unfortunately large role these issues play in our lives. But I won't go into all that here and now.

For now, I just want to share with you a digital sneak peek of the book, which features three of the essays (not mine, sniff!) and the introduction. [You may need to do the quick, free sign-up when you get to Isuu, to download for easier-on-the-eyes reading; It's worth it – the 47-pages are funny, authentic, raw and real.] While all of the writers have done a superb job, each from their own idiosyncratically unique viewpoint, I especially recommend Caroline Leavitt's "The Grief Diet" which you can read on the advance peek.

There is a reading scheduled in New Paltz, NY, next week, a panel discussion at Syracuse University in February, and possibly others coming up in Manhattan and northern New Jersey.

On this blog, I try to only mention my own publications once and move on, but in this case, please bear with me if I gush periodically at my good fortune, and chronicle some of the book's journey as it sails into the world on January 27. Look for a give-away sometime in February, too.

Guest Blogger Vicki Forman on the Copy Editing process for her first book

While I am at the Vermont Studio Center for a couple of weeks, my intention is not to blog too much. Then again, it may turn out I will welcome the chance to get away from the manuscript and connect. Since I’m not sure which way it will go, I've asked a few writer friends to help fill this space.

Vicki Forman first caught my attention with her special needs parenting column at Literary Mama. (Her last column there must be read sitting down, and with a prepared heart.) Her work has also appeared in the Seneca Review, Santa Monica Review, and the anthologies, Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child With Special Needs, and This Day: Dairies From American Women. She lives outside Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.
I asked Vicki for a glimpse into the wonderful, nerve-wracking and occasionally tedious pre-publication process she's currently involved in for her first book, a memoir, This Lovely Life: A Memoir of Premature Motherhood (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), due out in July. Her manuscript earned the 2008 Bakeless Literary Prize for creative nonfiction.

Please welcome Vicki Forman.

Great news: you’ve finished a book and even landed a contract. You’re in love with your agent, and even more in love with your editor. From here on out, it’s all fun and games, right?

Sort of. Writing a book is absolutely hard. But getting a book through production—from the friendly Word document you have come to know and love into a thing in print, between covers—is a different sort of hard. There are tricky steps to learn, and all the nomenclature that comes with them (blurbing, bound galleys, ARCs,) and then there is the simple psychological aspect of seeing your own words become more and more engraved in stone as the publishing wheels turn.

My own book is currently making its way through production and I recently had the first encounter with the fact of my words becoming real when I was asked to review copyedits. Most writers will confess to a love-hate relationship with copyeditors. We need them to point out errors in continuity; they remind us of the rules of grammar and punctuation (rules we may adhere to only in the most perfunctory way as we create). In other words, I fully expected the task of reviewing copyedits to be strenuous at best, tiresome at worst.

I didn’t expect to find myself faced with words, now reviewed and altered by someone else—and a stranger to me at that. I am thoroughly familiar, to the point of intimacy, with this book that landed on my desk. I’ve been writing it for four years. But to see words changed, suggestions made, grammar or style questioned? These marks on the page had the effect of severing me, in some elemental way, from those same words. They were not only mine now, they belonged to a reader. And a reader with a point of view.

Which is exactly the point. The difference between that same friendly Word document you’ve come to know and love as a writer, and a published book, is that it will have readers. As my favorite songwriter, Jeff Tweedy says in “What Light”:

"And if the whole world's singing your songs
And all your paintings have been hung
Just remember what was yours is everyone's from now on"

My first reaction in seeing the make up of my sentences questioned was to become defensive. But then I remembered Tweedy’s words and realized that I had a new job: not simply to protect those words, but to see how they were now being experienced by someone else. My job as a writer had evolved into that of shepherd.

And so shepherd I did. I looked at every suggested change and asked myself if it made the sentence better. I reread aloud each new sentence to evaluate rhythm and clarity. I made at least two passes through the book before sending it back to my publisher, and wrote a careful cover letter explaining (in general terms) the changes I chose to accept—and reject.

A good friend explained that while I was the performer, the publisher was in charge of the auditorium. If they moved the metaphorical lights or microphones of my words, I could certainly move them back if I chose. But I should also know that they knew what they were doing when they moved them. And that our goal, in the end, was the same: a solid piece of writing we could all stand behind.

What follows is an insider’s guide to surviving the copyediting process:

- Ask your editor or production manager about house style. The publisher may even have a writer’s guide to which you can refer. Make sure you know which style guides the copyeditor has used (e.g., Chicago Manual of Style) as well as which dictionaries.

- Clearly understand directions for accepting or rejecting changes. These instructions should come in a cover letter from the production manager.

- Respect the copyeditor for being better at his or her job than you. This person has been hired for a reason, and it’s not simply to make your life complicated.

- Enlist the help of a friend. In some cases, I was so close to certain sentences, I honestly couldn’t tell if a suggested change was better or not. I ran at least four or five such examples past another good friend who has also read my manuscript.

- Allow yourself enough time. You do not want to rush this process. It will take far longer than you expect, and you will have a hard time reading more than 40-50 pages at a time without losing perspective.

- Meet your deadline. I know many authors feel they can squeeze an extra day or two at each production deadline, but your book is just one of many in the pipeline. I have worked with production managers before and they value above all writers who help them stay on schedule.

- Find out about next steps, and prepare yourself for them. If you know you’re going to get bound galleys at a time when you have other deadlines, for example, try to clear some room in your schedule. Each part of the process takes longer than you think, and brings up unexpected psychological aspects in your personality. I had completely forgotten about my emotional “finishing” problem, for example, until I took so long reviewing the manuscript I was forced to send it back via Express Mail. An expensive quirk.

A few last words: as with any step in the writing process, it’s important to enjoy yourself along the way. I felt a great sense of relief and accomplishment when I put the manuscript into the envelope and sent it on its way. Always honor each moment—you never know when you’ll get to do this again.