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Wide-eyed & Wild-eyed in Writing & Submissions

MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAIn one of the last days before the regular job really kicked into gear, I sat manic and crazed in front of my computer revising a short story and posting a fellowship application and slamming a 300-word essay together in 45 minutes flat.

Maybe it was an hour, and maybe this wasn’t my very best work, but it was definitely a wide-eyed, wild-eyed attack on writing and submitting.

These last-minute attempts at literary scholarship don’t always produce prize-winning material (…wait, do they ever?), but they do produce. In that strange and stubborn moment, when I can do anything but sit one more day on a story, I find a tiny bit of hope and possibility and a fire rekindled, which for me was relief after a very quiet summer.

Sure, I anticipate the usual No’s, No thank you’s, and “Really…No” to hit my inbox in the next several months. Still, I don’t regret hitting SEND. After all, as Sherman Alexie says in this podcast with Jess Walter, submitting, acceptances, and rejections are all part of the “entire process of becoming a writer.”

Mantras help me push that process, phrases like “Why not?” and “Fearless writing” and (more recently) “Do the foot work.”

IMG_0424What that means is that one day in doing the foot work to get your portfolio together for the submission to that literary journal so far out of your league it’s laughable, you will sift through all those old stories and rejections (because who are we kidding, you save every one), and you will discover that half of the stories you sent out, which bounced back time and again, eventually did find a home.

It took countless tries, but they made it to publication, all because you sat crazed at the computer that one Monday afternoon and hit SUBMIT again and again.

What are you waiting for?

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Smoothing Over Scrutiny

Yesterday, I found out I didn’t make the cut for a writing gig. I half expected such, but somehow seeing the list of writers who did make it, nudged me into a writer’s pity-party. Then, my husband and I moved furniture between two floors last night and discombobulated the house as well as my psyche.

So, here it is Wednesday, which calls for a word of the day post. Wordsmith.org threw me for a loop with this week’s theme — miscellaneous words. I didn’t know what to expect this morning when I pulled up the site. After I read today’s word, my vision panned out from the laptop screen to me: standing at an open door, staring into a dark and empty room, hearing an echo when I asked my muse for any ideas.

“Hello?”

Her lack of answer told me she’s still recovering from yesterday’s pity-party. I’ll have to go on without her.

Today’s word is avoirdupois, a French word gone English. I took four semesters of French in college, documented only by my transcript and a vague memory of a late night phone message left on my friend Rick’s answering machine. He really did know how to speak French; I, through a filter of too-many-Amstel-Lights, babbled in misplaced accents and overdone R’s. Rick never returned my message, a quiet reprimand to stick to writing English.

Its roots in Old French, avoirdupois rolls off the tongue with class and style. But, in English, the word is a disguise for the truth. A noun, avoirdupois means the heaviness or weight of a person.

“Did you just see…?”
“Yeah.”
“Was that…?”
“Susan.”
“Did she…?”
“She did. But, you have to admit, she carries her avoirdupois with elegance.”

Or, on a more personal note, I’m reminded of my son’s recent side comment to me after my husband held his pants waist out and showed off the inches he’s lost since bumping up his running schedule:
“Mommy, maybe you should start running like daddy.”

He hasn’t learned to finesse in English discourse. But in my own defense, I’m a writer, not a runner.

And, some things you just can’t hide.