Indie publishing queen Zoe Winters, who keeps accidentally inspiring me to write these mondo-long blog posts when I’m innocently trying to procrastinate by reading her blog in the first place, spoke today about the myth of The New York Gatekeepers of Publishing.

From Zoe's post:

There is a lot of hullabaloo about “good writing” vs. “bad writing”. And how do you know if you’re a “good writer” or not? The sad truth is that you can’t. I think one of the reasons the gatekeepers hold SUCH strong sway over unpublished authors is that they NEED to know if they’re good or not.

And the reason they need to know, probably more than other types of artists, is that EVERYBODY thinks they can write. Whether they can or not. Everybody believes they have a book in them. It’s not like other forms of art like painting and sculpting and film where people seem to have some basic grasp of whether or not they suck.

So many writers don’t have enough self-confidence. And those that do often end up being the ones everybody mocks for self-publishing crap. So people are afraid if they have self-confidence it must mean they suck and are just deluded. So much ego is wrapped up in the act of writing.

When a NY publisher says: “Yes! We will buy this work!” They are validating you. They’re an authority figure. To many writers these gatekeepers mean more to them than end readers.

She’s right. Validation is a slippery thing.

I’ve found more trouble dispelling that crazymaking need for outward validation than any other aspect of the illusionary writing life. Every time I thought my big break was imminent, something always came along to knock me back down to my comfortable place on the bottom rung.

Usually, it was me.

And before you say, "Well, I don't care what other people think, I'm writing for myself," let me tell you: writing to publish “for yourself” as an end goal is impossible emotional level to hit and score against. Here's why.

As a naive college kid, I remember thinking, "I'll be a professional writer when I send out my first query letter to a major publishing house."

Then I did just that, and it turned out to be not that big of a deal. My family was unimpressed that the Highlights editor hand-penned a couple of words on one corner of my green form letter. If I remember correctly, it was just my name, but I still did the happy dance. At first.

Of course, it wasn’t an acceptance or anything, so I decided that had been a dumb proclamation and aimed my sights higher. At, you know, publication, even.

A few years and several “real jobs” later, on a total fluke, I got a temporary gig as a journalist and it stuck. I was making $30 a week. The checks came in my name, like clockwork, for my words. In fact, I still remember the date and the weekday I first saw my name on the front page of a real, live newspaper.

But it wasn't making-a-living money, and I wasn't being creative; I was being a hack. I would know I was a real artist when I made some cash for something I felt like writing, not a city council recap. Something with authority, some prestige.

Then I thought, "Well, when I get my first acceptance for something creative, that'll be how I know I've arrived." I sent out a few subs and I got one, from a now-defunct online poetry zine. (Actually, I was in their last issue. Did I break it? Sorry, guys.)

But that was just a blog-style zine on some guy's free webpage. It wasn't a real, paper journal. (Don't hit me, Zoe, this is past tense. We all know better now than to doubt digital.) I decided would know I was an actual writer when I made it onto a physically printed page which I could show my family. That would prove it.

Then I did, but it was poetry. It wasn't a story. Try again. Then I got that, too. But it wasn't for money, so I still had qualms about telling everyone else I was a "professional writer".

I soon started working at a subsidy publishing house, editing books and learning how to do layout and define bindings to newbies and call Ingram and register copyrights. I made a couple of hundred a week for playing with books.

But they weren't my books, so they didn't count.

I became part owner of the publishing house when the former manager and majority owner had a huge shake-up, and I got to reorganize things to a degree. One of my partners and I decided to do an anthology, and we did. My name was right there on the cover. I wrote the introduction, selected the cover art, and wrote the press releases. I gave copies of the book to everyone for Christmas, and my extended family started thinking I was famous.

But I knew the truth; I had self-published it, and it didn't have to pass anyone's muster but my own. I knew it didn't count...

I could go on and on, but I've kinda already done that.

Just trust me when I say there has been plenty more, and it’s all the same pattern.

Between those college kid days and where I am now were a ton of other random publishing jobs, lots of writerly dues-paying, and nods of validation from many people I used to be completely terrified of and intimidated by. Now I publish fiction and non-fiction pieces in all sorts of places, report weekly for a regional newspaper, edit other people's books at a good wage, publish a literary magazine, own a book and graphic design company, and make enough between all these things to stay home and write exclusively.

My child goes to daycare so I can write, make conference calls, and manage publishing projects. I do this and nothing else for eight hours a day, every day of the week. My family is even buying that I'm a Real Writer, initials in caps. They buy me pen sets at Christmas.

I’m finally, provably established.

Yet every day as I’m running around doing these things, it's still in the back of my mind that I haven't sold anything to a NY publishing house and garnered a pretty little advance, written a full-length novel, or seen my name on a cover at Wal-Mart...

And yes, I know how silly that is. I get that now. All along the way, my goals only seemed ideal until I reached them. Then they lost their weight and became meaningless; because surely any goal that I could reach couldn’t have been that hard to begin with. Once a particular thing’s not impossible anymore, it becomes boringly attainable and I have to refocus elsewhere.

Silly or not, though, I think it's human nature to keep pushing the golden ring further away out of your grasp. Since I’ve noticed my mental self-sabotage, I’ve watched others do it over and over and over again. My husband acts, and time and again I've seen him reach his goals only to instantly change them, brutally discounting everything he’s done so far. It’s that next step that will be the big break... even though last year, the “big break” was the thing that now he’s done.

Remember junior high? How if you were only in high school, people would have to listen to you and treat you like an adult? Remember high school? How if you only had a car, then you could go anywhere and conquer the world? It’s like that. Well, here you are. You have a car, you are an adult. Is it everything you thought it would be? Is life suddenly easier, perfect, tangle-free?

It only seems like an exclusive world when you're outside looking in. It’s all about the imaginary prohibition. The people looking back at you through the glass are probably regretting their own yet-unreached pinnacles over the agent lunches you're jealous of. The people sitting in publishing offices sipping lattes are likely daydreaming about other offices, other projects, other lives.

As one of my favorite Jackson Browne lyrics puts it:

No matter where I am
I can’t help thinking
I’m just a day away
From where I want to be

One of the things I’ve never thought to tell newer writers (which I suppose I should) is to set small goals—in writing—and keep the list somewhere so you can check yourself against it every few months. Maybe add more goals later on, sure; but make a rewarding pattern of Xs as you go.

Those checkmarks are worth everything, even when your ego outgrows that goal and looks for a new one.

And like Zoe said, so much of being in this business oftentimes comes back to ego. For better or worse, being a writer is part of being a writer, go figure, and it's all part of the territory. It's the weirdest kind of journey, and I don't know of a single established writer who would stand on the mountaintop and proclaim that he is finished, everything meaningful in him has been written, and there are no new mountains to climb.

That's a great thing. Ambition is what makes us better, makes us wiser, and gives us something to hope for. Yeah, it can be a curse, but it’s definitely a blessing, too.

Don’t ever stop reaching for new places, new heights.

Just remember not to miss the milestones along the way.

They count. They really do.

I read a blog the other day (3 Shared Paths, one of my favorites), and the latest post discussed the recent solar eclipse and how long it would be until the next one: 19 years.

Rebecca mused on how long 19 years feels—not is, chronologically but really feels—and how much a life can change in that time span.

My favorite gem:

What will be the themes in your life 19 years from now? Take some time to really think about it because you’re building that time in your life right now.

That hit a nerve. Definitely.

19 years ago, I was a different person. Hell, that was three whole people ago. In 1991, I was idealistic, lazy, depressed, and hopeful. Yes, all at the same time. I had my whole future ahead of me and I knew it, so I didn’t waste much time with the present.

Unfortunately, that particular present was the last place I had the chance to see my great-grandmother alive. Or visit my childhood home which was later bulldozed for the maintenance area of a public golf course. And it wasn’t long afterward that I had a crisis of faith, my first broken heart (which is really the only one that matters, isn’t it?), and a breakdown in the identity of my youth.

So much has changed since then, and I must have been the one that changed it—for better and for worse.

I’ve rebuilt, and I’m better for it. You always are.

It takes a lot of breaking to make a solid person.

That doesn’t mean it was simple. When you’re a kid convinced of invincibility, as all kids are, the first problem is always the hardest. You disbelieve that bad things really are going to happen, or that your turn for old age is just around the corner.

Rebecca’s blog post reminded me of a tiny poem I wrote when I was in my 20s:

~30~

When I am thirty
I shall believe
That I will die

For as a child,
Both thoughts
Were equally impossible.

I find it in a folder again every few years.

Umm, yeah. It happened, just as I suspected it would. I was right.

The poem's a bit overdramatic, as many of my twenty-something and teenage poems were, but the concept still fits.

Now I know, without a doubt, that I am going to die. I will have a last breath, leave my body, and go wherever it is we go. My body is going to only fall apart more, not develop or strengthen, from here on out.

I will no longer have a voice or an experience. I will vanish, too.

I’ve been brooding on mortality lately. (I’m a morbid little punk.) When you think about it too much, it just all seems like such a waste. 70-100 years is so terribly short a time to accomplish everything you can, from start to finish—and getting that long to do it is under the best possible circumstances in the first place, blindly taking for granted that you don’t die in a car wreck or succumb to some disease or another long before 70.

Life is too short.

The John Ondrasik song “100 Years” sums it up best, I think.

That song. Yes. That’s where I am today. Exactly there.

I’ll be brighter later. These days there are serious family health things going on, financial worries, parenting battles, and major work stresses. (Those are constant, though; freelance work is never a consistently smooth ride.)

I’m not complaining. Please don’t think I am. I love my family and the fact that I get to stress about deadlines in the first place.

It’ll all be okay in the end. I have faith that it always is, even when that has to mean that life is tangled with thorns and razors in the midground from here to there.

This year has been reflective for me, and quiet. Seriousness has a place, and that’s all right sometimes. If you never pull back and look, really look, then you don’t know where you are in the path on the first place.

You can’t recognize the good times until you’ve murdered your ego through the bad times.

(That sounds more Buddhist than I actually am. Huh.)

But life is intentional, difficult or not, and this is mine. When it gets better, I’ll rejoice and bounce around a little in my shiny happy new circumstances. Until then, I’ll appreciate what I have, work to make things better, and enjoy the time I have with my family whatever our current flavor may be.

You have to be careful spending the time you have. You don’t get more.

I try to remember that, but I’m human. I get pissed off about toilet paper rolls hung the wrong way and bills mailed late (ha! paid bills?) and having to clean the house from scratch nightly. Everybody nitpicks, I suppose.

But overall? I love my husband. I adore my kids, and feel privileged to be able to watch them grow up and change before my eyes. I get to do what I enjoy for a living, albeit a meager one at the moment. Maybe these are the golden days. Maybe we’ll win the lottery and remember these years as the ones when times were tough and we were young and in love and we had to live in a tiny space nestled into bed with the baby.

Life isn’t always rosy, but it could stop at any minute. And then it’s done; whatever happened is over and that’s the legacy you’ve left. There is no correcting it; there are no do-overs.

Life is the bills, the groceries, and the years winding by in a less-than-perfect state. It’s the memories made over crappy, burnt breakfasts and dead dogs and Christmas presents that aren’t quite as expensive as the gifts you’d like to be able to give.

Life isn’t in the clouds. It’s here, in the dirt and the mud.

And it’s beautiful.

Far be it from me to be accused of taking things "too seriously", as claimed by this guy, who is actually a dear personal friend from Austin, Texas.

Apparently, my blog topics are bringing him down.

So, in the interest of pacifying Frank, and since he was kind enough to call me a "worthy blogger" for all the world to see, here are seven things that few people know about me. (But I'm not pasting the graphic or tagging anyone else, so you can forget it.) :)

1. Jackson Browne's "Sky Blue and Black" is one of my all-time favorite songs. I'm overcome with emotion almost everytime I hear it... and I've heard it a LOT. (I think I even own eight or nine different versions, actually, and I've had them for over ten years.) This is a song that I should be desensitized to enough to let it roll off my back; but it never, ever does.

2. I play guitar. Not magnificently, but enough to sing along with pretty well and surprise most people who know me on a face-to-face basis. I've been thinking about making some YouTube videos just for kicks, but never have gotten around to it yet. Maybe soon.

3. If I weren't a writer, I'd probably be an interior designer. I draw houses constantly, have architecture software to make 3D images of them, and snip photos out of magazines to save forever. I also play The Sims just to decorate. And then I kill them all.

4. I can't stand the smell of Cheeze-Its. This especially sucks because my kid loves goldfish crackers, and they're close enough to count, as far as my nasal membranes are concerned. I think the hatred stems from the time I ate an entire family-sized box of Cheeze-Its on a roadtrip to Pennsylvania as a kid, and then ate them all in reverse. All over the car. The sight alone of the box on the grocery store shelf is enough to make me nauseated. Maybe that's why I hate orange.

5. I have never read MacBeth, Midsummer's Night, nor King Lear. I should do that. It actually really bothers me.

6. I watch every minute of the Winter Olympics obsessively, and always have, but I won't watch the Summer Olympics at all. I have no idea why.

7. I have had the same email address for sixteen years. The only people who ever write me there are spammers and old boyfriends, so I rarely check it... but I pay $10 a year to renew it just because I can't stand the thought of breaking my record.

So, there you have it.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled, over-serious programming. Pffftt.



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Been crazy-busy working on not one, but two new websites; one for my editing and design company, Four Square Creative, and one for the literary magazine I'm starting as an imprint thereof, Smash Cake Magazine.

(The sites aren't fully cooked yet, so I'm not sharing links today. But believe me, my dears, you'll be the first to know.)

I've got lots of plans and big dreams, but as usual, not-so-limitless financial resources. I'm fine with that; having no money just means making more time.

Instead of hiring a web developer (the cheapest quote I received was for $2500 for a five-page site), I decided to grit my teeth and learn enough CSS and PHP to do it on my lonesome. Was it comfortable? Not by a million miles. But was it educational? You bet your little lacy doily.

This is the part where I pimp WordPress, and swear to anyone reading this that their CP is the way to go. Granted, it took me the better part of a week and several twelve-hour, squinting-at-the-screen-with-my-eyes-crossed, massive headache-inducing sessions... but in the long run, their support codex is unbelievably intuitive, idiot-proof, and helpful. I survived. Nothing blew up... well, more than once, anyway. I got it.

Also helpful was the myriad of support pages at Laughing Squid, my hosting company, who I'm equally rabid about. For eleven bucks a month, I've got a sweet package and constant support. This is a kooky little company run by just a handful of artsy folks, and they've managed to stay that way. It's amazing; I wish I knew these people personally... they're just so interesting! And I'm pretty sure their freakishly detailed support pages would help anyone trying to get started, even if the person were using a totally different host. They're that good. The longest their support desk has EVER taken to respond to a ticket of mine was still within the same hour I submitted it. (This includes a ticket that I sent in just one hour before the close of business on a Friday afternoon. These people are the bomb.)

Anyhow, now that I've learned a little bit of what's necessary to dance into real, live web-hood, I'm [thisclose] to releasing details about Smash Cake Magazine, and I'm terribly, desperately excited. It feels as if everything else I've done, edited, and published up until now has been all backstory for this, my baby.

Hopefully, we can make her fly.

Literarily speaking, that is. (And no, literarily's not a real word. It should be.)

Literary Mama has seen fit to publish my poem "Brevity", available by clicking here.

It's a little weird for me, honestly. I adore this particular publication, and have submitted time and again there, only to have two accepted pieces. (Both of those are here, for anyone who's interested.)

And I've always sworn by writing what you feel, not what's comfortable, so there was no oddity at all in my submitting a piece that deals with secret breastfeeding habits that I picked up casually, remember fondly, and don't tell anyone about because it's probably kind of gross.

Submitting things like that has never been an issue for me at all. Reading poems aloud about private sexual experiences or my personal failures and embarrassments has happened more than once, in groups from five to twenty. I've gotten shocked looks, offended a few folks, and been congratulated for my honesty--sometimes even all at the same event.

I'm not shy with my words.

So why does seeing this particular poem, which isn't racy, controversial, or even remotely written in blue language, suddenly making me feel so squirmy?

Is it because my step-kid is now old enough to be able to follow a link on my blog and see it? Is it because it's gross, and not blatantly rock-and-roll sexy?

I don't know.

But there's a poem about my nipples at Literary Mama, I'm twitching as I write this, and I wouldn't change it for the world.

Here's the project I've been working on this week... well, the one that's fully finished, at any rate.

The flash panel below is NOT an outside ad nor a referral link, it's merch for NaNo Nashville, my personal Zazzle store.

NaNo Nashville is a subgroup of writers here in Music City who are getting together to support each other in their attempts to produce a 50,000-word manuscript in only one month. These items are not official NaNoWriMo gear, but rather are based on a logo I designed and implemented on these items to help raise funds for the events hosted here toward Tennesseean efforts.

One third of all of the proceeds will be donated back to the official NaNoWriMo site, located here, to thank them and keep them going, and another third goes to the official NaNoWriMo Municipal Liason for Nashville, Mandi, who has been awake every night since August planning, scheduling, and begging for donations from every business in the area (mine included, LOL -- we paid for and sent a ton of bookmarks and some door prizes for the kickoff party.)

Anyhow...

Hope there's something cool for everyone... and if you have a suggestion or quibble, please feel free to yell it at me. I'm all ears!






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Yeah, we live in a world turned topsy-turvy with political correctness. Yeah, it makes most of us sick. (Alternatively, it makes the rest of us insane with vanilla-flavored fury at anyone who doesn't play the game.)

Not a big secret there.

But one thing I'd missed somehow was that folks these days, especially in the early education realm, are bowdlerizing Mother Goose and other common rhymes for the emotional well-being of our little tots.

Of course, Grimm's tales and those from the Hans Christian Anderson archives are never what Disney would have you believe; children get maimed, killed, eated, abandoned, or upset and left in a sad ending, even.

I knew we weren't all familiar with the details, being the self-aware, therapy-loving, post-Boomer generation we are.

But Humpty Dumpty? Apparently, according to the BBC, he can't break now. He ends up happy and superglued.

The old lady in the shoe? She has reformed her child-rearing policies and now gives kisses instead of whippings. Still not good enough? Worried because she "doesn't know what to do"? Calm thyself; that's fixed, too. Here's a multi-stanza version, including the words "kindhearted mom", and other baffling things.

Even the Minotaur is now cute and cuddly, and those crazy boys from Troy got a (yay!) surprise from their good friends who sent them a horse. No mention whatsoever of the killing and sacking, death and destruction.

Read this article by someone with the distinctly opposite view of mine, iffn' you wanna, and tell me what you think.

Personally, I can't believe my ears.

Or eyes.

Hell, whichever is politically appropriate.


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