Notes from the Dead Days

A few bright moments from a dark year.

It’s that quiet, contemplative week between Christmas and New Year’s, and something is prompting us all (at least those of us in the writing community) to ask: what have we done?

I wasn’t going to do one of these year-end roundups this year. Everything is so terrible out there, and so many people are suffering. Does anyone care about writing? About stories?

But reading is what gets me through the tough times, and I hope that the power of stories can bring hope to other people who are sad, tired, angry at the state of the world, or all three. And when I see my friends looking back at the writing they’ve done, it makes me feel better to know their art is out there.

Another reason I decided to do the year-end stats: this year, I signed up for the Rejection Competition, so I wanted to see how (or if) that affected my writing. Did I get more stories accepted this year?

Actually, no. I got fewer (27 compared to 28). But I did get WAY more stories rejected (72 compared to 45), and I submitted more (115 compared to 89). So, was it a valuable experiment? Yes, I think so. More important than the actual numbers, to me, were:

• the sense of camaraderie that came from sharing the experience of rejection with other writers. Knowing that you can fail and not be thrown into the outer darkness.

• an increased fearlessness about submitting to journals “above my level,” because what’s the worst that can happen? They’ll reject me, and I’ll climb a notch higher on the rejection leaderboard. (Fail again. Fail better!)

So, I published stories in my favorite journals—lit mags like Fictive Dream, Ghost Parachute, Gooseberry Pie, Milk Candy Review, trampset, and Your Impossible Voice—journals I love to read, where I’ve published before, and where I think my work will be welcomed. I also published stories in new or new-to-me journals, like Boudin, Crow and Cross Keys, Flash the Court, Hot Flash Literary, Literary Namjooning, Rawhead, and Wensum. Again, I think being in the Rejection Competition may have made me more willing to take a chance on new venues, and I’m happy with how it came out: two of my “best of” nominations this year came from new journals.

Mostly, I’m grateful: to Riffraff Books in Providence for hosting the book launch for A Map of Lost Places (and to the hardy folks who braved the January snow to attend the reading); to The Sunlight Press and Gooseberry Pie, for choosing my work for their flash fiction contests; to Boudin, New Flash Fiction Review, Hot Flash Literary, Flash Boulevard, and The Sunlight Press for nominations for Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize; to Linden Place, for the residency that offered time and a place to write; to Claudine: A Literary Magazine for the magical review of For Every Tower, A Princess; and to my writing group, for always being there.