some point in the years since we bought the house in 2004, i thought it would be funny to paper the downstairs powder room with the best of my handwritten short story rejections.
by that time, though, i had gotten rid of a HUGE humber of such saved rejections. in the nineties, when i was submitting postally (the only way to do it!) and pretty much nonstop — pay day for me was a big day at the post office — i had tons of great, handwritten, and some very funny, rejections.
by the late nineties, these were trailing off, as my submitting was as well. i felt very un-in love with the markets, had used much of my energy to try to create a new and better market, and, seeing how ungreen things were on that side of the fence too, began questioning why i submitted anywhere, at all.
the idea for the short story letterpress project was born of the need for a satisfaction deeper than that of both the submission/rejection AND the submission/acceptance process. i still felt for awhile that WHEN i started submitting again, i’d fill up the walls with plenty of rejections… but by that time the tide had turned completely and snail mail submissions were a thing of the past. interesting indeed to live and write through such a sea change.
and i have, for years now, been submitting virtually nothing. i’m writing, but not submitting. but a great friend turned me onto duotrope — which i had known about when it was just a search tool for markets, but now it is much more. we had tried to build something like this in the night rally days — a way to empower writers more than magazines — but it was more text-based and subjective, and less data-oriented, and writers were, frankly, afraid to use it — nobody wanted journal publishers “mad” at them and didn’t want to burn bridges. fair enough. duotrope has done a really great job, and, frankly, their submissions manager has become my favorite way to zone out on the computer. without facebook and a hundred and fifty people’s snapshots of meals, etc… i was missing my online zone-out time.
now browsing short story markets and submitting here and there rather is as easy as skimming news stories about peaches geldof. no more poring over the writers’ market and addressing envelopes and explaining to postal workers “the empty envelope inside needs the same postage as the outside does…” all those things that were part and parcel of the short story process for me when i began writing short stories are just gone. browsing duotrope, i found a new journal or two that looked particularly cool. but really only one or two. for the huge majority, the markets look shitty-samey or suspiciously clubby, and the sample work is not very motivating.
this all brings me right back to “why submit at all?” but for now the answer is: because it’s almost harder not to. i still don’t feel online “publishing” is the future of anything (although sometimes it happens, even to me, and although i do use my kindle)… but i think things like the letterpress project keep me on the right side of the good fight. (and you’d be a fool to think there wasn’t one.)
so, the powder room is never going to be papered in rejections a la james joyce. when i asked ben what we would do with it instead, he reminded me of the roll of trompe l’oeil “knitted” wallpaper that i had purchased and used in the “not a stitch” exhibit. a HA!! i hope to have a very cool bathroom photo here soon!
