To Thine Own Self

I'm not one to let moss grow under my feet. So while I wait to hear about The Teacher, I keep writing. Normally, I write grown up, contemporary type novels, but recently I've taken to short stories and - a departure and also a return to my roots - a young adult fantasy novel (though I use the term fantasy most loosely).

Since the YA novel felt so new, I found myself inclined to adopt a different narrative approach. I thought it should be more direct, simpler, less humorous. Normally, if you have not already deduced from previous entries, my style could accurately be described as "chatty." So be it. Still, I thought, I did not ALWAYS have to chat my way through every book. Certainly I could rein it in to tell a nice adventure story. And yet the more I strove to fit myself into this straight and narrow jacket, the more I disliked the story.

The lesson here is simple. I am not going to bother writing anything unless I can write it in exactly the way I like to write it. No, not like, need - must! For such is the bliss of life itself. That which you must do. We have all been put on this planet to speak one voice - our own - and so we must, for if we don't, who will? I try to get around this sometimes myself, hoping to, God help me, "fit in." What a curse. There is nothing into which anyone can fit.

Ah, but to be anyone but me. Me with all my troubles and uncertainty. Me with a brain like a loaded gun at three in the morning. I look around me, and everyone else's life seems so simple, if only they would get out of their own way. Why, if I could just step into their skin, I could straighten their lives out in a blink.

But that's just the trouble, isn't it? You're life, start to finish, is your own, all your troubles and loves and losses and hopes and beauties. It's all yours and it's all you. And all of that that is you is what speaks when you speak. Speak out! Lift the shade and let God shine through, I say. Shine on.

Horses in Mid Stream

I love epiphanies. I am devoted to them and celebrate their arrival the way a good Catholic might the appearance of Mother Mary in a tortilla. But epiphanies usually mean one thing: Change.

Ultimately, I'm in favor of change. Ultimately, of course, I don't have a choice in the matter, as life itself is nothing but change, the words being more or less interchangeable. But this is speaking metaphysically. In the nuts and bolts day to day, you can always dig your heels in and do your best not to be dragged along life's ceaseless current. Good luck with that, by the way. This is the sort of thing that leads to back pain and cancer.

I digress. I had an epiphany the other night. The novel I had been calling The Prince of Despair for more than a year would now be called The Teacher. It was absolutely the right thing to do, for reasons too technical to get into here, and for about an hour I was joyous. I'd seen the light.

But no, it was more than that. A door had been opened, letting in light, and now I had to walk through that door. How much easier to dwell in the darkness you know than to walk alone into some foreign light. Yet walk I must now. Now I must write a new query letter; now I must let go of something I called the Prince of Despair, which, because of my particular biography, had a certain romantic appeal.

When the epiphany came, I knew it was the right thing to do. But then the sunburst of thought dimmed and I was left with myself again. These things may come to you, but the truth remains that it is up to you and you alone to allow the idea in and live from it. The idea, after all, doesn't tell you where you'll go, it just tells you that go you must.

So go I will.

Glimmer Train

I've taken up the short story again recently. I don't consider this news by itself, but in the process of reacquainting myself with the world of periodicals, I've discovered one in particular worth mentioning.

They're called Glimmer Train Press, and anyone who's spent time submitting short stories is probably quite familiar with them. What struck me about Glimmer Train, however, was the enthusiastic and eager tone struck on their website. I am sure they receive thousands of submissions every year, of which they are only able to publish - at most - around a hundred. They are a well respected, literary journal, probably one of the top three or four platforms for new writers to show their work, and could easily assume a stand-offish posture, along the lines of, "Look: Everyone wants to publish here, we're totally inundated with all these wannabes, so send it in, but don't hold your breath. We're in the position where we get to be very, VERY picky, and we are."

And yet they implore writers to send in their work. They do not list rejections rates, they do not tell you how long the odds are of publishing in the journal. They are decidedly encouraging and optimistic, and for this I have nothing but deep admiration. How easy it would be to become depressed and resentful of all the writers pouring their work onto your desk - the clumsy plots, the thin characters, the clichés, the predictable endings. How easy it would be to scream, "Don't waste my time with this until you've honed your craft!" But that is not their way. They say, "Send it. We want to see it."

This seems to me to be just the right position. The world does not need more people telling writers how long the odds are. If you do not know, you will find out soon enough. In fact, the world does not need anyone telling anyone how long the odds are of doing anything. What use is that? If you want to do something, if that is what you are meant to do, what use are odds? If you must do it, then you must do it, the odds be hanged. We should be a world of encouragers. The publishing world in particular can seem a high-walled, unfriendly place, but it needn't be. It's just a place.

So my hat goes off to Glimmer Train. Not just for publishing short fiction, and not just for paying writers for short fiction, but for doing so with love and enthusiasm. I can't think of any other way I'd want to do anything.

While We're Waiting

This would be a good time to talk about criticism. After years of giving and getting, I've come to the conclusion that The Bible was right. We must not judge not lest we be judged.

For instance, last night I did something I have not done in quite some time - I sat down and read a literary journal, The Paris Review, to be exact. I tend to avoid these types of publications because of a weakness over which I have shown little if no control over the years, the second most deadly of sins, Envy. I don't like feeling envious of anything, because until such time as I can admit what I'm feeling is envy and let it go, I'm forced to defend something indefensible, and so I spend days twisting myself into aesthetic contortions to justify my position.

So I did the somewhat less cowardly thing than getting over it, I surrendered, and I stopped reading them altogether. If I couldn't stop drinking I'd stay away from the bars. But yesterday I picked up the Paris Review because I thought perhaps I was over that now. I certainly wanted to be over that, and what's more, I was going to give short stories another try and so I wanted to just hold a journal in my hands again. Not to compare - NO - but just to hold one and see. At least that was the plan.

I did fine with the memoir. I did fine with the poems. But then I came to the short story, and here, sadly, I began to run afoul. It would have been easier, I think, if I had really liked it. But I didn't. It was perfectly well written, of course, only not to my taste. The characters were well drawn, but I didn't really like them. And the ending made fine sense, but it didn't satisfy me.

If I could have left it at that, I would, I guess you could say, have passed the test. But then something else began creeping in. Perhaps there was something "wrong" with the story. I began making a mental list of grievances against it. As the list grew, I was becoming increasingly unsettled. Perhaps it wasn't long enough. Perhaps I should talk to my wife about it. Perhaps I could show exactly why I was right not to enjoy this story and the writer and the editors and anyone else in the world that agreed with them was wrong.

It was then, thankfully, I had an epiphany. I saw myself sitting down to work the next day, and I saw myself, as I do at the start of every work session, rereading my previous day's effort, and that is when it hit me. If I continued to judge this fellow's short story in this way, then tomorrow I would do the same to mine. Instead of reading my work from the inside out - that is, asking only "Is that what I meant to say?" - I would judge it from the outside in, seeing it through the harsh and critical eyes of some unnamed jurist. And I would fail. Because no work can be everything. Nothing can please everyone. Nothing at all. And so I would waste the day's work feeling that what I was doing was deeply and irrevocably flawed, until I'd purged this cruel judge from my psyche and could see my work anew as it was meant to be seen - through my eyes only.

So I stopped. Enough, I said. You must let work you do not care for exist. It must have the right to exist. For if YOU can be such a final judge of other people's work, why then cannot someone else be the final judge of yours?

Perhaps you do not have this same problem. You are lucky. I'd say I envy you but, well, we've been down that road already.

Waiting . . .

If you've never heard of The Law of Attraction, I'll explain it to you now, in brief. The Law goes like this: Anything you want, the universe gives you. Anything. Be it good or bad. If you think it, if you want it, it will come to you - as long as you allow it. You see, it's not immediate. It takes time for the universe to arrange itself to deliver whatever it is you want.

This is how I always feel about the time between sending out the queries and receiving an answer. I send out my request to the publishing universe and then . . . I wait. And this is where the doubt can set in, because you've got nothing else to do with your restless and hungry mind. Sometimes you get many no's and so you have to wait while you mail more. In the quiet of waiting there is only you and your belief.

This is the great gift of the waiting. This is where you get to learn the meaning of faith. Faith is nothing when you've got offers pouring in; it's nothing when you've got peers and teachers praising you. In the quiet solitude of the wait, that is where you find out the meaning of faith. And really, it's only faith you've got to carry you through from the Idea to the Creation, and from the Creation to the release to the world.

Faith is just another word for You. And it is in these quiet moments where you get to meet yourself as you might have never done before.