Confessions of a writer who is afraid to submit her writing elsewhere

Writing short pieces for this blog was supposed to be a warm-up for me to write longer or more eloquent pieces that I would submit to online and print journals.  Instead, I've been writing postings for this blog (usually on Fridays), for my food blog (usually on Mondays) and spending a small amount of time each week tracking down quotes for my online databank/blog of quotes on creative women. In addition, this week I spent some of my free time watching The Colbert Report (on the tiny TV in the kitchen while washing dishes), looking at YouTube political videos and being hysterical about Sarah Palin. I also did some volunteer work, some editing for money, got acupuncture, had my annual physical and finished reading "Little House on the Prairie" to my daughter.

Once my kids went back to school this month, I thought I would have no excuses for not sitting down and polishing up pieces I've intended to send out for years, and working on new pieces that have been written in my head for months. What is the hold-up here? I finally asked myself. And the answer came, loud and clear: I hate rejection—I hate to read rejection letters. I hate looking for markets for things once I've written them, and I don't like writing for intended markets (unless they are of my own making, like blogs and little magazines).

The pathetic conceit is that all my writing sitting stale in a filing cabinet is "brilliant" unless proven otherwise. I do not know how to prod myself to start up what for me is the painful process of stuffing SASEs and hopeful query letters into envelopes again and again. If I had some feel for what people wanted instead of blindly sending things out, it would help.

One thing I hope will help me get through this is that I am going to yield parts of this blog to outside experts. In a separate post, which I'll also post today, I want to send a call-out to other writers to tell me how you deal with rejection.  I hope to have similar call-outs to writers in the future, on a range of topics, at least once a month. I also hope to interview and talk with other writers on how they are able to maintain productivity and why they write in the first place. I am hoping to learn from their examples, yes. But I'm also hoping that letting other people occasionally talk through this blog will free me up a little and get me back to my other writing, especially the short story I've always wanted to finish.

Not so a-Twitter: Do writers need to know about all the Internet's gizmos?

Maybe it’s my age (I went to college with a Remington manual typewriter), but I don’t see the usefulness of a lot of the gizmos on the Internet. Last year I managed to make a Facebook page and start a Facebook page group—admittedly with the help of my teenage son. And I’ve started a few blogs and web pages, though I’ve yet to figure out how to publicize them or help other people find them.

This is painful to me as someone, long ago, who considered herself to be part of the latest technology trends. Instead of an engagement ring, I asked my fiancé for a Mac Plus—cutting edge at the time, it allowed me to lay out the pages of my little magazine, section-by-section (the screen not big enough to see even a whole, small-scale page). And as a librarian, I used to search online databases for a federal agency, cranking out mega-searches sometimes worth hundreds of dollars.

But now I’m confronted with little icons for Digg and RSS feeds and bookmarking tools when I go to other web sites and I don’t know why I should care. At a blogging workshop I attended, the instructor told us we needed to know about such things, but as she mentioned them it was like she was talking to me from a distant tunnel—I just couldn’t hear her. Such things are not part of the Internet landscape I have grown to be comfortable with—Daily Show videos, Yahoo email, the Washington Post online, my Facebook page, the county public library online catalog.

There are two particular things I don’t understand that I’ll mention today: Twitter and Technorati. (I suppose this could be a series—“Cranky Middle-Aged Woman Complains About All the Technology That’s Passing Her By”—should I choose to look at other Internet features in the future).

1. I don’t understand the usefulness of Twitter, except to stalkers and people engaging in affairs who are trying to let their paramours know where they might be able to hook up.

Twitter entries I found just now:

• Eating chocolates right out the box.
  
• is thinking of eating out tonight, but would love some company
  
• Figuring out what we're going to do today. Oh, wait, now I remember: NOTHING.
  

[Found quickly by searching “eating” and “going.” I don’t know anyone on Twitter to search for.]

I assumed that Twitter was mostly for high school and college students (and, as I said, people who might want to be stalked or have love affairs), but when I was looking through the search results just now I saw some pretty middle-aged looking people doing pretty typical (boring) things.

As a writer, I worry that this is what people are reading now instead of reading books, that things like Twitter are contributing to our already short-attention-span culture. It seems an outgrowth of the ability to click on endless TV channels and Internet hyperlinks. The other worry is that the people who write these Twitters might fancy themselves writers, so they feel compelled to flood cyber-space with all their interior thoughts, which turn out to be superficial and limited. This will make it harder to find (and justify placing) good writing on the Internet.

2. I don’t know what Technorati is exactly, but I saw it on someone else’s blog last week and when I clicked on the icon, it somehow led me to a place where I could put the icon on my own blog. So I did, totally not knowing what Technorati could do for me, or why I would need it. It was an experiment from which I’m not sure I’ll be able to interpret the results or even recognize any results if they are there.

If any other writers are using Twitter or Technorati to good effect, feel free to share them in the Comments line below. I can't say that it will help me understand them better, or make me want to use them, but maybe if enough people try to tell me about this stuff, the voice(s) coming from the tunnel will be loud enough for me to almost hear them.

Is Helium.com a bust?

Sometime this summer, I saw an ad from Helium.com requesting freelance writers.

Looking for every opportunity to publish at this point, and being new to Internet publishing (i.e., not knowing what else is out there), I wrote a response to one of their posted debates, on motherhood and writing.  It’s the top-rated article in the “No” category for this question—but I haven’t been paid for it.

On their information page, Helium promises: "When you write at Helium, you help inform millions, earn money, get recognized and build your portfolio." However, even when I signed up, I was suspicious that this might not be a legitimate business venture for me since they didn't ask for my SSN (which even Google wanted when I signed up for Google AdSense on one of my blogs).

When I look at the ad-engorged pages of Helium now, I realize that letting people post whatever they want on a web site and having them return to the web site again and again to see who is reading it or how it is rated would be a great way to guarantee eyeballs to the web site's advertisers. So I asked other writers (via a local writers’ listserv) to share their experiences with it. These represent the typical responses I received:

 “I occasionally post to Helium and my articles are always highly rated. Sounds good, right? Not so fast. Because I've only written a handful of articles, and only a few of them are the sort advertisers would find useful, y-t-d I've "earned" about $7.36. You don't even get a check until you a certain threshold ($50, I think).”

 “I have a Helium account, but quickly lost interest because I found it rather confusing and not worth the effort. I believe I've made about $4.50 cents with Helium. They're legit...but you have to contribute lots and lots of writing to make it worth your while.”

“Be cynical. ...what you'll find there is akin to a "fan readership" you could generate at MySpace or Gather or any social networking site. If you do publish there (just for fun), I wouldn't add it to to your resume as a publication credit.”
---

What's sad is that there are so many people who think they can write and have something worth sharing with everyone else in the Internet universe. Helium offers their essays on such varied topics as:

•  An overview of Lake Mead boat tours
  
• Realization that your Pastor has value, and
  
• Animal books and their educational use with children (which includes this helpful advice, "Animal books capture the attention and imagination of most children, and by reading them they can learn many different things...."

I pity these people who are fooling themselves into believing that someone is reading them–and that their writing matters. But then I realize the context in which I am sharing this—on my own blog, read by few, publicized nowhere right now, and for which I am not paid. A tiny voice in a roar I have helped to create.

Blogger as index and time machine

Today I created a new blog to house quotes on women and creativity. It's not a blog, per se, but I wanted to use the label feature of Blogger to index the quotes. (The label widget lists subject labels alphabetically or by frequency). This way, I can sort-of alphabetize the writers I'm quoting with a label like: writers-Alice Walker. (I haven't found a way to put last name first since Blogger uses commas to separate individual labels).

I'm not sure how many more quotes I will add myself, but hope that people will submit them to me. Each person who submits something will get an acknowledgement, along with a link to their web page or to a biographical paragraph I'll house somewhere on the web, if they have no particular web page.

I say that I created this blog today, yet the posts date back to July. The Post Options feature of Blogger has allowed me to turn back time. According to the blog's Archive, in July, I was not busy editing, or taking children to the swimming pool, but was finding fresh quotes for the blog. Cool. I wish I could do this with other aspects of my life--it's almost as good as having a clone.

The blog is called "Quotes About Creative Women" and can be found at: http://qacw.blogspot.com/. Please feel free to submit any quotes you happen upon or remember reading fondly in the past. Humor is especially needed since the past reality of creative women tends to be a little depressing.

Send quotes to me c/o thebethblevins -at - gmail.com. Please put "Creative women" in the subject heading or it may get filtered out.

Writing in a vacuum-less world

Today on my other blog, Cooking for Four, I posted an essay I wrote years ago for my little magazine, a very small magazine, called Finding Your Inner-Julia Child. 

I "reprinted" the essay for two reasons: 

• it represents our family's food philosophy (we eat to enjoy and nourish vs. to lose weight, etc.),  and 
  
• it represents something written in a vacuum--before the Internet made searching for an idea or phrase so immediate and comprehensive.
  

I thought that I had coined the phrase "inner-Julia Child" since it came to me in a flash. There was no reason to believe that this wasn't my idea or that no one else had thought of it. The only way to have verified its uniqueness back then would have involved a subway ride to the Library of Congress and/or the use of (expensive) online databases. And, even then, it wouldn't have found obscure usages, like things found in zines and underground publications (the sort-of equivalents of online pubs and blogs now).

Not long after this essay was originally published in the mid-1990s, I began to notice the phrase "inner-Julia Child" popping up elsewhere, including in one of the panels of the comic strip Shoe. (I wrote Jeff MacNelly, then the comic's creator, teasing him that he was copying my idea, and he sent back a cordial letter along with a check for a subscription to avsm) . 

A Google search just now of the phrase "inner Julia Child" brought 378 hits.  I don't know if people still think they are inventing the phrase when they use it now, or if it has become so standard that they know they are repeating it. I'll never know who was the first to coin it.

The question this brings up for me is whether nonfiction writers can now safely and happily write in a vacuum. Must they search to see if their brilliant phrases or ideas have already been posted? And, if they have, must they try to come up with another turn-of-phrase or idea--or attempt to build on what has already been written? 

Unfortunately, to some extent, the Internet has made all writer collaborators. I think, sometimes, I miss the vacuum.

Finding ways to track submissions

As a first step toward getting over my increasing inability to submit my writing to outside publications, I took a workshop on Publishing for Poets and Fiction Writers with Nancy Naomi Carlson at the Writers Center this weekend.

One reason I hate to submit my stuff is that I have never figured out how to track it. Do I file the rejection letters or throw them away and move on? Do I keep tabs of all the publications I send things to, by individual piece submitted, or by journal title or both? If both, how do I cross-reference the two things? Do I set up a database and, if so, what kind? Excel?

My mind gets lost thinking about all the things I could do with submissions (I really don't know how to cross-reference things in a database) and then a sort-of panic sets in, especially when combined with the dread I always have of getting another rejection note.

Imagine how delighted I was, then, when Carlson pulled out a wooden box, a little larger than a shoebox, and from inside it bundles of 4" x 6" index cards--one for each poem she had submitted, one for each journal submitted to. Poem cards were in one section, journal cards in another.

Each poem card listed which journal the poem had been submitted to, in chronological order. Each poem card also had rejection letters attached to them with a paperclip. If accepted, the journal title was marked with orange highlighter and the card was pulled and put into a separate bundle for poems that had been accepted.

After 20 tries, she said, she revisits the poem to see if it should be revised or just put away.

20 tries? I don't think I've ever submitted 20 times all together. Light bulb moment: this may be one reason I have not been widely published.

Carlson keeps a separate card of all her rejections--761 in all, in chronological order. But, she reminded us, she has been published more than 100 times, and 1 in 7 tries isn't all that bad.

I'd love to hear from other writers about how you track your submissions. At this moment, however, I am aiming for Carlson's example of the primitive and tactile, as a start.

Useful Writers' Web Sites

I took a workshop on Flash Fiction yesterday with C.M. Mayo at the Writers Center in Bethesda. Two of the web sites she recommended were:

• Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. Offers a directory of its members, which include quality lit journals, both in print and as a list of links:

http://www.clmp.org/directory/index.php. You can check the list for possible markets and verify legitimate/literary pubs.

Another page on the CLMP web site simply says "Links"--there you'll find four categories of links:
Get Indie Lit (123)
Publishers (192)
Resources for Publishers (225)
Resources for Writers (57)

• Mayo also recommended her own web site, of course: C.M. Mayo.

A useful resource on her web site is the "Workshop" page, which links to her Giant Golden Buddha page--365 days of 5-minute writing exercises. We did a few of these in class and they were fun and stimulated lots of ideas.

Workshop also includes Resources for Writers, which discusses the writing biz, writing workshops and editing.

How Do Women Write?

As I said yesterday, I don't mean to make motherhood and writing, or mothers who write, the entire focus of this blog. There are already so many mother blogs out there, I don't feel I need to add my voice to them.

And though I love being a mother, it's not the entire focus of my life. In fact, when I write, and hit a groove when writing comes fast and easy,  I forget that I'm a mom or a wife. I forget social role and house and even body. Those grooves don't come so often now, with interruptions from children and necessary errands/chores to run off to, etc., but I know I crave those interactions too much to never want them. 

Anyway, wondering how women who write have dealt with being moms—or not—I tried to find a book or web page that has already delved into this topic. So far (admittedly mostly by using Google and looking at books in Amazon), I've found nothing specific to the topic. Biographies of female writers often answer this question, woman by woman, but I wanted to find something that looked at women writers historically, as a group.

So, I've started a web page on women writers and motherhood called How Do Women Write?

It's very sketchy at this point and I haven't put lots of energy into it yet because I'm still thinking I'm going to find a book or dissertation that has already examined this topic. 

If anyone knows of a book or web page that already answers this question, let me know. Otherwise, if you can think of a female writer I should add (especially if you have a lot of info on hand so I don't have to write  too much of it up!), let me know at: thebethblevins -at- gmail.com. Please put "Women Writers" in the subject line. I'm also interested in collaborators if anyone else wants to help me work on the page.

Mea Culpa

So, I've been hearing how one should publicize one's blog by going to other people's blogs and leaving comments. Sounds easy, I thought. I found a blog about moms who write (not that I want to make this the entire focus of my own blog), specifically a posting titled "Does Motherhood Impact Women and Our Writing Careers? And If So, What About Women Writers Who Aren’t Mothers?” and left a comment describing my own recent post that asked: Do motherhood (parenthood) and creativity mix?.

And I left the link to my posting.

I felt hip and with it, thinking I'm now integrating myself into the blogosphere, until I saw my teenage son shake his head as he looked over my shoulder.

"You're not supposed to do that."

"What do you mean?"

"You're not supposed to mention your own blog posting on someone else's blog posting. You're only supposed to leave a link to your blog at the top of the comment and let people find it if they want to find it."

Apparently, this is considered shameless self-promotion. I want to apologize to the blogging community and all of cyberspace for my small act of chutzpah. I really only did it to get my site meter to maybe hit triple digits someday...

BTW, where are the rules of blogging etiquette and how do I find them? 

How not to get published

I can write, I can edit, I can layout text and format text and illustrations into a magazine or government report. These things come naturally to me—even when challenging, I find them enjoyable or at least satisfying on some level.

But I seem to lack a corresponding gene for knowing how to get my stuff published by an outside source. I find the whole submissions process frustrating and excruciating, so most of the time I don’t even bother to attempt it. I have many pieces of writing that have been submitted to only one publication and, after receiving a polite refusal, now sit idly in my file cabinet.

(I have been a newspaper reporter, but that kind of writing wasn’t easy for me. I felt that I was emulating the style of a newspaper reporter—it never seemed like my own voice.)

Otherwise, the only way much of my writing has seen the light of day has been through vanity efforts like this blog and my earlier, paper efforts including “a very small magazine” and “another small magazine.”

Vanity efforts are easy, seductive, but they just don’t feel as legitimate to me as an outside editor/publisher reading over my stuff and accepting it. That filter/conduit is important and missing from too many things on the Web. I shudder to think of a world where everyone thinks he/she is a writer and there are no editors left—no print magazines, no newspapers. [I say this knowing I am part of what is killing print publications. Not just because I am posting to a blog, but because, just now, I looked up “conduit” on thefreedictionary.com rather than getting up and looking it up in the dictionary.]

I still think print is important—and I would like my writing legitimized by being in print. What writer doesn’t? Therefore, I intend to use this blog partly to help me figure out how to go about the submission process in a more painless and fruitful manner. This is what I’m planning:

• I plan to ask writers how they have gotten their stuff in print and/or how they have made a career out of writing, in a feature tentatively called Making Writing Work.

• I’ll ask publishers and editors what they are looking for in submissions and what kinds of submissions stand out in a feature tentatively called What Editors Want.

I’m also attending a workshop next month on getting published for writers of fiction and poetry. I’ll share what I learn.

Granted, I am mostly doing this for my own benefit, but I’m hoping it will inspire other writers to get their work moving--and to let me know how they deal with the submissions process.