What’s the worst thing about being a writer, you ask? Besides rejection, which goes without saying, it’s trying to get paid for my writing. I’ve worked with some fabulous editors, but every once in awhile I have to nudge an editor to pay me. As the year draws to a close, I’ve been nudging a couple of editors pretty hard.
I am not talking large sums of money here, folks. I’m talking about what amounts to two weeks of Starbuck’s mochas or one nice lunch (excluding alcohol) or a few paperback books or a two or three rounds of drinks on me. It’s not a lot of money, but I earned it and it annoys me to no end to have to go begging for something that is rightfully mine. I worked for it, I wrote something worth publishing (and even worth reprinting), and I want my money without sob stories or lame excuses, dammit.
Some of you, okay probably none of you, remember the sex and death story I was working on last year. It is one of the most challenging pieces of fiction I’ve ever written and I’ve had a love-hate relationship with it since day one. It is one of those stories that I will probably never feel as if I’ve gotten quite right (and I’ve edited it several times, attempting to do just that). Alas, it was rejected by the editor of the anthology I was targeting and it is one of three or four stories I’ve simply been unable to sell.
Until now.
The Fabulous Fiction EditorsTM at Clean Sheets bought my little story just two short days after I submitted it to them earlier this month. For those of you who aren’t writers-- this is almost unheard of for any publisher. A minor miracle, if you will. Imagine my surprise to not only sell my unsaleable story so quickly but to hear that they wanted to run it in the same month.
Clean Sheets has a solid reputation for publishing quality writing and being extremely selective, so I’m really quite honored they liked my story so much. For the morbidly curious, my story “At Midnight, In the Month of June” will be up on the front page of Clean Sheets for the next week and then will be in the fiction archives.
Let me know what you think-- and what you expected.
I know, I know. I’m a bad, bad blogger. So spank me. (heh)
While I’m waiting for the inspiration and motivation to entertain you with tales of unemployed excitement and grad school madness (not to mention writerly debauchery), I’ve put up a couple of new book covers in the sidebar for forthcoming anthologies. I have to say, my story in Amazons: Tall Tales of Strong Women in no way, shape or form resembles the book cover they’ve chosen for this collection. I also updated my books page to reflect a bunch of sales over the past year, though there are still four or five covers missing because the publication dates are too far out. It’s a bit of a surprise to realize how busy I’ve been the past couple of years.
More soon. Really. Probably.
Is it still August? Sheesh. What’s a girl gotta do to get to September?
Classes start in a week. Exciting stuff, the buying of books and school supplies. Or maybe that’s just me? In any case, the next week will be interesting-- I’ll be leaving the library after 4+ years and continuing my grad school experience, not to mention writing my ass off to justify being willfully and rebelliously unemployed. A season of change is coming and I’m looking forward to it.
I have a few more book covers to add to the sidebar as publication dates for various anthologies approach. There is such a long delay time between sales and publications that I nearly forget the excitement of the sale, but seeing a new book cover always brings it back full force. Of course, book covers are often designed months before actual publication of the book, so even that enthusiasm fades until I actually hold the book in my hands. Instant gratification this business is not.
Writing requires perseverance, skill and luck; the job of being a writer, however, requires a lot of waiting. At the moment, I’m waiting for several paychecks, contracts and author copies, not to mention a handful of overdue responses to submissions. There’s only one thing to do while I’m doing all this waiting. Write.
September will be here soon…
I had more to say than usual in class tonight. I might venture so far as to say I may have said too much because my professor and classmates now have a whole new view of me. I am not, despite what you might think as you read my semi-coherent ramblings here, a chatty person in a classroom setting. I tend to prefer to listen, observe and absorb. Occasionally, I will offer my opinion, but only when I feel I have something of value to contribute. I don’t speak to hear the sound of my own voice, but tonight I had some things to say and I spoke up. Loudly.
The book under discussion was Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. Having written my share of literature on the topic in addition to being a proud owner and operator of a vagina, I felt somewhat qualified to offer my opinion on Ensler’s play. In the course of things, I outed myself as a writer of erotica. Those of you who only know me from my writing, or have only known me for the past few years, might not be all that surprised since I make no secret of what I write and don’t use a pseudonym. But there’s a difference between writing about it and talking about it and a big leap from telling close friends to announcing it to a classroom. It was an interesting out-of-body moment of self-awareness.
The question that got me started talking (and still has me thinking) tonight was, “Is The Vagina Monologues radical?” I had much to say on the subject, but my basic point was that as long as there are girls/women (and boys/men) who are afraid of and embarrased to say the word “vagina,” as long as there are teenage girls (and, yes, adult women) getting pregnant without really understanding the mechanics of why and how, as long as there are teenagers who think oral and anal sex do not constitute “real” sex (and who would have thought the words “anal sex” would come out of my mouth in a room full of strangers?), then Ensler’s work is radical.
This isn’t to say that I think Eve Ensler got it all right. I have respect for her work for the good it has done, but I think she takes the woman-as-victim theme to an extreme. Women need to understand their sexuality empowers them, not enslaves them. Sexual empowerment is a difficult thing to explain to girls who have sex to keep boyfriends or women who have children but not orgasms. Empowerment isn’t always about saying “yes” to sex-- empowerment also means being able to say “no,” too. Having a vagina doesn’t mean a woman is a goddess, but it also doesn’t mean she is a victim.
I have a lot of strong feelings on the topic of women and sexuality. (Go figure, right?) I’ve been going back and forth over whether to do a graduate thesis because it’s not a requirement for the M.A. in Humanities program. A thesis is a lot of research and writing, which I actually enjoy. The reason I keep waffling is because there’s also the minor (terrifying) detail of having to defend it orally. But I’m starting to think if I can talk about sex in a classroom of strangers without stammering or blushing, then maybe I can write and defend a thesis on a subject I’m very passionate about.
What’s it all about?
Life. Love. Writing. Editing. Sex. Books. Romance. Movies. Friendship. Photography. Teaching. Coffee. (Lots of coffee.) Travel. Feminism. Academia. Insomnia. Memories. Experiences. Rants. Raves. Reviews. Babies. Pregnancy. Motherhood. Insanity. Musings of an insomniac writer. Want to know more?
