How Does She Do It?

I've mentioned that I have an assistant who helps me with my submissions. We're still early in this process, so she's a little unsure about which pieces to submit to what markets. She is still looking to me for guidance, asking me "Which one do you want to send to Kidney Quarterly? How about to Hubcap Review?" Normally, I think about what pieces she has, which of them hasn't gotten enough exposure lately, and make my answer based on that.

When you look at the submission guidelines for most magazines, if they're not genre, they're depressingly similar. "Furgpickl Monthly accepts only the most outstanding fiction. We're looking for evocative, edgy, brilliant writing that makes the hairs on our arms stand up." Or something to that effect. Something that says "Don't submit anything written on the back of a napkin unless you're already an established name, in which case we're already bribing your office assistant to mail us your garbage."

Every magazine suggests that you look through their back issues to see what kinds of stories they've published in the past, but I maintain that's bullshit. Here's the thing: even at the smallest magazine, you've got at least two - more likely three to five - people making the editorial decisions. If you can find even one story that's like yours, chances are that not everyone on the staff liked it but they put it in anyway. Now, you don't know what it is that they liked about it. Perhaps it had a dog in it with the same name as a particular editor's dog, and that made him feel kindly disposed toward it. Nevermind that the meat of the story was the one-legged woman determined to run a marathon. And your story about the one-armed tennis player has no dog and is therefore going to be seen as derivative and tacky. You are being asked to look into the minds of an unknown number of people and guess, based on choices they've already made, whether they would choose another thing that you've produced.

There's a term for this: it's called "collaborative filtering," and it was the common way that people did things back before everyone shopped online or in big, anonymous chain stores. You would go down to your local grocer and he'd say "Howdy, Myrtle. I see you're buying some peaches. You know, Frances was in yesterday buying peaches and she bought some maple syrup to put on them. Said she's been having them that way for years and she loves them." You'd buy yourself some maple syrup, remembering that time that you had a nice salad at Frances' house and she'd put raisins in the salad and that was really delicious too. The grocer knows that you know Frances and knows that you like her cooking, and is passing along her preferences to you in order to make an additional sale.

Places that do a lot of online business do this with complicated algorithms. Amazon.com does it - you see a window every time you choose a product that tells you that "People who bought a cheese straightener also bought a left nostril inhaler." Netflix does it, first asking you to rate a lot of movies and then recommending more movies to you based on the movies you rated highly.

Both the Amazon and Netflix systems are flawed, though. They can only be binary in their calculations (okay, so Netflix's system has four stars, it still comes down to "like/didn't like"). They can't drill down on why you liked or didn't like a particular thing. Sometimes, they make some spectacular mistakes and we look at something that Netflix or Amazon has recommended to us and think "What in the hell are they thinking? Why on earth would I want to buy a crossbow, just because I bought some cheese popcorn? Why would I want to see Jesus Christ, Vampire Slayer just because I liked Jesus Christ Superstar?"

But Amazon and Netflix are dealing with exactly the same basic problem. They're trying to discern, based on previous choices, other things that you would like. They don't know you personally and can't tell why you might have liked a thing in the past, so they're making their best guess. And remember, their "best guess" involves engineers having spent thousands of hours and millions of dollars constructing, refining and testing algorithms that are supposed to more closely mimic the millions of decisions that go on in the human brain when developing a preference.

I don't have thousands of hours or millions of dollars. I have just me and the knowledge of what any given magazine has published in the past. And sometimes, I don't even have that. Is it any wonder that I look at this whole process as a crapshoot? So, in the absence of the kind of engineering power that large corporations have applied to this problem, I turn to wisdom that has helped people in my situation for decades now:

If you throw enough shit at the wall, some of it's bound to stick.

When Curmudgeon and Philanthropist Battle It Out

I've been submitting like a fiend lately. Well, credit where credit is due - my lovely and capable assistant has been submitting like a fiend on my behalf lately. The point is that over the last year, a boatload of my work has been sent out for consideration.

Many of those submissions are to contests of one sort and another, and most of those contests are held by college publications. I enter these contests not just for the glory of having someone tell me that my work doesn't suck (which has happened even when I haven't won), but because most of them offer a better payoff than actual publication. If I were to publish a short story in most magazines, I might get fifty bucks for it, but if I win a contest with it, I could garner $250.

The thing that cheeses me off about those contests, though, is that they all come with a catch: you have to pay an entry fee (which is fair enough), and they're then going to send you a subscription to said publication. I now have a 3-foot high stack of these things in my dining room - Tin House and Boulevard and Hotel Amerika and Alligator Juniper and about six with the word "Review" in the title.

When they first started coming to me, I felt it my duty to my fellow writers to look at them - to see who had gotten that coveted first prize instead of me, to see whose work fit the judges' notion of "good writing" moreso than mine. But then they just kept coming.

It never bothers me when the person who beat me for first place writes something wonderful. Even better if the person's style and subject are nothing like mine. That's fabulous! There's room for everybody.

But that do-gooder, beatific, sunshiney attitude goes right down the toilet the minute I read the first "experimental" thing that sounds as though my 6-year-old had written it, then torn it up in shame and hidden it under her bed because in first grade even she should know better. Those bastards! I think to myself. They've got some kind of balls to reject my well-written, beautifully-rendered, heartbreaking prose in favor of this foetid, gelatinous suet of words! And then I stop opening their stupid magazines, no matter how many they send me.

But wait! There's MORE! They've taken your entry fee, they've rejected your work, they've burdened you with the stinking drivel of people whose crap they chose to publish INSTEAD OF YOURS - and then they send a renewal notice!

"Your subscription to We're Never Going to Publish You Even if You Beg Quarterly is about to run out. Don't cut off our gloating before we have the chance to rub your face in the untutored prose of every semi-literate twelve year old on the planet!"

I called my local library. They don't even want these things for their periodical section. They have no use for four copies of Squat and Hunker Review. Who does, really?

I know. This makes me a terrible person. Terrible. I should be doing all I can to further the cause of literature in America, including donating zillions of dollars and acres of storage space to back issues of All-Adverb Review, but I just can't whack up the ginger, really.

In the Virtual Bank Line

I know, it's been a quite a while since my last post, but on the good side, if my evil plans come to fruition, I'll have much more to post soon. In the meantime, I have a couple of Virtual Bank Line episodes I wanted to record.

7.23.2006
I was sitting at my kitchen table with several of my former co-workers, including my old boss. We were trying to solve some kind of engineering problem and were in a heated discussion, but the television was on and it was loud enough to be distracting.The television show was some kind of nature program about how animals react to the panic and pain of other animals. The narrator was saying that when an animal was dying traumatically, other animals would kill it to relieve its suffering.

On the screen there was a dog. It had no hair left and its skin was a horrible, mottled pink, like a raw sausage. It was lying on its back, writhing and crying. The skin was stretched and looked like it was going to burst. Another little dog jumped onto it and began tearing at its belly, eviscerating it.

The engineers and I looked on, horrified, but soon realized that we had a much worse problem. We had vampires.

I came upon a vampire killing a very large woman (another co-worker of mine, but nobody I knew in real life). The vampire was a punk-looking blonde girl, about 12 or 14 years old. She standing in the shower, having dragged the woman halfway in after her. The blood was spattering all over the shower and her, and as I walked in, she looked up. The woman's blood continued to ooze onto the shower floor and down the drain, while the girl looked ashamed of herself, then turned to smoke and fluttered away.

The rules of vampires aren't what you think. Vampires don't die in the sunlight; they just lose their vampire powers, along with any memory they may have had of their nocturnal activities. As vampires, they have amazing strength, no fingerprints and they can turn their bodies to smoke, making them able to enter sealed rooms and fly through the air. They instantly regenerate when wounded, so they can't be killed, even by a stake. The thing that's lethal to vampires is the wood. It's like smothering a fire by putting to much fuel on it - when you put a wooden stake into a vampire, the wood "absorbs" the smoke and you're just left with a piece of wood. You can't ever BURN the wood, though, because it will release the vampire. You put it in a coffin and bury it.

As humans they retain the ability to regenerate, just not as quickly. They also have problems metabolizing food: their digestive systems are really set up for being solely carnivorous. Because of the way they metabolize they are normally very thin, with very pink complexions. Mostly, people think of them as beautiful, healthy, rosy-cheeked people. They have unusual amounts of energy and age more slowly than ordinary people.

Vampire victims do not turn into vampires; they just die. I have no idea what it is that turns people into vampires. Perhaps they're born mutations, perhaps it's some kind of virus.

I stood there over the body of the dead woman and wondered how I would catch the vampire, and if I caught her as a human, how do you even begin to prosecute that?

7.24.2006
I'd been on vacation with the Pirate, and at the end of it all, I had to go to a funeral. I was driving into the city for this funeral, but for some reason, I seemed to only intermittently have a car. I would be at a traffic light and realize that I was sitting on the ground with four large pillows in my hands. I was annoyed because I knew that I had to carry these pillows with me, but they were awkward. It's true that in real life, I often feel like I have too many things in my hands at any given time.

I arrived too late for the funeral, but went to the family's house for the reception. In the kitchen, I met the dead man's girlfriend. The dead man was the boy I liked when I was in kindergarten. He'd be my age, but in the dream he was only 20 or so. His girlfriend was sobbing because they'd been having problems right before he died. Suddenly, the wall opened up and I could see an image of the dead man walking down the front walk hand in hand with another woman as the girlfriend's voice kept crying in the foreground.

I went back outside and there were two groups - the dead man's family and friends and my entire family. Why was my entire family here? All of my aunts and uncles and cousins, everyone was gathered at picnic tables out on the front lawn. I noticed that most of the people who didn't know each other were making awkward conversation or at least sitting together and sharing their grief. But there were some men who were specifically avoiding even looking at each other. It was as if they were trying to maintain their status of strangers.

As I walked through the kitchen outside, one of my little cousins was talking to one of the dead man's little cousins, saying "My cousin Malachy's a hitman, but nobody else in my family anymore..." It was a well-known fact in my family, but not something we talked about. But I looked outside at the group gathered there in a whole new light.

In the Virtual Bank Line

I was at a luxury resort whose driveway included a bridge over a deep, clear moat. The moat was a decorative touch, the bottom covered with colorful fake plants and rocks visible from anywhere in the resort (think: the submarine ride at Disneyland). From the driveway, a stone footbridge led to a stone pavilion where one could be close to the water.

I was in the pavilion talking to the woman who had been hired to be the mermaid. She wasn't the voluptuous, hair-combing kind of mermaid. Rather, she was the bony, spiny, lobstery kind who looked more seahorse than manatee.

She wore greasepaint that highlighted the peaks and valleys of ther body, which gave her skin the look of a carapace, a hard shell. The mermaid complained about her job and the toll that the hours in chlorinated water and greasepaint took on her skin. She bitched about the impact that job was having on her acting career.

As I was leaving, cars were comign across the bridge - limousines and huge SUVs obviously carrying important people. Celebrities were showing up with the attendant lights and fanfare. There was going to be a magic show, televised and broadcast, so all the celebrities were dressed to be seen.

One particular man, a sporst figure, abandoned his SUV on the bridge, stepping out in a cherry-red silk suit that gleamed in the spotlights. The cameras swarmed to teh banks of the moat to catch the man, who said that he'd been studying magic forever and he had it all figured out. He was there, he said, to relax and have a good time, but he was too smart to be taken in by a little sleight of hand.

He strolled to the edge of the pavilion and bend over to start flirting with the mermaid who sat coyly on the bottom step of the pavilion, smiling at the man's advances. As he approached her, she smiled and flipped into the water. The man laughed at the antics of the mermaid and came closer to the edge of the water. The mermaid's head appeared, and as the man bent forward to say something, he toppled over and fell into the water.

The combination of his churning arms and legs and the bright spotlights rendered the water opaque and obscured the man's body from view. The water continued to splash and froth with the commotion, only dying down as the man managed to climb back onto the steps of the pavilion - but now, he was naked except for a pair of filthy sneakers. He pulled himself out of the water and stared around, not seeming to realize that he was nude. A lackey from the hotel came running up with a blanket to cover the man, who was now shaking and trying to cover himself from the cameras' view. As the huge man stared into the water trying to figure out what had happened to him, the mermaid's head appeared in a spotlight and she announced "The magic has begun."

Busier Than I Knew

A little while ago, I was feeling sort of blue because I had friends who were saying "I have 25 pieces ready to be put into the pipeline..." and things of that nature. When people say that they have tons of material that they've written and are sending out, I feel the lack of writing time in my life keenly. I'd like nothing better than to be able to do nothing but write, but it's unlikely to happen.

On the other hand, I was searching through my documents folder for something and I came across two pieces that I had written a few months ago and then utterly forgotten about.

It's like finding a fiver in your pocket.

We Have a Winner!

I came home from doing a reading at the California Writers' Club open mike to find two envelopes that had my address label on them - obvious SASEs from previous submissions.

"Ah, well," I thought. "Another couple of rejections."

The first one was exactly what I expected - the cover letter I had sent along with a rejection printed on something larger than a business card, but smaller than an index card. Not the worst thing I've gotten.

The second envelope had the word "yes" stamped in green ink on the front. I looked at it and thought "Wouldn't it be cool if that meant an acceptance," but dismissed the thought because acceptances are in thicker envelopes. Or something.

I opened the envelope and pulled out a pink photocopy, trifolded, called "List of Winners for the 2005 Soul-Making Literary Competition." I started looking at the categories, because I didn't remember off the top of my head what I submitted to them. Under "Sheila K. Smith Short Story Prize" was my name under second prize. Yup, I won second prize.

On the back of the pamphlet was this notice:

"In keeping with our ongoing tradition, every prize winner and honorable mention is invited to read from his or her winning works at the

Soul-Making Literary Competition Awards Reading
Sunday Afternoon (1:00 pm)
March 12, 2006
Koret Auditorium
San Francisco Main Library, Civic Center
Program includes dance and music performances and art exhibit and will be televised for future viewing on Access San Francisco Channel 29.
Event includes a reception and is free and open to the public."

Hint. Hint.

In the Virtual Bank Line

I had two distinctly different dreams last night, which is only significant because the end of the first one kept coming into the second one in a kind of "WTF?" way.

At the end of the first dream, my friend Mortaine had a special kind of bell. It looked like a clear glass Christmas tree ornament, but inside it had three bells that looked like finger cymbals. They were one above the other, each with a hole in the middle so that tiny golden beads could trickle through, chiming the bells inside. She held it in her hand and, moving her hand slightly, made beautiful, trilling music with this tiny little thing. She told me that each bell produced a different note, and that the three notes together were especially pleasing. The notes were E, A and N. That's right. N.

I woke up from that dream thinking "N? What the hell does N sound like?" And then went back to sleep, but throughout the next dream, I kept thinking "E, A, N? That can't be right."

In the next dream, the Pirate and I had moved to a cute little neighborhood into a townhouse. All the houses shared walls, and we could all see into each other's yards. Our bedroom was on the ground floor, and the window was right above our bed. The blinds we bought were just a tiny bit too big for the window, and the breeze from the open window (it was hot) made them scrape softly against the window frame. It was right in the Pirate's ear, driving him crazy. I snuggled up behind him and put my hand above his head, holding the blind down to keep it from scraping.
{N? No. Not N.}
When we got up, we had to go to a party at my friend's house. My parents were going to be there, and a lot of our neighbors - it was going to be a big thing. I thought it was just going to be a barbecue, but it turned out to be a trunk show of jewelry - they were still setting up as the Pirate and I arrived. We talked to other guests for a bit, and then I wandered off to look out the window.
{E. A. N. E. A. N.}
The neighbors had caught a fawn and were using it to entice its mother across the creek. The mother was understandably nervous about trotting over, and it wasn't even clear to me whether they intended to capture the mother and kill her or just to get both mother and baby out of the way somewhere else. There was a boy - 8 or 10 years old - who wanted to pet the fawn, but the neighbors kept shooing him away and the boy was crying.
{It must mean something - be short for something. There's no N.}
Back inside the party was underway, and people were lining up to dance. They had a squaredance caller who was calling out the moves slowly so that even inexperienced square dancers could follow along. There were eight couples who were all in a line (instead of being in two squares). Now, remember, this is a jewelry trunk show. And who buys more jewelry? That's right. So, the couple are all dancing, and at one point, the women have their backs to their partners, and they lean back with their partners holding them under the arms, and kick one leg out. The caller then yelled "Now drop 'em!" and the men all dropped their partners, who fell on their butts to the floor. The whole place went quiet.
{If there's a note N, is there a key N?}
The caller came in quick with "Gentlemen, you can make it up to your lady by buying her some lovely jewelry!" And, while most of the women let their partners off with mean looks and expensive purchases, one woman with long, white-blonde hair started screaming at the square dance caller, telling him how dare he make her husband humiliate and hurt her just to sell some cheap costume jewelry! Then she ran into the bathroom and slammed the door. When she'd composed herself, she left the house, got into her car and drove off, leaving her husband behind. I watched the whole thing, thinking "Good for her. He was an idiot to drop her like that."
{E. A. N. N. N.}
The Baby Goddess came running into the room, telling me that I had to come and walk with her to her daycare. It wasn't her daycare in real life. This was a series of small buildings joined by corridors. The corridor that the children entered in the daytime was built to look like a forest path. There were round stones set into the concrete of the walkway, and everything was overgrown with moss. The buildings had columns that looked like giant tree trunks, and in the window of an office, there was a cutout of a kindly-looking old lady with the words "I'm watching you" above her head. Next to her was a video monitor where the children could see themselves walking down the path. (As I was telling this dream to the Pirate and the Baby Goddess, she said "That sounds really scary!")
{bEAN, clEAN, dEAN, lEAN, mEAN, wEAN}
There was a tiny door leading down to a sort of basement looking place, and I asked the BG what they kept in there, and she told me that it was where they kept Sarah. Sarah was one of the little girls at daycare, but because she was small, she stayed in that little room. I opened the door and saw a room that was about 4 feet tall, and perhaps six feet on a side. Along one wall there was a bench, and a tiny table in front of it. The only light coming in was from the cracks in the floorboards above. It was inconceivable that the daycare would be keeping a child in such a hole. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, a tiny little person popped up and said "Is it time to go home?"
{Where would N show up on the clef?}
I didn't know what to say. It was Saturday afternoon. "Time to go home" would have been nearly 24 hours ago, and yet the girl, who looked to be a very tiny 4-year-old, didn't seem distressed at all. She was still wearing diapers and seemed to be a little addled, but pretty clean and cheerful. I was getting myself all worked into a state, wondering where the girl's mother might have been and how I was going to find the woman. I had changed her diaper and was trying to figure out her tights. They weren't proper tights - they were made out of cotton gingham, fitted to the leg and fastened with buttons all up the outside of the leg. They looked like doll clothes. The feet were much too small for the little girls' feet, which looked bloody from being jammed into too-small tights and shoes, but the little girl didn't seem to notice as I put the clothes back on her. I was getting more and more panicky - so much seemed to be wrong with the situation, and yet I was the only one who was noticing it or taking it to heart.
{THERE IS NO N!}
I woke up with my heart and head both pounding. Apparently, I'm still sick.

Taking Notes

I got the contributor's copy of my little magazine article, but still no word from the agent who promised to get back to me "much sooner" on the second submission.

I think it's time to do another round of submissions, although I must admit, I'm a little upset with myself. Other people I know who are writing have volumes of work that they're shoveling out the door with both hands. Due to my own perfectionism, I tend to have only a few offerings at a time that are ready to go out.

*sigh*

I have started a new writing notebook. For years, I have carried around a little green leather notebook that I have jotted down bits and phrases in so that I could save them for later. I like hearing things that people say that are particularly juicy, like "No hair is okay if you have really bushy eyebrows." People say weird things, and I like being there to chronicle them.

But this particular notebook is where I have been actually sketching out the skeletons of the projects I am working on. I've gotten to the point where my ability to work is so sketchy that it's best if I jot down everything about an idea that I can jot down so that when I do have some time to concentrate on it, I have a good idea of what I'm doing.

Thus far, my book is rapidly filling up with ideas that I don't have time to flesh out. But I'm not bitter.

The Bitter Tang of Success

I know now what it is that's been dragging me down lately.

It's success.

In November, I got word that a nonfiction piece I'd submitted in October had been accepted. The piece was short, the pay nominal, but it's an acceptance and that's what counts. The minute I got word, I started hating my job. I wanted to stay home and be able to get to work on all the ideas I had flitting through my brain.

I finished my Nanovel, but I wasn't all that excited about it. The plans I have need a little more work than I was able to give this one. The contract job I'm working at right now means that I have a boss who thinks that because I'm a contractor, I'm not subject to the normal rules that everyone else adheres to. I should be available 24/7, I should have no life of my own that might require my attention. I must be desperate enough to want to do nothing but work.

I got back on track and buried my head in work, but then along came a rejection that was better than anything I'd ever gotten. I note that actually called my writing genius and expressed deep regret that he hadn't been able to convince other editors to publish my story. Again, I'm sure that the pay would have been nominal, but it would have been something.

That note came on the same day that I had driven into work through one of the worst traffic jams I'd ever seen. It had taken me over an hour to drive the last four miles, and for the rest of the day my left eye was twitching the way it does when I'm deeply stressed and unhappy. A couple of days of working from home has fixed that, but I'm still resentful as hell that I'm working on this and not on something I'd rather be doing.

Back in December, I'd gotten a rejection of my first novel from an agent who said that they loved the work, but just didn't feel they'd be able to sell it. They asked to see something else I'd written, so I sent them another novel of an entirely different flavor - Genius of Want. The December rejection had come fourteen months after I had initially sent them the manuscript, and they promised in the letter to give the next one a quicker turnaround. I sent the next manuscript off two or three days after getting the news from them, and I have no idea what to expect, but I can't help but have some high hopes.

The problem is that those high hopes are making it really difficult to concentrate on making a living. It's not my boss's fault that I have literary aspirations. It's not her fault that I'd rather be creating swirls of magic than bringing my considerable organizational skills to bear on her subscriber communications.

I just can't help but realize that every other successful author I've heard about has bitten the bullet, made incredible sacrifices and NOT WORKED A DAY JOB while they were working on the novel that made it for them.

I keep wishing that something will happen to make that possible for me, but that's unlikely.

In the Virtual Bank Line

It's been a while, but I've had some pretty mundane dreams lately.

Last nights' dream was a little disturbing and I don't even really understand why.

I was jogging through my old neighborhood, back in Phoenix. There's a maze of condos there called "Concord Village," and in the dream, it had been given over to some sort of military training complex. As I was jogging along, I turned down a path and came upon some guys showering under an upturned hose. They weren't in a camp shower or anything - just hanging out in the middle of a public pathway, naked as could be. They started to laugh as I jogged through, but I told them they didn't have anything I haven't seen before and kept running. It was kind of funny, I thought.

As I jogged, I realized I was holding someone's towel. I slowed down as I came to a house that I remembered seeing as a kid. I looked at the front door, and it was open, so I went inside. The place was two stories and filled with rustic-looking antiques. There were three cradles that looked as though they were made from bark, and three trundle beds and three high chairs. They looked at least a hundred years old. I managed to walk all through the house without seeing anyone. It looked like a tiny little museum of old pioneer artifacts, but when I came out the other side, I realized I had left my towel inside somewhere. I put my face to the window and saw it on the stair railing. Just then, a woman in her mid-thirties came out of an upstairs room and saw me. I was going to run, but she opened the door and led me inside, telling me all about how her grandmother had collected all these things, and how she and her two brothers had been the babies who had used them.

I left the woman's house and went back toward my own place. As I neared my condo, a little kid came running toward me, showing me some treasure she'd found. She was babbling on about it, holding my hand as I went toward my place. As we got nearer, I realized that this was a kid who belonged to the daycare just across the passageway.

I went to my place and changed clothes, and the minute I was done my best friend from grade school showed up. She wanted to go shopping for something, but she was being really mysterious about it. We went to a strip mall that had one shop with no sign outside. Inside, the whole place was full of huge chests of tiny drawers. The drawer fronts were all carved wooden filigree with tiny elephants on them whose trunks served as the drawer pulls. I looked inside a few of them and found carved wooden rings, bracelets and necklaces of various sizes and colors. There were tapestries in back, black hangings with bright weaving through them depicting various Latino left-wing heroes. My friend was looking around with her nose wrinkled.

I had no idea what she could have been looking for or how she knew about the place, but it was obvious that she was disgusted by what she'd found. I realized that she was just checking the place out. She was going to report back to someone else, who would then take some action I couldn't begin to predict. I told her that I thought she was a bad person and walked away back across the parking lot.

On my way home, I went through an open-air market. I started going up and down rows of market stalls filled with all sorts of things - food, clothes, housewares, auto parts - and I was looking for something specific, but I couldn't remember what it was.

I was still looking when I woke up.