You’ve made it to the fifth installment of Keep Writing! With any luck, spring is in full glorious bloom where you are (and not snowing for the seventy billionth time like it is here). If you’re new here, please accept our fondest welcomes: Kindly help yourself to the bubbling fondue fountain in the corner and feel free to peruse our very first edition as you make yourself at home.
Of all the scrawled comments a writer could read on a rejection slip, “it’s just not special enough” has got to rank as one of the worst. I’m sorry, is “special” a quantifiable entity these days? Must a work tick above 75.3 on the special-o-meter to merit publication? Is it weighed on some magical Specialness Scale or lined up against a wall with a half-dozen other hopeful drafts, only to be ranked in order of ✨that special something ✨?
And yet those five maddening little words are exactly what I find myself wailing most often as I revise my drafts. The words are there! The words make sense! The words are as strong and evocative as I can make them! But still I fret, pacing over the sum of my sentences. Does it sparkle enough? Does it shine? Will it dazzle? Will it please? Does it offer enough? Is it enough? Am I?
I obsess over these questions because I’m haunted by the truths of the slush pile, having spent entirely too many hours in its trenches. And one such truth is this: Works do get rejected, often, for no other grounds than being not special enough. The syntax is strong and the phrasings are solid and the pacing is perfect and the tension is steady and yet! Nothing within it moves its reader enough to set aside space for it in a given publication. It sparks, but can’t quite catch fire.
Knowing a truth is one thing; fixating on it is another. Because here’s the thing: We can never know if our work is going to stand out from what everyone else in a slush pile is doing, because we don’t know what everyone else within it is doing. We can’t! We aren’t psychic! Try as we may, we will never be as omniscient as our narrators.
Outside of reading the work an outlet has already published, we will never have any idea of what else has been submitted to its queue. Outside of calls for submissions and manuscript wishlists, we will never know which editor is secretly pining for more humor or experimental essays or speculative mermaid romance. We will never know if our work will be a bright breath of fresh air after 50 ho-hum stories or if it will be read after the last poetry slot in a given issue has just been given to another.
All we can focus on is the work at hand: Making it sing as sweetly as it can for its eventual readers. Considering those eventual readers as we revise, removing anything in their path that might make them stumble. Worrying less about whether it will be special enough to a gatekeeper – or any reader, for that matter.
Because I’m not sure we can ever know if something is special enough for a reader. I don’t think that was ever our call to make.
Once our words leave our hands and end up in a reader’s, we’re no longer in control of our stories. We provide the script, the casting suggestions, and the scenery, but it’s a reader who chooses to fully stage the production in their minds. It’s the reader who opts to engage with the clues we seed on the page. It’s the reader who decides to walk away mid-scene to go make dinner or rush through a crucial moment because their stop is swiftly approaching on the subway. It’s the reader who will choose to hug our books to their chest or toss it in the donate pile after DNFing.
Each reader who encounters your work must engage in decisions about it: Whether to begin it, whether to continue it, whether to finish it. Only they can decide if a work is special enough for them. That is their choice to make, and their right to choose it.
And at the end of the day, no matter how hard we work and how tirelessly we revise, no narrative we write will ever please every single one of its readers. All we can do is lay our foundations as surefootedly as we can and hope, if we’ve done every due diligence, that the right readers will find their way.
A better question to fixate on as we revise, I think, is whether a work is special enough for us, its writers. Does it sparkle enough for you? Does it shine? Does it dazzle? Does it satisfy you? Does it please? Is it enough for you? Can it ever be?
So I’m trying to shift my phrasings as I mull over my umpteenth drafts these days. I try not to let my lizard brain drift to ranges of “special” or “unspecial” and think more about what I want to offer readers with each narrative. What bounties can my draft bring to the table? What riches can I offer? What delights can I sow in each draft for readers to reap?
Because there’s a gracious plenty of delights for writers to offer readers, I promise you. Your writing can, for example:
Make your reader laugh so hard they forget about their longstanding feud with Aunt Mildred;
Build a fictional setting so fantastical it helps readers escape into a world without cantankerous relatives like Aunt Mildred;
Immerse a reader so deeply in your heart-racing plot they ignore Aunt Mildred’s eighteenth nagging voice message;
Stun readers at the sentence level with beautiful prose, inspiring them to reach for new words when they write their third cease-and-desist to Aunt Mildred;
Help your readers see things from Aunt Mildred’s point of view, even though she still has not returned their sterling-silver aspic mold;
Provide concrete, actionable tips for reconciling with estranged relatives that rhyme with Scant Hildred;
Guide your reader toward empathy, sparking a new begrudging understanding about Aunt Mildred;
Inspire readers to take action in their lives, such as picking up the phone and telling Aunt Mildred the sterling-silver aspic mold is hers to keep.
Your writing can offer frankness, ease, marvels, or escapism. It can offer safety and comfort, risk and experimentalism, mirth and joy, truth and reckoning. If you know in your bones it offers one of these such things, and does it well, it is every bit as “special enough” as it needs to be.
Until next month—
Keep writing,
Nicki
P.S. No relatives named Mildred were disgruntled in the making of this newsletter.
P.P.S. I don’t even have an estranged aunt named Mildred.
P.P.P.S. Her name is Gladys. And she knows what she did.
May 2023 calls for submissions
As the warmer months set in, calls for submissions can tend to shrink a bit – it’s just the nature of the Northern-Hemisphere-vacation-season-combined-with-academic-summer-break-season beast, I’m afraid. Rest assured things will swell again to dizzying heights come fall. And lest we forget, many April listings from last month are still open and viable. Happy submitting, dear hearts!
This month’s listings in brief
Minerva Rising: Submissions around the theme of “subversion”
The Quarter(ly): Fantastical “Let’s Go to the Movies” submissions
Spotlight Pick
Ploughshares: Emerging Writer’s Contest
[Note: I generally try to pick a free or low-cost call for our Spotlight Pick each month, but all of our free calls this month felt a bit too niche to appeal to the broadest range of subscribers, and at least this contest’s non-subscriber entry fee comes with a subscription to Ploughshares and free future submissions. Plus, what writer’s heart doesn’t skip a beat at the thought of getting their words in front of Sandra Cisneros, Gish Jen, and Meghan O’Rourke? But rest assured, there’s a heaping plenty of fee-free calls in the rest of the listings below.] Writers who have not yet published or self-published a book are welcome to enter this annual contest from Ploughshares. Winners will receive $2,000, publication, a one-year subscription, and a review from Aevitas Creative Management. Gish Jen will judge fiction entries, Meghan O’Rourke will judge nonfiction, and Sandra Cisneros will judge poetry. Prose submissions should clock in under 6,000 words and poetry entries should be three to five pages. Only one entry per year is permitted. Submission is free for subscribers; the $24 entry fee for nonsubscribers includes a one-year subscription as well as free submissions during the entire 2023 reading period.
Deadline: May 15 at noon EST
Other listings
Parsec: “Preserve or Purge” speculative fiction
This annual contest invites speculative short stories up to 3,500 words that use both elements of its “Preserve or Purge” theme. This theme “can be conveyed in the setting, plot, characters, dialogue; the only limit is your imagination,” but note that “the theme must be integral to the story in some way and not just mentioned in passing.” Only non-professional writers may enter, which Parsec defines as not having sold a novel, published three stories to a large-circulation publication, or become eligible for a professional organization like the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). First prize is $200 and publication in Parsec’s annual conference program. No entry fee.
Deadline: May 1
Farmer-ish: Seasonal farm-adjacent content
For its annual print issue, Farmer-ish seeks “poetry, narrative essays, educational essays, recipes, and how-to pieces” related to farming or farming-adjacent topics (nature, gardening, sustainable or frugal living, canning and preserving, etc). The issue is divided into the four seasons, and since editors note the timing of the deadline lends itself more to warm-weather submissions, “we will be especially looking for essays, recipes, and more that work well for Fall and Winter.” Other accepted genres include farmer profiles and book reviews. Lengths between 800 and 2,000 words are preferred for personal essays and memoir, “though we are open to pieces outside of this range,” while general and how-to essays should be about 1,000 words; no length preferences are stated for poetry. Payment is a $25 honorarium or a free copy of the annual. No submission fees.
Deadline: May 15
Minerva Rising: Submissions around the theme of “subversion”
Minerva Rising is a journal that aims to celebrate “the creativity and wisdom in every woman by giving them space to tell their stories and to tell them well.” For its 23rd issue, editors seek submissions from “writers who can share stories, poems and essays showcasing the ways subversion has been and continues to be a necessary antidote to oppression within our own lives, our communities and the world.” Send one story or essay up to 7,000 words or up to five poems (10 pages max).
Deadline: May 15
Song of Eretz: Second-person POV poems
If you’re participating in NaPoWriMo this month, you’re likely accruing a tidy stack of poems as April wears on. If any of them use the second-person POV, consider sending them to Song of Eretz for its summer issue. Send up to three poems, each in its own email with no attachments; include a cover letter, but do not send a biography. (Be sure to read the journal’s submission guidelines carefully as there are a few specific formatting preferences to note.) Submission window opens May 1. No entry fees.
Deadline: May 15
Apparition Lit: “Creature” poems and stories
Apparition Lit’s third themed submission call of the year centers on “Creature.” For poetry, send up to five poems (no longer than two pages each) that “have obvious fantasy or sci-fi elements that make it clear it this isn’t a literary poem that you stuck an ogre into.” Speculative short stories should be between 1,000 and 5,000 words. Payment is $50 per poem and $.05 per word (with a minimum payment of $50) for fiction. Submission window opens May 15.
Deadline: May 31, with a one-week extended submission window for BIPOC writers
Ghoulish Books: Bury Your Gays anthology submissions
Queer horror writers, this one’s for you: Send queer tragic horror stories from 1,000 to 6,000 (ideally 2,000 to 4,000) words for consideration in this anthology, which will contain a mix of solicited and unsolicited stories. “We want hauntings! Possessions! Lovers doomed to be separated for eternity! Mad scientists reviving their beloved wrong! Gays in hell! Sad Bly Manor gays!” Editors urge. “We want feverish intensity, dread, and heartache. When asked, ‘yo, u good?’ after reading your story, the answer should be ‘no’.” Only submissions from writers who identify as queer or are questioning whether they identify as queer will be accepted. No submission fee, but stories should be submitted using Shunn proper manuscript format. Payment is $.07 a word and a print contributor’s copy.
Deadline: May 31
Movable Type: “State of the Art” submissions
Send poetry, prose, memoir, essays, visual art, and interviews to Movable Type for its themed “State of the Art” issue. Submit up to 3 poems or prose up to 3,000 words. No submission fees, no payment.
Deadline: May 31
The Quarter(ly): Fantastical “Let’s Go to the Movies” submissions
Quarter Press’ print magazine The Quarter(ly) (“A Literary Journal with Some Art, Comics, and Analysis Thrown in for Good Measure”) is seeking film-themed submissions for an upcoming issue. This includes stories (anything up to 10,000 words, including microfiction), poems (up to five), analysis/interviews/reviews ( up to 10,000 words), and graphic stories (20 pages or less). Send work that shows what in film “matters to you, from specific directors and work to simply the experience of the silver screen.” Also note that submissions should include “fantastical elements: scary, happy, creepy, heartbreaking, bizarre, hilarious, whatever;” works that do not include fantastical elements are unlikely to be chosen for publication. Payment is $5 and a PDF of the issue; however, be forewarned that “in some instances where we’d like to publish a single poem, short work, or piece of art, we may not have the budget for a payout,” and writers are welcome to indicate they do not want to be considered for paymentless publication when submitting.
Deadline: May 31 or until issue is full (So don’t wait if you’ve got something to send!)