Take the Damn Help

It's the Keep Writing Return-from-Maternity-Leave Special!

Apr 11, 2024

And we’re back! Thanks for allowing Keep Writing its winter hiatus while our chief listings wrangler and editrix-at-large was out on maternity leave. If you’re just joining us for the first time, our sincerest welcomes to you: Help yourself to the potluck table in the corner—honestly, whoever brought that peanut butter Chex mix should be knighted—while you take a leisurely stroll around our archives.

In other housekeeping news, there’s a new essay by yours truly in the latest issue of the Bellevue Literary Review. Snag a print copy if you see one in the wild!

Here’s a funny thing about this country: Once a person returns from growing an entirely new human within their body and then welcoming it into the world by way of a very expensive and potentially traumatic hospital stay, they are generally expected to “bounce back” to pre-baby life within weeks, if not days, of delivery. Their bodies should snap back to pre-pregnancy shapes as if a spleen and a skull and a beautiful beating heart were not conjured within it. Their brains should be capable of managing all the same tasks and functions with the exact same degree of success and precision despite learning an entirely new set of skills—namely, how to keep a fledgling human alive—while navigating acute, compounding sleep deprivation. Their days should be magically stretch to accommodate all these new responsibilities without losing any of the old ones, meaning their houses should be spotless to welcome visitors, their tables heaped with home-cooked nutritious meals, their laundry baskets ne’er overflowing, their emails ne’er unread, their hair always coiffed.

And I am here to say that is bullshit.

That’s not how time works, for one. That’s not how bodies work. That’s not how brains work. And to pretend otherwise is setting a new parent up to fail from the very outset of their journey. It is a multi-faceted lie that we collectively pretend is the truth, and I would like to wrest it from our collective hands, snap its neck, and bury it deep in the frozen earth.

There is no way for any of the above to be true without help, be it by way of grandparental assistance, paid leave, paid help, or a magical fleet of singing forest animals to cook and clean and harmonize while you warble. And it’s that notion of help that I want to talk about today, help and the collective myth of independence, especially when it comes to writing.

Because the world of the writer is often solitary, and because there is usually just one name on a byline or book spine, we too often believe success is a solitary act. A writer must have just worked hard to get on the bestseller list. And I must not discount the long and lonesome work any writer puts in as they wrestle with language on the page, agonizing over which word to use or which scene to cut! But it’s not the only labor that brings a story to the world stage, and to pretend otherwise is a fallacy.

Pick up any book on your shelf and you will find a long list of acknowledgments pointing to the work of editors, agents, publicists, marketers, and artists that helped bring a book into existence. But you will also find less linear forms of help radiating through the acknowledgments: Glasses raised to friends and critique partners who read drafts, to sources who shared their expertise, to loved ones who helped with childcare. To the teachers who inspired and instructed. To the parents who read a writer’s earliest stories with encouragement and enthusiasm. Every published work has one name attached to it, but the invisible work and help of countless others behind it. No story is born in a vacuum. No book is published without help. None of us are born knowing how to query, how to write, or how to read, for that matter. We learned from the people who walked ahead of us.

In writing and in life, we are constantly being sold a myth of perfect independence in a world that does not allow for it. There is no glory to be found in pretending you can navigate the writing world alone, only heartbreak—and lord knows this industry has enough of that without lying to ourselves to boot. Start by knowing there is no way to proceed without accepting offers of help, even passive ones that come from reading books and articles and newsletters like this one.

And then make yourself this promise: If someone I trust offers help, I will take it.

Even if you worry about taking up their time.

Even if you fret that they’re “just being nice.”

Even—especially—if you worry you don’t deserve it.

Because if someone you trust is freely offering help, we should shake off our doubts and lean into that trust. Trust in their agency that they won’t make an offer they don’t mean. Respect the offer for the gift that it is. Trust that they’re probably offering because someone helped them—or they wish someone would have.

Next: Acknowledge the help you were given. Often and always.

And then vow to pay it forward with others in return.

Until next time—

Keep writing,

Nicki

Upcoming calls for submissions

Spotlight Pick

Shooter: “Nightlife” submissions

“We’re looking for stories, essays, memoir and poetry on anything that relates to nocturnal happenings: dating, working the night shift, crime, clubbing, dinner, sex, partying, witchcraft, ghosts, childbirth, insomnia, even nocturnal wildlife,” explain the editors of Shooter. Send prose submissions between 2,000 and 6,000 words and/or up to three poems. No submission fees. Payment is £25 per story and £5 per poem.

Deadline: May 12

Other Listings

Heron Tree: Found poems

The eleventh volume of the online poetry journal Heron Tree “will be dedicated to found poems composed from sources published in or before 1928.” Editors say they “are interested in any and all approaches to found poetry construction and erased or remixed texts.” Send up to six poems plus a cover letter and a “process paragraph” that identifies each poem’s method of composition in a single file. (Past journal issues containing previously published found poems as well as their process paragraphs are available for download on the journal’s website.) No submission fee, no payment.

Deadline: May 1

Vilas Avenue: “Impermanence” poetry

With a themed submission call centering around “impermanence” for their sixth issue, editors of the poetry journal Vilas Avenue challenge “the writer to attain a deeper understanding of the state of change—crafting work that lives, dies, lives again, & vanishes into momentariness.” Send one to three poems via email along with a short bio. Authors should expect to receive a response within two to four months, if not sooner. No submission fee, no payment; however, “one poet (chosen at random out of all authors accepted for Issue Six) will receive a $25 honorarium upon publication.”

Deadline: May 1

Bloodletter: Horror about “hysteria”

Bloodletter, a feminist horror magazine written by women, non-binary, and trans writers, is seeking submission for its upcoming “hysteria” issue. “We seek writing that pairs the personal with the analytical, exploring the theoretical underpinnings of the [horror] genre through an experiential perspective,” editors note. No word counts: “Length and style should be determined by the needs of the piece.” No submission fees, no payments that I can find.

Deadline: May 7

Cicada Creative Magazine: “Dial-Up Dreams” submissions

For its eighth issue, the editors of Cicada Creative Magazine invite submissions that revisit the days of dial-up internet. “The internet has evolved dramatically since then, but the nostalgia for its unrulier days has persisted, especially amid today’s more sanitized, corporate internet,” editors write. “For this issue, we invite submitters to reflect on a bygone era of whirring modems and the thrill of the unknown.” The journal’s accepted genres are vast, from the usual literary fare (poetry, short stories, flash fiction, essays, etc.) to categories rarely seen in modern journals (topography and GIS, architectural layouts, polls, cosmetology, etc). However, the maximum word count for all written genres is 5,000 words. Previously published work is fine but must be identified as such. AI-generated work is also permitted so long as it is identified as AI-generated and “the AI has been exclusively trained with your work.” No submission fees, no payments that I can find.

Deadline: May 10

Miniskirt Magaine: Love & romance submissions

Send “your flirtations, your short & sweet confections, stories with fairy tale endings or disintegrations” involving love and romance of any kind to Miniskirt Magazine. Issue 27 will be the PRIDE issue and will be published in June 2024. Send one to five poems, one piece of prose up to 4,000 words, or one to three pieces of shorter prose (max 1,200 words each). No submission fees, no payments.

Deadline: May 10

Ploughshares: Emerging Writer’s Contest

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. Dantiel W. Moniz will judge fiction entries, Augusten Burroughs will judge nonfiction, and Porsha Olayiwola 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

Talk Vomit: Submissions on “girlhood”

Talk Vomit seeks submissions about girlhood for its summer edition. Send nonfiction (less than 4,000 words), fiction (less than 2,000 words), and poetry “just generally kept to a minimum.” Submitters may send one prose piece or two poems. Writers can expect a response within one month of the submission period closure. Journal editors “particularly like” gothic stories, flash satire, coming-of-age narratives (especially “coming-of-age stories related to motherhood”), cultural criticism, book reviews, and serial stories). No submission fees. Payment ranges in $10-30 for fiction and nonfiction and $5-15 for poetry. (Rates higher for print exclusives.)

Deadline: May 15

The Winged Moon: “Ancient” submissions

For its second print issue and sixth online issue, The Winged Moon seeks submissions relating to the theme of “ancient.” Editors acknowledge that “this is a broad theme” that is open to interpretation, although they note “we are especially looking for work that swims in the undercurrent of myth, folklore, animism and the natural.” Send poetry up to “around 30 lines” as well as prose poetry and micro fiction with a 300-word limit. No haiku or one-line poetry, and the journal is “not favourable to work that references technology or electronic world.” Send up to two written items per genre. Submissions may close before the May 21st deadline, so submit early if you can. No submission fees, no payments that I can find.

Deadline: May 21