The Essential Art of Staring Out the Window
Being creative versus being productive.
Welcome to midsummer at Keep Writing, where the Alaskan wildflowers are in full bloom and the brown bears are feasting on salmon around the clock. If you’re new here, warmest welcomes to you: Slip on a bib to enter our annual hot dog eating contest before exploring our archives at your leisure.
There are a lot of things no one tells you about the writing life.
When we decide to pursue writing, we likely imagine a lot of agonizing over sentences and racing against deadlines and seeing our names blazoned in bookshop windows. We picture our days spent drafting from clean, cozy desks while surrounded by books from authors we love. Maybe we occasionally get on the horn to chat with our whip-smart New York editors or bury ourselves in thick tomes for research.
We maybe don’t picture ourselves squinting through contracts or trying to navigate quarterly taxes, but we aren’t necessarily surprised to learn they come with the territory.
What does surprise us is how much of our precious time is spent staring out the window.
Or going for walks, or re-organizing our closets, or pacing around the house talking to ourselves—all tried-and-true pastimes in the Nicki Porter School of Hammering Out Drafts.
Because in order to write anything, we need to have Something to Say. And that certain Something doesn’t tend to shimmy onstage whenever we shine a light on it. It’s never really ready for its close-up. It hides under rocks. It runs at full speed in the other direction. It splits itself into a thousand pieces and giggles maniacally as you trip over yourself trying to chase it down.
So we strap on our helmets and begin the hunt.
Writing anything comes down to asking ourselves a series of questions until we arrive at something new, interesting, or peculiar enough to write it down. Chief of all is the most blessed of all questions, the question that launched a thousand manuscripts: What if?
Or: How would that work?
What do I believe?
What happens next?
Why did that happen? And: What am I going to do about it?
Some writers take to the page to answer these questions head-on in the first draft. For them, the act of putting words on paper is the brainstorm in motion; the act of revision is the necessary clean-up after the storm.
Other writers stare out the window.
Or alphabetize their bookshelves, make a pot of bolognese, or go for an hour-long walk in the woods.
I’m telling you all this because I worry that we live in such a productivity-focused society that we often mistake the necessary act of thinking for inaction. We obsess over our word counts the same way we fixate on our step counts or our billable hours or our site traffic analytics. And I get it. We live in chaos. It’s comforting to find something tangible to measure. When you’re being tossed about like a tiny ship on the ocean, who wouldn’t yearn for a little way to pretend we have control at the wheel?
But creativity is not measurable. It never will be. It can be hurried along by deadlines or neurological shortcuts, but at the end of the day, creativity takes the time it takes. We are not machines and we are not assembly lines; there is no way to guarantee a set rate of hourly creative output from a squishy organ comprised largely of fat, water, protein, carbohydrates, and salt. The human brain is both a miracle and a curse. How lucky we are to each have a unique way to spin language into meaning. How frustrating it is to have to find your own unique way of arriving at that meaning on the page.
I have been fortunate enough to publish many authors’ writing routines over the years, and one thing they all have in common is that drafting—that is, the physical act of putting words on paper—is generally the tippy-top of any day’s iceberg. It is the most important thing in their waters. It is also only a small percentage of each workday. The other hours are spent answering email, promoting their work, navigating finances, doing research, going over line edits, alphabetizing their bookshelves, making a pot of bolognese, going for a walk in the woods...
Eventually, of course, we need to come back to the page to record all our findings. Our manuscripts won’t write themselves. But our thoughts won’t think themselves, either. The key is finding what you need to ferret out your own Something to Say—by staring out the window, doing laps around the neighborhood, scrubbing the bathroom tile, etc.—and then embracing it as part of your writing process instead of feeling guilty about it taking you away from your writing process.
Because as long as you are engaging in questions like What if? and How come? and What happens next?, you aren’t procrastinating. You aren’t wasting time. You’re using what sweet brief time you have on this burning earth to make meaning from what you’ve been given. You are finding the truth of what you believe so you can pin it on paper.
In short, you’re writing.
And why on earth would you feel guilty about that?
Until next month—
Keep writing,
Nicki
Upcoming calls for submissions
Several calls for submissions from last month’s edition are still open if you act quickly. Happy submitting!
Spotlight: South 85 Journal: “Metamorphosis” submissions
Cowboy Jamboree Press: Anthology submissions incited by Texas singer-songwriters
Snowflake Magazine: Submissions for the Sapphic/Achillian Issue
Gnashing Teeth Publishing: Anthology submissions from trans writers
Spotlight Pick
South 85 Journal: “Metamorphosis” submissions
For its first-ever themed issue, South 85 Journal, an online literary journal produced by Converse University’s low-res MFA program, wants submissions that have something to do with a metamorphosis. Send fiction and nonfiction up to 4,000 words or up to three poems (up to six total pages, one poem per page). Novel excerpts are also accepted. Every piece will be considered for the journal’s Editor’s Choice Award of $100, awarded once per issue. $3 submission fee.
Deadline: August 31
About Place Journal: Election season submissions
About Place Journal, a publication by the Black Earth Institute, is seeking submissions for their Fall 2024 issue on the theme of “Shaping Destiny: Election Season, Before, During, and After.” Send up to three poems (50 lines max for each) or up to 4,000 words of prose “reflecting the pre-election, election, and post-election periods.”
Deadline: August 1
The Amphibian Literary Journal: “Folklore” fiction and poetry
The Amphibian is a literary journal “for the culturally amphibious.” “Our main inspirations are the thoughts and impressions of people who write in English and live in two cultures at once,” editors explain. “There is no limit on how you experience two cultures, it can be countries, gender, language, ancestors, neuro-divergence, any way that you experience your difference and explore it using the themes of the issues.” The theme for the next issue is “Folklore.” Send up to three poems of any length or fiction (including flash) up to 2,000 words.
Deadline: August 1
Creation Magazine: “A Currents Issue”
Creation Magazine’s currents-themed summer issue “explores the dynamic and multifaceted nature of currents, both in water and in life,” editors explain. Send prose up to 5,000 words or up to 5 poems. No submission fees.
Deadline: August 1
Cowboy Jamboree Press: Anthology submissions inspired by Texas singer-songwriters
Send stories, poems, and creative nonfiction inspired by Texas singer-songwriters for consideration in Texas Wind, an upcoming anthology from Cowboy Jamboree Press. No submission fees and no word count maximums that I can find.
Deadline: August 1
Snowflake Magazine: Submissions for the Sapphic/Achillian Issue
”Often it is easy to assume that the majority of the LGBTQ+ community is mostly just the Ls and Gs, but that isn’t the case, and is not the primary focus of this issue,” editors of Snowflake Magazine explain. “Sapphic, and its MLM equivalent Achillian, seeks to understand and explore the idea of same-sex/gender relationships among cis and trans people…We want to hear from the girls, the guuurls, the butches, the fags, femmes, twinks, DINKs, dykes and bears. The aros, aces and the greys. Whatever your gender identity or sexual preferences, put the ‘same’ in same sex/gender and show us in art, writing and poetry how you homo your sexuality.” Send up to three poems (max 25 lines), one piece of flash fiction (max 250 words), or one piece of short nonfiction (max 500 words). Pitches for interviews and reviews are also considered for the website.
Deadline: August 1
Vernacular Journal: “Vernacular” submissions
“Vernacular Journal enthusiastically welcomes submissions on anything and everything that falls under the theme of vernacular,” editors explain, definining “vernacular” as “anything that reveals a sense of place…the local and the vulgar – food, music, buildings, speech, flora, fauna, etc. Something regional that serves as a means of reaffirming or establishing identity.“ Send works within the “reasonable word count” of 1,500 to 2,000 words. Note that the journal also welcomes unconventional works “the weirder the better” as long as they can be displayed online, citing examples of dream interpretations, playlists, “a menu for a nonexistent restaurant,” etc.
Deadline: August 8
Gnashing Teeth Publishing: Anthology submissions from trans writers
Trans-identifying writers are welcome to submit to figuration, a forthcoming anthology slated to be published in June 2025. Send up to 5 poems or two pieces of prose (max 1500 words each). $5 reading fee with a free submitting option if the fee creates a financial burden. Payment is one copy of the anthology.
Deadline: August 15
History Through Fiction: Historical short fiction
Send historical fiction under 5,000 words to the independent press History Through Fiction for consideration in their second annual short story contest. Any historical setting is welcome as long as the story is set before the year 2000. Stories will be judged on five factors: theme/message, historical relevance, character/plot/setting, narration/POV, and overall impact/quality. Grand prize is $250, a podcast interview, and publication in a paperback anthology named after your story. The second-place runner-up will receive $150, a written interview on the press’s blog, and publication in the anthology. All shortlisted writers will receive $75 and publication in the anthology as well. There is a $15 submission fee, although all submitters will receive a written evaluation of their submission from each judge as well as a free code to access the press’ member-only website.
Deadline: August 15
Inkd Publishing: SFF with dragons
“There be dragons, that’s all we ask,” explain the editors of the forthcoming anthology Dragon Mythicana: An Anthology of Dragon Tales. Send one unpublished speculative fiction/fantasy story ranging from 2,000 to 6,000 words. For payment, authors have the option of choosing to receive Draft 2 Digital royalty shares or a flat $20. U.S. contributors will also receive a paperback copy; international copies will receive “at least a digital copy,” depending on shipping costs to the contributor’s home country. No submission fees.
Bonus: Submissions for another Inkd Publishing anthology, Yay! all queer, are open for a bit longer if you act fast. All genres welcome except for explicit romance/erotica, and LGBTQ+ characters must have a central position within the story.
Deadline: August 31 for Dragon Mythicana, July 31 for Yay! all queer