And just like that, the last summer edition of Keep Writing is upon us. In this month’s newsletter, we’re looking ahead to the fall, both in terms of upcoming deadlines and our mindsets. Belly up to the garden tomato bar—please, like we’re going to let the endless rains of August stop us from enjoying a good Caprese—and if you’re new here, please accept our warmest welcomes as you help yourself to the heaping offerings in our archives.
August may be considered the cliché “slow season” in publishing, but nearly every other corner of the Northern Hemisphere seems to crackle with frenzied activity this time of year. Plants weigh heavy with plenty; farmers and gardeners race to keep up with the harvest before the first frost lays waste to the abundance. Parents hasten to tick off shopping lists before the first school bell chimes; older students heave duffels and hastily taped boxes into station wagons and set off for their dorms.
In the north, preparation for the long winter ahead reaches a fever pitch. Once the blooms of our beloved fireweed reach the top of their stalks, we know summer is officially over. Snow will soon start creeping down the mountains like a reverse flood line. Our late sunsets and early sunrises will recede like the tides, leaving us all to make our individual peaces with the oncoming dark.
All of us, animals and humans alike, know the first chill of autumn to be the last gasp of summer, the first sputtering cough of winter, and we immediately bend our spines to our particular work at hand. Red squirrels frantically bury spruce cones in their cache, clipping seeds and drying mushrooms, desperate to stockpile enough to withstand the siege of winter. Brown bears catch salmon after salmon in their jaws, tearing the ruby-red flesh clean from the bones, gorging and feasting and gaining up to four pounds each day.
While the moose graze long into the night outside our windows, Alaskans scurry to build our own caches before the frost comes and the rivers glaze. Already my freezer groans with the weight of our caught sockeye and garden-grown vegetables, and I have so much more to coax into its overburdened stores before the first snow.
It has never made much sense to me why the bleak of January is the season of fresh starts and earnest resolutions for the northern hemisphere. The flip of a calendar has no bearing on our frozen physical landscapes, so why do we allow it so much weight in our mental ones? Why is the icy dark of midwinter the moment we decide to drag ourselves anew to the gym or the page? For all our sputterings of invention, humans are animals at our core; we remain as attuned to light and dark, warmth and cold as the moose and magpies. So why do we carry so many expectations of personal growth in a season with precious little growth to offer?
I wonder if a better, more fruitful season to enact change is the current harvest season we’re in. Back-to-school, meet back-to-page. Let the bracing crisp air of fall return some much-needed starch to our daily habits and routines. Freshen up our desks, return to our neglected projects. If the new calendar year means so much to us, well, we still have four glorious months remaining in this one to set us up for even more success in 2024. Grab hold of the abundance of the season while it is still within your easy reach.
What might this look like in your writing if you, too, are looking to feast creatively before the famine of winter sets in?
Why, we might:
Bury ourselves in research, trading our beach reads for books and articles relevant to our latest project
Haunt the fall book release lists for a new craft and/or trade book to inspire us (here are two to get you started)
Take a class, attend a workshop, register for a conference
Draft writing goals for the new year and beyond; begin laying a solid foundation of preparation that will allow us to meet them
Outline a new project (NaNoWriMo is around the corner...) or shore up holes in an old one
Carve out new space for our writing (physical space in a home, figurative space on a calendar) or refresh/recommit to existing ones
I saw my first brazen yellow leaf on a birch tree yesterday and stopped dead in my tracks, marveling at this physical proof of autumn come to call. I will spend the next few weeks in near-constant motion: filling my calendar with a hum of activity before the ice overtakes the roads, stocking my pantry, gathering my candles and twinkling lights close in hand before the dark arrives in earnest. I will fill my creative stores to last the whole winter through, as fervent and eager as a red squirrel but never guarding my cache as fiercely. Because abundance is meant to be shared and passed, revered and relished. I hope your own season of plenty brings you what you need most to last the leanest months; that it provides you with enough energy, momentum, and substance to sustain you through the worst of the dark ahead; that it leaves you with a heaping, gracious plenty, enough to save and enough to share.
Until next month—
Keep writing,
Nicki
September 2023 calls for submissions
A bit of a slower start than many would expect for the first traditional month of fall, but there’s still a robust collection of deadlines below, and we can expect university-connected publications to ramp up calls for submissions later this fall as the school year settles in. And as always, several August calls from last month’s newsletter are still open and beckoning.
This month’s listings in brief
Spotlight: Ecotone: Moon-themed submissions
Academy for Teachers: Flash fiction starring teacher protagonists
Bright Wall/Dark Room: Essays about Westerns or films set/shot in Chicago
Orion’s Beau: “Transformation and the Power of Love” LGBTQ+ SFF
Spotlight Pick
Ecotone: Moon-themed submissions
Ecotone’s upcoming fall/winter issue will be themed around the moon: “We’re thinking about abundance, harvests, meditation, dreams, discovery, good-nights, gravity, the night shift, wonder, eclipses, telescopes, relativity, myth, spirituality, science, solitude, sentiment and straightforwardness, romance, moon boots, Moon Pies,” editors explain. “What do we project onto the moon, and what does the moon project onto us? How do its phases calm and faze us? What are our dark sides, our shadows?...What kind of dances do you do by the light of the moon? What makes you howl?” Send three to five poems or one prose piece no more than 30 double-spaced pages (minimum: 2,000 words). Response time is six to nine months. Payment is $100 (minimum) for poetry and $200 (minimum) for prose plus two comp copies of the issue and a one-year subscription.
Note: While general submissions close on Sept. 8, the journal will be open to no-fee submissions from historically underrepresented writers from Aug. 25 to 31; also, the journal will accept no-fee submissions from current subscribers to Ecotone from Sept. 1 until Sept. 30.
Deadline: Sept. 8 for general submissions (see note for other deadlines)
Academy for Teachers: Flash fiction starring teacher protagonists
Just in time for back to school: Send stories between 6 and 749 words that feature a K-12 teacher as the protagonist/narrator for your chance to win $1,000 in the Academy For Teachers’ “Stories Out of School” annual flash fiction contest. The judge for 2024 is acclaimed author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Karen Russell. Writers need not be teachers but must be over 18 to enter. Note that “sentimentality is discouraged and education jargon is forbidden.”
Deadline: Sept. 1
The Acedian Review: “Trace” poetry
This brand-new poetry review, founded by a collective of high school students “who seek to combat poetic acedia,” is looking for submissions that deal with “trace” for its first issue: “What artifacts (objects, people, feelings, places, traditions, etc.) have ancestry? How do we identify the past by its roots in the present? How do things grow or erode over time? Consider the word ‘trace’ in all its forms as you write.” Send up to five pieces for consideration along with a third-person bio. Submissions from all poets, including students, are welcome. No submission fees, no payments.
Deadline: Sept. 1
Bright Wall/Dark Room: Essays about Westerns or films set/shot in Chicago
This “online journal devoted to long-form critical discussion of the intersection between movies and the business of being alive” has two themed upcoming deadlines: The first will feature essays on Westerns, while the second will focus on movies set or shot in Chicago or “use Chicago in some prominent thematic way.” Most accepted pieces are over three pages (“unless every word is gold”). Payment is $50 to $200 per essay. No submission fees.
Deadline: Sept. 1 for Westerns, Sept. 22 for Chicago
Chicago Story Press: Triumphant stories of resilience
For its upcoming “Storytellers’ True Stories of Triumph” anthology, Chicago Story Press is looking for nonfiction submissions “from individuals who have overcome life’s most formidable challenges.” Send previously unpublished personal narratives between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Responses will be sent 30 to 60 days after the final deadline. Payment is $25; $5 submission fee.
Deadline: Sept. 1
Parabola: “Comfort & Joy” submissions
Parabola, “a quarterly journal devoted to the exploration of the quest for meaning as it is expressed in the world’s myths, symbols, and religious traditions,” is calling for submissions for its winter issue, which will have a theme of “Comfort & Joy.” Send “well-researched, objective, and unsentimental” articles or translations (1,000 to 3,000 words) or up to five poems. No submission fees.
Deadline: Sept. 1
Honeyguide Magazine: Connections between humans and animals
Send poetry, fiction, and nonfiction about animals and humans to Honeyguide Magazine for consideration in its next issue. “We accept pieces from the perspective of animals that are as present and authoritative as human characters, the reciprocal bond between human and animal that bewildered, challenged and changed the human, and discoveries that reveal how close in space and mind the animal and human kingdoms are,” editors explain. Send one fiction (flash, literary, historical, and young adult genres preferred) or nonfiction piece up to 3,000 words or up to 5 poems (20 lines max per poem). All contributors receive a free digital copy of the issue and 50% off the print issue; contributors chosen to be featured on the website will also receive $25.
Deadline: Sept. 2
Free Verse Revolution: “Compass” poetry & prose
Send compass-themed poems and prose to Free Verse Revolution for consideration in its 11th issue. Submit up to 4 poems not exceeding 40 lines or two pieces of prose up to 2,000 words each. No submission fees, no payments.
Deadline: Sept. 3
Orion’s Beau: “Transformation and the Power of Love” LGBTQ+ SFF
The fall issue of the LGBTQ+ SFF journal Orion’s Beau has a theme of “Transformation and the Power of Love.” Fiction submissions should be 5,000 words or less, although longer works will be considered for serialization. Poets may send up to five poems. There are no entry fees, and contributors will be paid $3 for each accepted work.
Deadline: Sept. 10
Starlite Pulp: Pulp fiction
For its upcoming winter issue, Starlite Pulp seeks pulp fiction in a wide range of sizes, from flash to “20k word beasts.” Any genre related to pulp is fair game, including “crime/noir, sci fi, horror, fantasy, and any genre-mixing that goes on in-between.” Submissions are $3, and payment is $25, a contributor’s copy, and inclusion in a podcast with all the authors in the issue.
Deadline: Sept. 15