I’m on a fairly hot ass rejection streak. I’m actually submitting some of the odd tiny tiny stories I’ve written.

I’m writing things.  Things are happening.

What else?

OH. For those of you fellow writers reading this can some of y’all tell me if you’re in PEN or AWP. Should I be doing that? I kind of want to join both but can only do one next month and I’m not sure if I really need either.

The thing I guess I’m thinking about is that I’m not really famous. I’m not a teacher. I’m not traveling and I can’t really afford to go to conferences and things so I’m just not sure if I should spend the money on memberships to those places or just keep doing what I”m doing and spend that money on something else.

I was going to join up with a local deal but it’s not really cost effective for me because all of the events I’d like to go to are at times I am at work. And I just cannot afford to drop major cash like that on classes I don’t really need.

I’m probably going to let my Writer’s Digest subscription lapse. I realized as I read the last issue that I just don’t really like it. It’s not really my flavor.

While I’m talking about spending money on this writing deal.

I really want a newish laptop. My bestie gave me an older one but Petunia isn’t really travel ready.  I want one so I can take some time before work and not at home to get some work done daily.

The thing is the older I get the more nervous I get about spending that kind of money on something like a lap top that is for writing.

I know I can and it’s you know part of my vocation. I know that in the bigger picture it would make a lot of things easier but they aren’t cheap.

I need to make a decision about these things so I can set my partner on find Shannon a cheap usable reliable laptop mission.

Now back to the grind. I have things to send to be rejected and whatnot.

I have picked up this phrase, in the weeds. I love that phrase and will pay attention when sweating upset chefs are screaming it over steaming pans.

To use their phrase.

I am in the fucking weeds.

So I’m sorry if I owe you a message or email. I’m overwhelmed and freaking out and anxious and all of those things that make me tuck my head into my shell.

And I’m writing.

Some of it is shit. Some of it isn’t.

While I”m getting my shit together check out some of the things I’ve read recently and enjoyed.

If you’ve read me for a while you already know how I feel about Antonia Crane. Go read that entry of hers and tell me with a straight face you don’t feel the same way.

Next my dear friend artist UglyShyla is in dire dire need. A tornado hit where she lives over the weekend and a tree fell and hit her house. Please if you have some extra $$ head to her etsy shop and pick up one of her one of a kind art jewelry pieces or one of her dolls.  If you don’t have money please send the link to people.  The good news is her Mama and the animal critters (including the Infamous Painting Squirrel Winkle.) are all okay but they really need some help.

Via tumblr I have discovered Gabby Gabby and her Black Dot Series.  I downloaded what she has thee and I really like it. I find her poems visually interesting, I like how she uses language and I like the fact that she will show her fucking tits if she goddamn well pleases and let you know in clear concise language that she will. I like her a lot.

What else?

OH Sugar has come out of the closet. Her name is Cheryl Strayed and since I couldn’t be at her party I will say that in her pictures she has the kind of eyes I imagined. Get all of your fix at the Rumpus. 

Also go read this by my friend Mensah at Pank. I adore this piece. I like how he phrases things y’all know this.

I think Anna March and I found each other on facebooks.  She is terribly nice and she makes these nerdy mixtape lists on The Rumpus which okay, I have to confess I have the worst weakness for that sort of thing. She even has one for making a pie. She has done a lot of them that i love but this one is probably my favorite because duh pie.

Writing news from me?

I got one really sweet rejection for a story I wasn’t sure about showing anyone ever. That zine loved it but it wasn’t really for them which on another look I totally get.

The other day while I was at work and trying to get my brain to do something aside from misfire I asked tumblr what literary thing I should try out. I like to look up a device or technique every now and then and give it a shot. Someone recommended Second Person POV.

I read about it a little bit to make sure I knew what I was doing and for some reason second person said Dystopian thing to me. So I write the tiny piece you’ll find under the fold. Enjoy.

You-

You know.

You know because you are fifth born, the first generation of us who has fully adapted to this new world.

The blood in your veins is thinner than your forebears, your eyes larger and your ears. Those precious ears that people in peacetime may have called jug ears.

Your magnificent ears mean that you will survive.

Some have called these changes mutations, genetic defects.
They cringe away when you remove your filtration mask and expose your lipless mouth and small nearly closed nose.

They cannot understand the mottled beauty of your skin and wet pink tiny pores, they don’t understand.

You are magnificent. You are the future and we the rest of us sad humans are the soon to be distant past.

We will wither and die.

We will succumb to the air and the starvation and the fires.

You, you magnificent evolutionary wonder will inherit the earth.

You know.

You know.

I’m very tired.

Honestly (I feel like I’m showing my ass here in not a fun way) I’m overwhelmed by how supportive and sweet and wonderful other writers have been to me in the last couple of years.

It freaks my shit out.

I’m not used to it when it feels like we’re peers and not fangirl to awesome author with me in the starring role of drooling starry eyed fangirl.

This anxiety is stultifying in a way I’ve not experienced before.

I’m afraid I’m being weird or needy. I’m afraid I’m being all of the things that are not good.

I don’t know.

I’m regrouping.

I wrote an essay about fear, drugs and madness.

I’m writing some hot smut.

I’m trying not to let myself suck my words into a black hole of writer paranoia.

Tomorrow I’m returning some messages and emails to people. I’m going to be honest about being freaked out.

I’ve resumed blogging in my personal blog after an unintended hiatus due to icky feelings.

I’m talking there about being fat, about being ugly and today while I was writing an entry it felt like home again.

I’ve also submitted to a couple of the Challenging markets as listed on Duotrope.  I feel better but not right.

That being what it is I’m going to self care. I’m going to make myself feel pretty. I’m going to do my nails which (due to me not currently sleeping with women) are very long and pointy, in sparkly fancy colors. I’m going to continue figuring out how to do my hair. I’m going to write about my foibles and mistakes.

I’m going to keep reminding myself that I don’t have to try and pretend to some Black Literary Ideal that I’ve made up in my head. I need to calm the fuck down and do what I do.

Tomorrow I’m going to talk about some other stuff. I want to talk about my new personal goal of resubmitting to a few magazines and not feeling like an asshole doing so. I also want to talk about the best rejection I’ve gotten so far this year.

Now some numbers.

My current duotrope stats:

Pending responses for last 12 months: 10
Submissions sent last 12 months: 63
Submissions sent this month: 2
Acceptance ratio for the past 12 months: 14.29 %

A few of these I’m going to be waiting on word for quite a while. I like that feeling.

Officially since 9/10/2011 I have been rejected 22 times counting items not listed at duotrope.

I sold 14 copies of my self published little collection and made 35 dollars. All of which I spent on Sparkle Femme Items.

My poetry has been called bold, intriguing and too confessional in the last four months.

And that’s all.

I have new work up at Foliate Oak.  Read my tiny story ‘Dog and Girl’.  A note about that story. It is one of the things I scribbled in one of my paper notebooks I don’t know when. I reworked it a tad bit and it sat in a might be closing lit mags limbo for a few months before I pulled it and sent it to Foliate Oak. I’m very glad they took it. I like it when my experiments get published.

What else?

I believe I’m going to do another edition of Wayward Words. The feedback has been amusing. Some of my author friends totally get where I was going, some have been horrified. My non writing friends thought it was lovely for the most part.

What else?

Uh some things are going on that I’m having a hard time with. Other writers, writers who’s work I admire and enjoy have been super super kind to me.

To be frank, this scares the shit fuck out of me.

I am not used to being in this position and while I am unutterably thankful I’m also nervous. It’s scary.

I don’t know what I’m trying to say exactly.

I’m still exhausted but sort of feeling better. Today I’m going to eat some fruit, write some things and try to remain calm and somewhat alert.

Here is a tidbit from one of the things I’m working on.

I learned that there are a few minutes just before sunrise happens that the air is made out of light and silence.

(See that in it’s entirety here at youtube)

I’ve been having a hard time writing lately. Things in my personal life are stressful and ugly in moments.  A lot of it hurts. I’m not sleeping well if at all.

Despite how tired and unable to write what I really want to be writing, I am writing a few things that I don’t want to be.

I’m in a state. I know this particular place well. It’s dark and I write things that make other people uncomfortable because I don’t have the energy to really slow myself down.

So I’ll let it out.

I may not show anyone but my closest friends but I will write it.

That had been an issue with my essay collection. Some of it is just so fucking hard and awful to write. I want to make my point but I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to feel those things because that’s how I work. If I think about it I feel it in my body.

Thus sometimes I need to write in my body.

For instance there’s an essay (this one unedited as of yet) in that pile about real serious violent rage.  I’m not talking about Lifetime Movie ladylike rage, I’m talking about the kind of rage that turns the tips of my ears to fire and my need to hit whomever or whatever has upset me makes my skull ache.

Those are things in my body and they are things I am often afraid to write about or think about.

No I’m full of shit.

I battle with myself about it because I’m afraid.

I fight with myself even though I know god damn well that I am at my best raw and bloody. Not literally, although somewhere there exists a photo of me with a womans fingers in my bloody mouth. That was hot.

I digress.

Right, blablabla, exhausted, blablabla pain, blablabla in my body.

I think my point here is to remind myself again that when I try to be some other writer lady who’s image is in my head I suck.

So note to self.

You know what to do.

So get on with it.

Hence the title.

I do want to talk about the fact that I believe I got a new acceptance but have had a bit of a hard time contacting the editors back so I’m unsure as to what’s gonna happen.

Other things.

I’ve been dealing with (on the internets and in actual life) a lot of racist shit being said in my universe and I was trying to read some lit news earlier and I hit that Black lady fatigue wall as I call it. This is also been called by (White) psychologists Racial Battle Fatigue.

Apparently it took long studies to determine that dealing with racism for your entire life might leave you a little damaged.

What pushed me over the edge for probably the entire next two months was a “critique” of my piece over at facebook for People of Color Organize.

Essentially this woman sent me a message to say first that she “loved” the piece but felt it lacked enough “scope” which she clarified as being “exclusionary” of White People.

That sentiment encapsulates everything wrong with me this week.

Also honestly there are so many indie/alt literary things I just don’t understand at all.

I’m feeling a little uh..I don’t even know how to put it specifically more than confused and vaguely disinterested despite the fact that I think these people are maybe my potential audience.

That is why I can’t think about that sort of thing over much.

I believe that the remedy for all my ills is to duck my head, write my shit and close some of the universe out of my immediate area.

Righty right.

This has been sitting here for an hour, I had more to say but I’ll save it.

Tomorrow I’ll do a little review of the Junot Diaz book I just finished.

The very first I am super happy to say is my dear friend Remittance Girl.

If you haven’t been reading me long let me say first that I have been a great lover of Remittance Girl’s writing.

My favorite thing that she has written is this little delicious flasher called ‘Heatsink’. I highly suggest both reading this AND listening to it because well, we know I have a thing for voices. There is something deeply special about both her voice in her writing and her actual speaking voice that speaks to me on a very deep level.

Aside from that, RG is very smart. I am so very happy that despite my usual reticence about talking to authors I really like, that I have gotten to know her.

Now here’s the interview. I as ever am SB she is RG.

SB:First tell my friends as much as you’d like to about yourself and your work.

Well, this is a bit of a difficult place to start. I’m 49 years of age. Although I was born in Canada and grew up, for the most part, in Europe, I now live and work in Vietnam. I’m a university lecturer and I write erotic fiction. I think it’s always dangerous to try and encapsulate one’s own work – you end up talking about what you wish it to be, instead of what it is. So, with that proviso in mind, I write about the human condition through the lens of erotic desire. I’m very interested in interior erotic lives, and self-revelation in erotic extremes. The biggest challenge in my work is how to use explicit language to portray authentic experiences when this language has been appropriated for commercial purposes. What I mean by this is, with the mainstreaming of pornography, a lot of the explicit language we have used to describe authentic erotic experience is now also used widely by commercial enterprises who use it to sell things. They have become the grammar of marketing. So, where does that leave erotic fiction writers?

SB: How do you like to work? Do you need your workspace to be any particular way?

Most of all, I need quiet. I don’t write with music playing, or the TV in the background. I now find it increasingly hard to write longhand, because I type much faster. So, I work on my laptop, pretty well anywhere, but with earplugs in. For some reason, visual stimulus doesn’t ruin my concentration the way sound does. I often write in quite crowded, public places, but in silence.

SB:Who are your favorite artists or authors?

I don’t really have a favourite artist. I like visual art very much, but I can’t say that I am enamoured of any single artist or their entire oeuvre. In terms of authors, I love Iain M Banks and William Gibson.

SB:Do you have any memories of the first piece of art or literature that really moved you?

I wish I could say that I did, but I really can’t remember that first instance of being moved by piece of art or literature. I have a vague recollection that the very first time I read Austen, I had that uncanny sense of reading as time travel. If I have to be honest about it, although I love reading, my most powerful experiences are setting based. I am definitely powerfully affected by place. Especially urban space with history.

SB:What makes you ridiculously happy?
Clarity

SB:Do you still feel awe? If so what fills you full of it? If not, tell me

Yes, I still feel awe. Especially in the face of history made tangible in certain spaces.

SB:Free for all: Tell me something good.

I just adore the way you see things in your writing.

~

I hope you all like this interview and look forward to more.  I also really hope you check out RG’s work and her blog where she posts fantastic posts and has equally quality discussions.

Thank you RG for doing this. You delight me.

Over on FB presence of People of Color Organize, you’ll find the piece I wrote. This article is about surviving as an author of color in the literary world.

I am very proud of that.

What else?

I got an acceptance yesterday but none of the emails for the magazine are working right now so I don’t really know what to do.

Coming up I’ll be in the next issue of Milk Sugar. So I do still write fiction and stuff.

I have other news but I’m kind of keeping it to myself for right now until I can get some shit done.

So go read things by people I like.

First go read this piece by the lovely (She gives me the vapors) Antonia Crane.

Via Dennis, I found a link to this piece by Kyler James. It is really lovely.

Go read Blake Butler in Tin House. I really like his work a lot.

Per usual Junk is bringing it and this piece is great. I really like it.

I’m kind of no okay really obsessed with Dogzplot and I really love this piece.
In other lit news.

I really want Fuckscapes by Sean Kilpatrick. I’d actually buy it based on the name alone but from what I’ve seen it’s really up my alley.

I’ve been reading this blog Literary Rejections on Display and I kind of really love it. Sometimes when all you get are rejections you just have to laugh a little.

In case you haven’t noticed HTMLGIANT, the comments have died. RIP..

I think that’s all for now. I will return with more news and things soon.

I pitched an article idea to a magazine cold and they are looking forward to it.

Despite their enthusiasm I am scared shitless people will hate it.

That said, I knocked another thing off of my writing list of shit I wanna do.

Also, it’s taking me some time because quite frankly writing about racism and dealing with it is fucking exhausting. It’s so tiring.

I have some posts planned that got derailed.

A lot (as in holy shit a shitload) of people read the post I wrote about never being an indie darling.

I have to admit I feel some kind of way about that. I feel like some people who’ve sent me nice messages/notes didn’t quite get my point.

I know that some of those folks were well meaning save for one very butthurt White man who told me that I should a.) write better and b.) stop “playing the race card”.

I got less of that than I was expecting. But, I feel misunderstood on some level and will address that when my article is done because I want to think about it.

First though let me make it perfectly clear that I was not trying to harsh on Ms. Calloway’s success. I honestly don’t give a shit what she writes or how it comes into being. I don’t care if it was true or not. Yes, I do find the ethics of first it was presented as fact then as fiction/the fallout but that is a personal not a professional matter.

Was her piece great to me? Not really. It’s not to my tastes. Visually there were bits that made me twitchy as a reader and honestly I didn’t find it titillating, maddening or anything. I had no real reaction to it one way or the other.

I was using her situation as an object lesson and example of what I was talking about.

Just so we’re all clear.

Now I need to go finish my article up and get it nice and shiny.

I also need to breath. Some other opportunities have popped up and I really need to step back and think about them hard.

A lot of crazy and wonderful things happened to me.

First let’s talk accomplishments.

I finished my essay collection, had it professionally edited by a very dear friend who is an amazing author in her own right.

I kept up this blog which admittedly has been difficult for me. I often feel like my voice in matters literary isn’t really important. However,  I know myself and I know that the things I felt in 2011 did need a place of their own. So here it is.

I also have been talking to other authors. Yes it is on the internet via various social media but, that is a big deal for me. I’m fairly shy-ish when it comes to talking to people I admire or who’s work I really enjoy.

I did not make it to any literary events which is sad but, I have plans to join a professional organization which is huge. I’d never even considered myself “eligible” before.

I gambled and did what people have been advising me against for ten years. I self published. Worse  yet I had the audacity to publish things in a less than perfect state.  And to put the glitter on the situation I am inordinately extremely proud of myself for doing it all by myself. I designed the cover, I set the price, I’ve done the promotion. Buy it here for 4$.

Other literary things.

I got nominated for a Pushcart. Holy shit right?  When I got the note from Tim, I was really sick, my partner had just had emergency surgery and I read it on my phone then went to bed. I woke up at some point and read it again, sat staring at it. Googled pushcart to make sure he was saying what I thought he was saying. I texted my best friend and went back to bed.

Now let’s go chronologically:

1/1/11 I had a piece of very short erotica published at Every Night Erotica. This piece was an experimental short short piece. My flavor of edge play kinky romance without the usual kinks. This is about punching.  That was among the first of my experimental FemDom pieces.

The next piece I had published was at Children Churches & Daddies. In this piece I wanted the reader to really hear the mind of this girl lost in workaday middle class life when her heart belongs on the street.  (This is an amazon affiliate link)

You can also see the story in the collection CC&D put together. Fragments: cc&d magazine September-December 2011 issue writings Because  they did that I was able to create an official author page at Amazon. That was also a big deal.

Next the Flash Fiction Offensive took my piece about violent reaction to racism.  What I really wanted to give the reader here is that feeling of things being too much, this story was heavily inspired by these lyrics by L7.

One More Thing-

I’ve just ’bout had enough
I’m drowning from too much stuff
I get scared when the telephone rings
Someone complaining about one more thing

One more thing
Yeah it’s one more thing
One more thing to put in line
One more thing to waste my time
One more thing that i can’t take
One more thing and i’m gonna break

You need more, well get in line
Too many things grabbin’ at my time
Tell your brother right out flat
Then I’ll have to throw your badge

One more thing
Yeah you’re one more thing
One more thing to put in line
One more thing to waste my time
One more thing that i can’t take
One more thing and I’m gonna break
Yeah you’re one more thing
Yeah, you’re one more thing

Fix my engine and the tire goes flat
It’s one more thing that I can’t have
Politics messing with my rights
There’s nothing fun to do tonight

One more thing, it’s one more thing
It’s one more thing to put in line
one more thing to waste my time
One more thing that I can’t take
one more thing and I’m gonna break
It’s one more thing… it’s one more thing
it’s one more thing… it’s one more thing

L7 is one of my favorite bands and when I wrote this story in heavy rotation.  It’s about more than beating the brakes off of a guy, it is more about feeling at home in that level of rage. This piece was rejected a lot. One editor was distinctly uncomfortable with having a female protagonist, having the character she beats up hit her back. I rewrote it with a watered down violence and it wasn’t the same. I should also mention this started me on my refusal to tone things down.

I won’t go over each and every piece. You can look at them all at my website here.

The big important thing that has been reinforced to me again is to trust my own instincts. Yes, even if no one wants to publish something I’ve written.

I re-learned that yes I have an aesthetic that often includes bad words like fuck and cunt and I’m not sorry.

I have planted my feet.

I decided (again) against separating my erotic work from my other work because it’s all my work.  I decided (again) that I don’t give a hot fuck if someone decides that since I’ve written smut they can’t take me seriously writing other things.

Again despite feeling unwelcome as I’ve mentioned recently, feeling like the outsider on the outside of the supposed alternative I will keep doing what I do. I will write my shit. Sometimes people will read my shit sometimes not.

In 2012 I will do what I do.

I will keep writing and submitting.

By the end of the month I will have out another small collection of unedited raw writing and by April a collection of semi true journal jottings.

Also keep your eye out for some short interviews with people I love and who’s work you need to see.

I’m going to trust myself. If I need to put my pain on a page I will. I won’t keep it a secret. If I have to put on my helmet and big girl panties I will.

That’s all for now.