Many of my publications have been in literary journals of one type or another. I haven’t minded the small fee, once in awhile, for submission.
But I have noticed fees have skyrocketed while many journals have gone online.
What’s worse is the slush pile of new “literary” journals asking for enormous fees. It’s disturbing and disgusting.
Questionable people with little or no credentials offering publication ONLINE. While they don’t guarantee publication, they are asking for fees and then one place even asked for payment for the publication in advance!
Submittable does charge a fee to journals to list their calls, but their fees are not in line with what is being asked by these questionable entities. (I hesitate to call them publishers).
Humans of the World is a website that asks for $6.00 fee to submit to their blog. Authors/writers pay to have their work on this blog? A quick tour of their website offers no publisher information – who is this run by? Who reads the submissions? How are submissions chosen? It appears they’ve been in business since 2022.
Poet’s Choice, based in Mumbai, has a number of calls, one is for word poems. I spotted an error in their call. There appears to be no fee requested – until you get to their submission page. Then they have a whole array of payment selections.
So – why haven’t I published in awhile? Look around – the publishing industry that we once knew is history.
I’m struggling to find reputable places to publish – as are many authors. Amazon takes many liberties with authors and they bought Ingram/Spark. Independent publishing is in question.
Credible journals are being lost. Publishers are extremely selective – they want someone with a large following for guaranteed sales. They do little to no promotion.
I have submitted some poems to a publisher, but then someone else showed me how they submitted an AI poem to the same publisher. I’m wondering if that is what I’m competing with. I’m looking forward to seeing the results of acceptance.
I’m not sure what will happen, where we will go, or where I might land. But I’m a writer. I keep writing.
I treasure the cool mornings in my garden surrounded by the soft sounds of birds twittering with drought tolerant blooms that still have the power to attract butterflies and nourish the bees before we all begin to struggle from the mid-day heat.
This is my time. A time before the day starts. A steaming cup of tea at my side and my cat at my feet. Occasionally, the neighbor’s cats stop by for a quick stroke before they’re off chasing a roly-poly or a grasshopper.
The gardener’s haven’t yet begun their buzzing, blowing, clipping, and mowing, and the traffic sees only a neighbor or two starting their day. It’s serene. Regenerative.
Therefore, when someone recommended I save my “wasted garden time” as a reward for a full writing day, my whole body reassigned itself to the back of the chair as I studied her. I felt profoundly misunderstood.
“It’s quite hot in the afternoon.” I offered. “I can’t really sit outside in the 105 degree heat and feel regenerative.”
She didn’t have an answer to that, but tried to offer another option.
Writer’s, let us be honest, need down time. There are times when things are flowing and we are bleeding words, we sit day and night at the desk or table or in some random chair maybe even at a coffee shop or even in the 105 degree heat in some shaded place in our car while we wait for an appointment and we write and we can’t write fast enough. But there are times, the juncture before those, or the moments after, when ideas percolate.
At times, it may seem we are doing nothing. We are wasting time in our gardens or traveling or walking or doing whatever it is that makes us who we are and fills our well with tranquil reflection. This is the place where our stories lie dormant, waiting for us to give attention to them, offer them life.
Temporary cessation is (sometimes) necessary for regeneration. Consider injuries: Does the doctor tell the athlete, “after you run a few laps, then you can rest it”? Or does the Rest Ice Heat Elevation come before the next laps?
Many years ago, I belonged to my first writing/critique group. In the beginning, it was great to get together, talk about writing, and read each other’s work. We were all novice writers.
There was a session when one member, the most critical of all of us, spent the whole time helping a single writer with the few pages she submitted. We didn’t get to the rest. None of us were too worried about it. The point was to help one another. The following session, however, the same member looked at my pages and threw up her hands, “I don’t even know what to do with this.” And she offered nothing. The rest of the group was as surprised as I was.
I don’t know what about those pages ticked her off that she wouldn’t respond to them but driving home that day I realized I was not in the right group. I didn’t attend again, and the group disbanded soon after.
Finding the right group has to be one of the hardest tasks a writer faces. Of course, we want writers equal to or better so the feedback is helpful. Personalities matter as well. If there is someone who waxes too critical without being helpful or another who is overly helpful and won’t be critical – neither is furthering the work.
Some writers might have different values.
One writing group was run by a well known editor. She had a certain way of doing things and everyone needed to do it her way. I respected her opinion. We got on well, even if sometimes we disagreed. One woman quit after a month. She didn’t see how all of our very different work and styles benefited from sounding all the same.
I stayed with that group a little longer, valuing the feedback I received. But then it was time to move on.
My writing and critique partner who lasted the longest offered me the greatest feedback. The more we read each other’s work, the more we talked about our goals for each individual piece, the better partners we became. And, we became lifelong friends along the way. Her work is sensitive, detailed, almost understated. And even though our writing was different, we understood each other’s voice and values. We were able to give each other helpful feedback on a regular basis. Her infirmities have left her without a creative streak. And as she tries to heal, I cannot ask her to read my work.
The few writer’s conferences I’ve attended have drawn people to me – but they are looking for a teacher, a mentor, and I can’t mentor all of them and still have time to write.
There were a few authors I would like to remain in contact with, but they have their own critique groups and want to charge outsiders for their services.
Critique services are good for editing, perhaps some are good for storylines. But trusting someone who doesn’t know you or your goals often ends with needs unmet and the critique unsatisfying.
Maybe a writer doesn’t need a writing group or critique group after a certain point. But writing is so solitary,it helps to surround oneself with like minded individuals.
For the first time, I saw a call for fiction with a warning about AI submissions.
Is this what we, as writers, have to contend with now? I’m pretty confident in my fiction and the originality, the use of language, etc. Do I have to compete with AI in writing good fiction or original fiction? I’m just not certain how this will work for writers. (I suppose this is partly what the writers’ strike is about).
I was concerned enough about students using it in the classroom and we are told “not to worry, work it in with exercises.” Uhm, why? I’m trying to teach my student writers how to form sentences, create meaning, develop paragraphs and write to include their own beautiful and important opinions and ideas. Why am I going to say – hey, let’s see how well AI can write this idea? The students are concerned enough about their skills; if we show them that AI can indeed write it better, will they bother to improve?
Writing takes time and practice. I put in my 10,000 hours. (plus!) One can not develop those skills overnight.
Many seem to believe writing is a skill you’re born with. How will I convince students and writers that it’s the work, it’s the blood, sweat, and tears, that will bring about beautifully written prose and it will have all been worth it?
When you see for yourself that you can do it, when you write something that you never thought you could – then you will understand the accomplishment, feel the endorphins rush through your body, and believe the work was worth the struggle.
But, if instead, AI writes it, the student/writer never really learns the value of doing it for themselves. (let alone the hows of doing it for themselves.)
Is this the last vestige of humanity disappearing right before our eyes? The benefits and rewards of motivation, hard work, struggling and overcoming a challenge. The indescribable feeling of….. yes, I can!
I know many people are telling me not to worry, and perhaps I have fallen into troglodyte fashions of thought and creation here.
I suppose it’s only over when AI can learn to love what it does as much as writers do.
A friend once said to me – they stole the life you were supposed to have! I was surprised by her angered response about something from my past. I’d never considered that anything had been stolen from me, taken from me, or that I missed out on anything in particular having not had the perfect childhood. See, I don’t believe there is a perfect childhood.
I remember a young woman saying, “my life would have been so much better if I’d had a father.” She was bemoaning the fact that she was raised by a single mother. And I said, “What if you had a father that beat you and your mother? What if he drank? What if you had a father that stayed out all night or didn’t work for a living?” She fumed – how can you say that?
People have this image in their heads of how things are supposed to be and they lament what they believe they do not have or what they’ve lost. They believe their lives might have been magically transformed had that …. blah.. blah.. blah… been different or perfect. I consider – it could have been worse!
I’ve just always taken the experience at face value. My parents made mistakes. Everyone’s parents make mistakes. But you get what you get and you make the best of it.
In watching the Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary, he said his tyrant of a father motivated him to do more, to do better; he says, if it wasn’t for his father, he would have never left his small town.
YES! Had it not been for the childhood I experienced, I may not have been so incredibly motivated to escape, to do better, to strive for more.
The truth is – like Schwarzenegger’s brother – some people don’t get out. They stay stuck. That was my worse nightmare.
My experiences of lack have informed my writing, have inspired me to strive for more, have helped me develop empathy and compassion. My shitty childhood motivated me to do more, want more, be more.
When I write about the past, I am not wailing about it. I’m praising the resilience I gained to overcome life’s challenges!
Nietzsche’s whole quote: “Out of life’s school of war: what does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
It’s a much abused and misquoted line. Maybe even I am oversimplifying it.
It’s a choice. You can choose to let the school of hard knocks keep you down, or you can choose to get back up. It’s hard sometimes to keep fighting – and you have to refine your technique. But you can win. And it’s not by looking back and wishing for what might have been, but by looking and moving forward.
How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry by Edward Hirsch is the most passionate, love filled book about the writing of poetry. It changed how I read and wrote poetry. It changed the way I taught!
This book isn’t prescriptive. No hard and fast rules here.
This is written by a person who loves poetry and wants readers to love it as well. I took this philosophy into my teaching of literature. I want my students to find things they enjoy reading – which I hope will encourage them to read more. We don’t spend hours analyzing poetry only to be told we’re wrong (how many of us have those high school memories?!).
Reading poetry should be like taking a warm bath, sinking into the steamy water, enjoying the bubbles against your skin, the scent wafting over you.
As for writing poetry, it seems there are no rights or wrongs. He suggests you give colors sounds, sounds feelings, etc. My writing grew more descriptive, creative, beautiful. I took chances and created new meaning in the relationship between words and ideas. I stretched my poetry muscles and it has paid off. This month, I plan to share some of my poetry with you.
It was the most illuminating, freeing book I’ve read throughout my academic and writing career.
I’ve written about the healing power of writing, but haven’t mentioned it in the same sentence with journaling. Any type of writing will help, bullet points, brainstorming, I most often start with freewriting as that is what works best for me.
Freewriting is the act of writing without stopping. Many people begin with a set time, like 5 minutes, and they’ll write whatever comes to mind. If you’re unpracticed in journaling or freewriting, this might work if it seems starting might seem overwhelming.
Some people see journals as a way of recording the day’s events, certain thoughts or feelings, or even keeping track of accomplishments and to-do lists. It can be all or any of these things.
It used to be I’d read Sylvia Plath’s journals or Anais Nin’s diary excerpts and be intimidated – how did they create such lovely and thoughtful prose in their journals when what I scribble appears more like word vomit, thoughts and emotions all over the place in no particular order? and there certainly isn’t much poetry within it!
But then a friend pointed out a few things. First: some people keep a writer’s journal (as opposed to or in addition to a personal journal). This may be what I’ve been exposed to within the realm of famous author’s private thoughts. Second: These published journals have probably been edited, redacted, and only the best parts saw the light of day.
The Diary of Anne Frank, most people are unaware, was edited. Large parts of the original text were blacked out by her father who thought some entries to be inappropriate.
Hey – all the best journals have inappropriate thoughts! That’s why they are there in the secrecy of our journals.
But journals serve a number important purposes: Journal writing relieves us of our anxiety by releasing any thoughts and feelings that have been unexpressed or need to be re-expressed. Writing things down is a way to get them out of us, to say them aloud, and begins a process of working out the challenges we face.
Some writers do morning pages. Some people journal nightly. The best time is the time that suits you.
The fine art of journaling lies in putting the pen to the paper and doing what feels best for you without worrying what others will think. It is just for you. And we all need that – to do things for ourselves.
Memoir is hard. Reliving the past, reasoning with it, acknowledging truths, and attempting to put events into words is challenging, upsetting even.
Speculative memoir is not a subversion of the truth, but an aid in voicing our deepest pain.
Speculative memoir uses supernatural elements, ghosts, fairies; it uses metaphors, imaginative scenarios – whatever it takes to further the truth.
When I wrote Ghost in her Room (printed below) it felt right, good. It said what I needed it to say. But was it memoir? Uncertain how to label it, I sent it out with explanations. Explanations which were not needed as it was accepted immediately.
THE GHOST IN HER ROOM – Noreen Lace
I stand in the hall at midnight. The oak floor is cold, even through my socked feet. The night light from the bathroom filters the darkness as I glance toward the pale pink haze at the other end of the corridor. I hear the small creaks on the floor, feel something just on the other side of that door. It’s menacing, waiting, daring me to enter. Tonight, though, I decline. I’m not strong enough. I’m tired, and I’m chilled.
It’s been raining for days. The house shivers in anger, the wood popping and cracking in the shadows behind me. It’s shrinking. We all are. I turn and go to bed, shutter the passage to whatever lies outside my room.
I lie there drifting between alpha and theta; rainbows swirl inside my closed eyes before a child calls my name right next to my bed, next to my ear, and then giggles. I spring awake but remain still. There is no child, so I don’t search. If there’s anything in here, it’s a ghost and looking won’t help me see.
Years ago, I heard footsteps on the cheap linoleum of the kitchen. I wrote it off to an old house groaning with age in a succession of weakening boards under the plinth. That stopped when I had the floors redone; ceramic doesn’t cede. That was long before I was alone here in the house.
In the bright light of day, I sense nothing behind that door. It’s quiet, empty, needs to be cleaned. I have my coffee, toast, and go on.
Sometimes I find myself home in the middle of the day. I’ve forgotten something or took a wrong turn and ended up in my own driveway; I go in. There’s a light on in the kitchen. A picture’s fallen from the wall. A forgotten towel slung aside the wooden chair. “Is someone here?” There’s no answer, not even my echo calling back to me.
In the shadowed hall, I stare at the pale pink gate. Pause. I will it to chirr or clack, shimmy slightly in the weight of my presence. The light from the window seeps around the threshold and stretches past strands of dust toward my shoes, but the door doesn’t give.
I don’t know if there is magic in this world. I don’t know if people can see things or if they know things. I used to think I would know if she was in trouble.
Some days I ignore the door completely, disregard the space, discount the whirrs or whines.
I’m sitting at the dining table. Haven’t passed or gone in for some time. My house has one less room. But then, suddenly, the hall creaks, a shadow moves; someone, something is standing there watching me, waiting for me, challenging me to look up.
I turn and it’s gone.
Later, I glance at the door, not quite closed, an inch or so ajar. Inside I click the switch. The light is hazy; a bulb burns out.
I stand, fists to my hips, in the center of the room. “Move one thing,” I tell myself. “Just pick up one thing and fold it or move it or throw it away.” But I back out. There’s no menacing figure now, just overwhelming emptiness.
I consider nailing it shut. Losing it. There’s nothing I need, not the four corners of square footage, not the admonition of what is not there, and not that ghost reminding me of all I don’t have.
Before bed, I stand in the hall; that dark presence has grown and I feel it breathing just beyond her door. A not so gentle sweep of chilled air in, warm air out, hanging on to the sound of my footsteps, egging me on. I back down. Turn to my own sallow room.
When I fall into a deep sleep, my father puts his hands on my shoulders. I haven’t seen him in ten years, but he looks good. “You’ve got to let it go,” he implores. It’s the nicest thing he’s ever said to me. But not today.
The ghost in her room was once small and indelible. It grows greater every day. It fills the gloom, spills into the corners, and bends back upon itself, towering over the entryway. If I challenge it, maybe it’ll shrink, fade into nothingness. But, at night, as I hear it mooring toward my room, the creak in the floor, a rap on the wall, the quiet whisper at my door, maybe that’s enough to get me through another day.
It’s exciting, invigorating, curative even; however, it’s not – as some people believe – revenge.
Just as forgiveness is more about us than those we forgive, memoir is the same. It’s about the author, the writer stating their peace. While some memoirs may read like revenge, they are more about sharing, maybe even confessing.
While Anne Sexton wrote confessional poetry better than anyone else I can name, confessional memoir comes in different flavors.
When I think of confessional memoir, I used to consider Life on the Edge or Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher. Some people would think of Spare by Prince Harry – but these are celebrity memoirs which carry a very different weight in the market.
Confessional memoirs will offer insight, a new way of looking at life and understanding people. Consider Dirty River by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarsinna who writes about being a disabled queer woman and survivor of abuse. Not the only example – Lit by Mary Karr, Unspeakable by Meghan Daum will offer more mainstream insights into death, illness, alcoholism, recovery. But we will come away with empathy for the human condition as lived through these authors.
These stories that will hurt your heart instead of shock your eyes.
While I’m working on a few pieces of memoir right now, they may not shock your eyes but some parts may hurt your heart. Certain pieces will speak to some people and not to others. Some readers will wonder, others may doubt. A person or two may become upset – upset with me – but confessional or not – it’s personal, it’s mine. And their upset will be their problem.
Writing memoir is not for the faint of heart. It’s not for the shy or the scared – and maybe it’s not even for the “brave” – it’s for those who need to speak, who need to heal, who might be heard, and for those very souls who need to hear it.
Noreen Lace 
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