Please Don't Write About These Don'ts {A Guide for Fiction Writers}

A Naga

A debate-ish popped up today about editors' proclamations. Editors of small journals which publish fiction. In addition to always and not originally stating, "Send us your best," as if writers knowingly send their crap, their fails, their uglies, an editor, one in particular, was called out for his proclamation, his warnings in his journal's Call for Work.  This particular fellow isn't so bad. But comments, mainly from men, defending him are (so bad).  It's an old battle, ongoing and never very interesting, the battle being the "don'ts" of plot. A woman instigated the debate. I suppose that's why the fellows chimed in.

One comment was only Kafka could write about the creature/human transformation. Whew! He got in under the wire. I thought the cutting off point was Shakespeare. I thought the real cutting off point was Ovid. I guess cause Satan isn't an animal, Goethe was safe.

Listen to me and listen hard. No one is to write a fairy tale. No one is to read the Hans Christian Anderson or Angela Carter. You might be inspired. O fie on thee, writer, inspired by great writing.

Some other don'ts include:

Don't write about star-crossed lovers, or lovers who have any problems at all.
Don't write about adultery.
Or gambling. Or driving, hitchhiking, or walking.
Don't write about men who hate their father.
Don't write about daughters with overbearing mothers.
Don't write about the experience of being a soldier at war.
Don't write about the experience of being a citizen in a country at war.
Just leave the whole war thing alone.
Don't write about revenge, abduction, or molestation. Who cares?
Don't write about being a Jew.
Don't write about being a Catholic.
Hey, Protestants, Buddhists, Muslims, and Hindus. Don't bother.
I'm on the line about atheists and agnostics.
Don't write about the absurdity of the academy.
Nothing there of interest and definitely nothing humorous.
Don't write about being a misfit teenager.
Don't write about a deformity, imaginary or real.
Euuuuuu.
Don't write about poverty.
Don't write about Brooklyn.
Don't write about wealth.
Don't write about Boston, New York or Americans who travel abroad (wealthy or not, for adventure, or with drugs).
Don't write about crime, be it true or false.
I beg of thee. No stories in which someone is murdered and a detective, official or quaint, solves the crime.
Please. No stories of injustice. No children born out of wedlock. No working class heroes. No war heroes. No heroines. No-I mean NO-stories of orphans who are adopted, abused, sent to dreadful schools.
Don't set your story in New Orleans. Or Texas or New Mexico. Or Oregon. Which reminds me:
No stories about institutions caring for or warehousing the mentally ill.

The above is a short list.

 Of course, be warned, publishers of journals. The quiet, open-minded, modest editors will end up publishing the best - original writing which steals from the finest. Theft in art? Always a plus.
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*The Nagas were mythical beings who could transform from man or woman to snake. They were a separate species from humans and lived in their own secret cities deep in the jungle. Often worshipped as gods in the early days, they eventually ended up as minor parts of both the Hindu and Buddhist religions. For more see:  The Naga

Anonymity Shrugged . . . at the Brooklyn Book Fair

At yesterday's Brooklyn Book Fair I was recognized (by three friends), slouched toward greater anonymity (next paragraph) and made a nice contact (the anti-anonymity) (finale).

Since my filters are few I know better than to think I can walk up to a publisher's or literary review's table and convince them to publish me, let alone ever again admit in the company of decent men and women they've met me. In fact I might antagonize them without ever understanding why.

So I stroll about such book fairs, the inner pep talk being: These are important events and I am happy they exist for newcomers enough unjaded to believe their symmetrical features and bouncy yet important demeanor will hook in an editor.

I did score a free New York Review of Books—I'm the man. And stopped for reasons I'm not sure of at a university press table. Well, the books were good and the press was functional so I talked to the woman in charge. She was the publicity arm of the publisher, strong, smart, directed. Verifying the publisher wasn't tanking, I asked about submissions and the publicicist said, Sure! in a voice that meant, Most likely not!

Thing is, when I told her I had a collection published with BlazeVOX [books] (I didn't speak the "[books]") her eyes glazed, as they say, as if an intellectual glassworker were on-call in her tear ducts. Telling her I wrote poetry and fiction, she responded, icky sweet, A little bit of everything.

A close relative of Fallen Satan is on-call for Sarah Sarai and Fallen Satan stoked fires in my eyes as I said, surly as I could, A LOT, I write A LOT of everything.

I was over it almost instantly, but not up for readings (late-ish Saturday night, which included watching a craps game on Stanton). On my way to the subway I stopped by one more table, a humble (more than the fancy publisher) affair, split between two ventures (a table is $300 for the day so splitting makes sense), both legitimate (which for me means literary-ish, including manga and graphics).

Without going into it, this is not a naming blog, the two at the table and I talked without attitude, exchanged info with the possibility of my reading them and them reading me.
Sarah Sarai is always willing to show up at a book fair, chat with (three) friends, be mildly insulted, and make a few new colleagues. So it is written.

It took 25+ years to get this story published

I wrote the first draft of "The Devil Is Her Friend," then "Half Death," in December 1984, which means in Seattle. (I'd moved there from L.A. in August, using extra money from an NEH fellowship for high school teachers to fund the adventure.) I don't have the earliest drafts--I don't hold onto much. I do, however, have my lovely blue cloth notebook--a gift from an L.A. friend. I recorded stories written and submitted until 1991 in that book.

Back then I had energy and like a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney prototype, gumption. I submitted it to The New Yorker, Hudson Review, Kenyon Review. My notes indicate they scribbled encouraging replies on the rejection slips. I received a generous number of "send more" slips to little avail.

My impulse should have been to submit first to smaller reviews, absorb their suggestions, then try the most competitive journals, but I used to be afraid I was depriving myself of a chance to join the mystical fellowship of the self-affirming egotistical hierarchy. Now I laugh at my idiocy. My story is out there. I am mo-fo thrilled.

The obvious thing is, however, that it took circa twenty-five years to get this story published. On the one hand (as they say), well, I can see that I tinkered on the story for years. On the other (another comment of theirs), holy crap. I mean the story hasn't that significantly changed. I spruced up this and that by means of cheekier dialog.

I agreed, a few years ago, with some review editors who loved it (they said), wouldn't published it, but suggested I remove a section in which Pearl decides what book she'll read while other teachers are lip servicing the priest. I love that delted section, a meditation on favorite books, but realized they were right, that few readers if any readers were interested in that kind of decision.

About six months ago, editors at WON'T BE NAMED wrote me they like this story "very" much but wanted me to delete another section. It's 2,500-word story. What did they want? This was the third story of mine they'd read--the first was over-the-transom, the next two were requests--ever in search of the perfect Sarai story, I guess.

I didn't delete any more, impolitely told them to screw off, and sent the story to Stone's Throw. (Do you know how talented, intelligent, beautiful, insightful and Russell Rowland and Tami Haaland & co. are, not to mention Russell was figure skating champion in Minsk five years in a row and Tami has been coaching Gold's Gym weight lifters for forty years.)

And herein lies a tale in a tale in a riddle in an enigma in Stone's Throw.

GO TO http://www.stonesthrowmagazine.com/ (and spy on the fiction links until you unearth my covert link), or boldly clink on or cut and paste:
http://www.stonesthrowmagazine.com/pdf/sarai_the-devil-is-her-friend.pdf