I just took a fifteen-minute power nap, which normally does the truck of zapping me back to normal. But today, my nap back fired in my face.
I didn’t get a great night of sleep, and I was up early as the kid needed to be at school early. Then there was alt side parking, and grocery shopping, and I made lunch for me and the wife.
As I sat on the couch to eat with her; WOOSH! All my energy just sloughed off and out the door.
Thus, I thought the power nap would do the trick.
Now, I’m just sitting on my bed, forcing this out because I will stick to my… Habit? Routine? Goal? I can’t even think of the word that I want to use…
Anyway… I just have the foggy head, and everything seems a little far out of reach.
I am beginning to see that Mondays and Tuesdays are difficult days for me to do all the chores, blog, journal, write and read. Something has to give, and I always pick working on fiction as the disposable one. I’m not sure what that says about me? Or if maybe it says nothing about me and I’m just over thinking everything? Should I forgive myself, and try again tomorrow? Or is this one of those “you only got one shot at this life, don’t waste it,” moments?
I should do dishes and pick up the kid from school.
It would be easy to write something about Valentine’s Day. I could put something down about my amazing and wonderful wife. I could write a quick whim about my daughter and her excitement this year of buying cards for us, and her school party. That would clearly be the easy choice.
I could also talk about the anniversary of the Pale Blue Dot photograph, but honestly, there is no way to top let alone approach what Carl Sagan already wrote about it.
I even thought about working on something about a couple of new bands that I have started listening to of late: The Hails, Sure Sure, and Kid Bloom. But I have never felt very confident in writing about music.
What I am is wishy-washy today.
I spent a good hour at a local coffee shop this morning after dropping off the kid at school, just writing in my journal, and that kind’a zapped me. Which sucks, because I have a good bit of free time today, and there are several things I want to work on. So, I need to push through this block. I’m at 186 words before I started this sentence, and I aim for at least 250 for a post, which means I’m closing in on my goal.
And I have a storage unit project that I need to start on. That’s just finding a new, cheaper unit that’s closer to our apartment. But I have to look, and make phone calls… That feels like a Thursday thing.
Anyway, this post is clearly going to be a part of my Greatest Hits Blog book.
So, I had a flurry of submissions that I sent out at the end of January. On the 31st of January to be exact. The month had flown by, and I had fallen behind on some projects, but I made a promise to myself that I was going to get submissions out before the end of the month. I sent out a handful, all to lit journals that I felt my work complimented. Just playing the game like a million other writers.
I do appreciate that the readers and editors of these journals can get inundated with submissions, and though they try their best, it can take time before they are able to respond. (I once got an email from an editor apologizing for taking so long on my submission, and then a month later they rejected me.) Everyone wants an answer sooner than later, and I do like that some journals says that you should expect a response after three months… if not sooner.
This afternoon I just received a rejection, after only nine days.
They were fast; I do like that.
It was substantially shorter than three months; I don’t like that.
In all fairness, it’s a rather odd duck of a flash piece.
See, I want to believe that there was a little bit of a debate over there. Like the reader is fighting for my piece, but the editor is holding strong that there really isn’t a place for my story in their publication, even though it is well written. Then other editors and readers start weighing in. The debate starts getting tense. Voices start rising. People are getting mad. Resignations are threatened; accusations of favoritism are made; mass chaos envelopes the office!
But, then cooler heads prevail. Drinks are had; apologies given; laughs are shared; everyone starts talking about why they got into publishing in the first place; the power of words and ideas; given people opportunities to share their voices and insights. It’s a thankless job; always on the verge of collapse; no one makes any money.
“We do this because we love it.” Someone says.
Everyone agrees, and smiles.
Then the managing editor adds, “But we got to reject that story.”
“That’s true,” the reader agrees.
“Send him the form letter of death!”
They all start laughing…
I guess what I’m saying is that if they would have held onto it for at least a month, then my ego wouldn’t be so bruised.
I only have fifteen minutes left to my part of the day, and I spent too much time doing laundry, and thinking about the mistakes I have made of late.
I’m thinking it was a good day to be humbled.
I’m also thinking that taking time for myself and not rushing things is more important than ever, and I should make a better effort.
But, this is just the start of the week, and I still have time to make corrections.
I do want to work no the online journal thing, and I am hung up on how to ask for submissions. I was planning on using Submittable, but they charge $85 a month for their service. A little too expensive for this idea, as I was looking to spend no start-up money on other than getting a URL. You know, onetime fees, not monthly stuff. Anyone out there have a suggestion on what platform to use for getting and organizing submissions?
Anyway, I got dishes to do, a kid to pick up at school, homework, and talking to my dad. Don’t get me started on dinner.
I’m guessing here, but I’ve written close to 100 reviews for my blog. And when I write one, I try to come up with some catchy opening, or hook, or gimmick in the first paragraph to get you, the reader, interested in reading further. The reason I do this is mainly because that’s how I was taught to write essays and critical papers in high school and college. Effective? Yeah, sure. Original? Not really. (Now, watch how I do this.) “Chance the Cat” is such a story that has a hook, a gimmick as one would say, that David Means employees to tell his story.
What “Chance the Cat” really is, is a deconstructed bittersweet rom-com with a cat and a Secret Service agent, which employees the gimmick of starting each section/paragraph by asking “Does it matter…” or stating “What mattered was…” or some other variant of the aforementioned questions/statement. Of the 49 section/paragraphs, only 5 do not use this hook. There must be a reason for this, right? Those 5 parts must contain some weight to them, because dramatically, when a pattern is created in the narrative, inevitable it will be broken for effect. I am not faulting Means for this structure in his storytelling, merely identifying it.
I bring all of this up because, as I said earlier, the story is a com-com. There is a meet cute, a budding relationship, a jointly cared for cat, a break up, and then the melancholy remembrance of the time shared. There are jumps in time, as the story doesn’t follow a linear format, which works well with the bittersweet tone of the story. I enjoyed how the story played with how disparate people come together, the crutch they use to stay together, in this story the cat, and how as time passes, it still isn’t clear how one should deal with those emotions from that time together. Using the “Does it matter…” “What mattered…” gimmick plays very well into that theme.
Did I mention the Secret Service agent? Yeah… this is the only issue I had with the story. (Well, it was a little long in parts…) You see, this couple lives down the street from the Obama’s in Chicago, and as such, there are Secret Service agents on the block checking people who live there as they come and go. Being that this information is essential to the breakup and the climax to the story, I found it an odd decision to share this with us about 2/3 way through the piece. A good amount of time is spent on this agent, whose purpose in the narrative is only to annoy the guy so he loses the cat. That’s it. The agent doesn’t weigh on the girl’s mind years later, nor is there some sort of connection between the girl and the agent, which I thought would happen as it would play into the complication of the central relationship. That was just me hoping for something to justify the agents existence.
I try very hard not to impose what I want to see happen in a story, but only to analyze and critically examine what the writer has presented to the reader. I kind’a fudged this one. In my defense, except for one character choice, I did enjoy “Chance the Cat.” I enjoyed the structure David Means created to tell this story, and there are many details that layered and deepened the central characters. But that agent…
(And then I got an anonymous comment this morning telling me that the story was about race, and how it was mind boggling that I could miss that. At first I left a quip about boggling minds, thanked the person for their comment, and asked what they thought the Agent represented.
I went about my day, but that comment kept poking at the back of my head. Was the story all about race? Could that be right? And if that was true, did I honestly completely miss that?
So, I went back and reread the story… and I took a whiff on this one.
And I’m embarrassed by that.
Rereading the piece, I now see what I missed and glossed over. Especially William’s reaction to the agent stopping him.
Something still doesn’t sit right with me when it comes to this story. I will stick with my original reaction of the Obama’s being down the street, along with the introduction of the Agent, 2/3rds of the way through the story. That Agent and all of his passages still feel odd to me; not fitting in with the rest of the flow of the story.
But I think the bigger question in all of this, is why did I whiff so hard on this piece? What I wrote in the last paragraph of my original review reveals everything, and shows my mistake. As I reread the piece, I began to discover how I had errored; I didn’t critically analyze what David Means presented, but started to impose in my mind what I wanted the story to be and glossed over what didn’t fit in with my judgement. I got caught up in thinking I knew better. That was my mistake. I want to own up to, and promise to do better.
Also, I want to thank the anonymous commenter who did an appropriate job of smacking me upside the head.)
