Rejection and The Terrible Baby
I’ll be submitting The Terrible Baby this week, with Elizabeth’s help. She’s my student assistant and I will, I swear, figure a way for her to help me get this done. I’m not thrilled about the money that it will cost—around $200 for this batch going out. But I am happy with the manuscript and not planning on going back in for more surgery anytime soon. Well, I say that, but it only takes another read to be tempted into more revisions/rearrangements/rewordings. Such is the nature of this thing. But I really like the book and I may come to love it. I love parts of it. And I do most definitely love the shorter, chapbook version. I love its compactness, its no holds punch.
As for the story collections, I've not been working, only thinking. Musing about what works collection-wise and what doesn’t quite fit. I probably have material for two ¾-length collections of prose (fiction and the something other-than stuff).
As for writing new stuff, not so much this past week. I’ve still got several stories in the hopper, but am obviously letting them lie, which is no doubt a good thing. I’ve the book I started this summer that I want to hop back on, but most likely will not hop on till Xmas break.
Am starting to get response/rejections, which always feels like at least SOMETHING is going on. I got this one yesterday:
Hi Rebecca --
This is a really, really tough decision. I think much of your writing in this piece is absolutely spectacular, but I'm having a really tough time with the metanarrative. I guess because it doesn't really seem to have any bearing on the story itself, for me it comes off as something between a gimmick and a stall, because the story of this story is so intense.
Best of luck -- obviously this is just one reader's opinion.
Yep. This is in response to “Inside Herman, Inside Irene,” which is a thorny piece, definitely meta-something stuff. But the meta-gunk is integral, I think. Who knows? Stories, prose, poetry. I am amazed at how well I can bounce between them now. But it does seem like scattershooting. And the manuscript prep and submission tracking gunkcrap takes so very much focus. Not to mention that life, that other life out there that pulls me back, as it should. What must it be like to get a fellowship and do nothing but write for a couple of months? Heaven or hell?
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