The Real Rub

Change is in the air.

Not only have I crafted and (mostly) published the cycle of fiction I cared to write, but a year of poetry rejections following a hot-hand right of the gate in late 2019 has made me feel less enthusiastic about spending endless time preparing journal submissions.

Right—two thematic poetry collections, Salvation Tactics Through Magic (full) and Ghost the Subtle Passing (chapbook), continue to gel. In time, if it feels right, I’ll print them myself.

Besides, I continue to get complimentary (a/k/a ‘encouraging’) rejections; the work seems to have merit. The last one read, “While we can’t use these for the current issue, this poetry sings. We look forward to more.”

Encouraging indeed. With more comments like that from other editors, as well as the honor of four poems published (three in one batch!) in my first full year as a submitting poet, the fields are far from fallow. And, make no mistake, there is more work in circulation; at any time it suits me, I can unleash sheaves of weird, challenging, possibly terrible, brilliant or in-between poetry in every cardinal direction.

If it suits me.

Problem: A serious submission game right done right, however, is a consuming, tedious task. Many writers devote an entire working day out of the week, if not more, to keeping up with submissions; others take an hour or two every day.

Coming ‘soon’ from Mind Harvest Press.

Problem deux: I’m not that interested in such a routine. For one, I simply no longer harbor the ego desire that comes with acceptances and publications and seeing my byline in print.

Don’t have a fit—I still embrace and embody the idea of the art life and manifesting creative works, but as far as seeking attention and eyeballs for them, eh, it doesn’t matter that much anymore. If at all. Hard to get in the chair for drudgery like staring at journals and contests and deadlines when the spirit, body and mind are only about half in such a trying game.

Nor to discount the stark fact that I’m still burned out from the long road it took to Dixiana. That merits its own blog post, which I don’t have the energy to write.

As for book projects, including writing a memoir entitled Shopkeep and preparing both Mansion of High Ghosts and Reconstruction of the Fables for Mind Harvest Press publication, no lack for that work, should I choose to accept it (also, two short story collections, sequenced and waiting to be line-edited).

Here may lie the real rub. The little mom & pop hippie shop, Loose Lucy’s, that is the source of the memoir’s title is doing so well in its 28th year that, frankly, a chunk of my ‘work energy’ will go toward helping my partners continue to run the old girl.

Besides, look at this face.

My ‘other life’ as a retailer obviously offers its own fulfillments, as can be read in this recent profile by the alma mater magazine Carolinian.

But worry not, literary fans: Shopkeep will include a spiffy, updated writer’s journey chapter or three as well, of course. Like the proverbial magician I have stood for the last two decades with my feet in two worlds (call it three or four if you also count teaching and journalism), and so no way to tell one story without the other, et cetera. The more I reflect upon my life, the true story is at least as strange and interesting as any of the fiction I’ve concocted, so I suspect crafting the memoir will dominate 2021.

It’s a new year, and I’m still a writer, but what it will portend in terms of work appearing in the world in the form of poetry or the unpublished fiction, no one can yet say. But I will be working. That’s the long-story-long for ya. Happy New Year.