January 5th, 2004

January 5^th, 2004

            The night after LSU won the National Championship, he was still partying in the Quarter on Royal Street. He had come from a bar on Bourbon—sometimes it seemed that all the bars were on Bourbon, though of course that wasn’t true—and was trying to find his way back to Dauphine, where Melanie was supposed to be taking photos for her article. He was drunk and had to piss, the nine Miller Lights in his belly trying hard to dribble down his leg. He needed a bathroom, an alley, anything. But there on Royal, he saw nothing but shops, all of them now closed. He spat

            Fuck

            and turned around, and that was when the fist came out of nowhere and caught him between the eyes. A bolt of pain shot through his head, white light exploding behind his eyelids, and he sprawled on his back, legs in the air. He turned his head and vomited, his eyes still closed against the pain. Someone above him said

            Ah, shit

            and then a hand jabbed into his front pants pocket, ripping out his keys. He heard them jingle as they landed in the gutter. Someone grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him upward and over, then pushed him down on his face. His nose cracked on the concrete, the pain like an electrical fire in his face, and he passed out. When he awoke, only seconds later, someone was cursing and shouting

            Yeah I got the wallet, but the motherfucker pissed on me

            and he realized that they were talking about him, the warmth spreading outward from his crotch. Someone kicked him in the ribs and he moaned, turning over just enough to see shoes, scuffed white Nikes with worn soles, the swoosh on the left one flapping back and forth like a flap of torn skin. He wondered if Royal Street was empty save for him and his attackers, or if someone might be watching, snapping pictures perhaps, possibly shooting the footage on cell phone. Perhaps tomorrow he would see his own mugging on the Internet. Somewhere a few blocks over Melanie was snapping photos of dimly-lit architecture, unaware that piss was pooling underneath his thigh and that his own blood was running down his throat like sips of fetid water.

January 4th, 2004--Flash Fiction

January 4^th, 2004

            She opened her mailbox and found the latest letter from Sweepstakes forAmerica, promising that she really, really, really, really had made it to the final rounds for the Grand Prize of fifteen million dollars. The raised, bold print on the envelope impressed her with a promise that she could feel under the pads of her fingers as she carried the mail upstairs to her three-room apartment. The calligraphy marked this letter as different from the light bill, the Victoria’s Secret bill, the advertisement for the nearby body shop’s oil change and lube for only $59.95, extra for some import models. She opened her door and went inside, shivering, the apartment nearly as cold as the weather outside. She dropped the mail on her couch and ran to the thermostat. The temperature was set at seventy degrees, yet she could see her exhalations. She stood on her tiptoes and stretched her hand up to the vent, hoping to feel warm air. She felt nothing.

            She turned back to the couch, eyeing the pile of mail. She could see perhaps two inches of the light bill, peeking from under the Sweepstakes letter. She stared at it for perhaps a full minute before walking over to the couch and sitting down beside the mail, her weight causing the pile to shift. The envelopes slid toward her. She felt the Sweepstakes letter poke her thigh. The light bill was now fully visible, the envelope plain white, the postmark nondescript, the print on the envelope plain and unimportant.

Nude Sucking Ink--Short Fiction

Here’s a short story I wrote some years back. It’s unpublished, previously unseen anywhere, so call it a blog exclusive. A bit humorous, a bit satirical, lots of fun to write…comments welcome, except from trolls.

Nude Sucking Ink

             He was painting a nude woman performing fellatio on a blue Pilot Bettergrip pen when his agent Curly called. Curly, a mousy man with an anemic pencil mustache, said

            Hi, Hamlet. Good news. The gallery agreed. You have a show.

            Hamlet dropped his brush and sat in the nearest chair. The model relaxed, throwing on a button-down white shirt and twirling the pen between her fingers. He looked at the painting, admiring his own work, his bold new style. On this canvas, what might be interpreted as a thin penis was capped, possibly, by a pair of full lips. This image lay at the center of the painting. Dozens of tightly woven lines—spirals, straights, diagonals—emanated from the central figure to the canvas borders. Hamlet said

            Don’t jerk me around today, Curly. I’m trying to finish Nude Sucking Ink, and I’m almost there

            and Curly said

            I’m not kidding. The Kane House in downtownLittle Rock. They’ve agreed to give you the whole second floor

            and Hamlet frowned, saying

           Little Rock. I live in Parkview and drive a Volkswagen Beetle. How am I supposed to get all my paintings toLittle Rock?

            Curly snorted and said

            I’ll send a van. Jesus, man, is that all you have to say? I tell you you’ve got a show in the Kane House, best gallery in the state, and all you do is bitch because I didn’t bring the buyers and critics to your place

            and Hamlet, only half listening, looked at the model and said

            Take off that shirt.

            She stuck the pen in her mouth and slipped out of the shirt. Hamlet felt his erection rising, just as he liked it when he was painting. He said to Curly

            Look, it’s fantastic news. I’ve just had a cruddy day and I want to finish this. When’s the show?

            and Curly said

            Next week. Call me when you finish that one and then don’t start on any more till after the big day. You need to save all your energy for schmoozing.

            Hamlet hung up. He picked up his brush and turned to the model. Her breasts hung down, pendulous, heavy. He took a deep breath and went back to work.

* * *

            One week later, Hamlet stood in the Kane House, surrounded by his paintings and several people he had already come to loathe. Each of the paintings exhibited his new style—a fuzzy image surrounded by tight lines. He called the technique Abstract Soft Focus. The work seemed to interest the browsers, though each of them seemed to have been bred especially to bug Hamlet and assault his sensibilities.

            Curly stood next to Hamlet in front of Nude Sucking Ink. Bob Kane, the gallery owner, stood next to them holding a half-empty glass of red wine. Kane clapped Hamlet on the back and said

            We’ve sold five already, Ham

            to which Hamlet replied

            I hate being called Ham.

            Curly grunted and shuffled in between them, saying

            Sorry, Bob, like most artists he has the social skills of a tree sloth. We’ve sold five so far, Hamlet. Lots of money here tonight

            and Hamlet said

            It isn’t the money

            and Curly said

            Of course it isn’t. By the way. If you only wanted to paint lips, why did you request a nude model?

            and Hamlet said

            Because I like looking at naked women.

            Kane laughed, cleared his throat, and moved on, mixing with his guests and grabbing another glass of wine from a passing waiter. Curly shook his head, frowning. A young man with blonde hair and a horrible bright pink ascot strolled up. He sipped a martini and considered Nude Sucking Ink, stroking his goatee every few seconds. Finally he said

            What lovely energy. A wonderful commentary on the proliferation of sex in the media

            and Hamlet said

            Actually, the sexual image is meant to represent all primal urges that both feed and are in turn fed by language, hence the pen

            and the young man laughed and said

            An interesting interpretation

            to which Hamlet replied

            The true interpretation. I’m the artist.

            But the young man only laughed again, as if such an idea had never occurred to him and in fact now seemed absurd since someone had mentioned it. He said

            It matters little. Your interpretation is still only one of many. You aren’t God, and even His creations have more than one possible meaning. But since we’re talking about your work and what you think it means, let me ask you this: why the speed lines?

            and Hamlet said

            They aren’t speed lines. Their elusiveness represents my denial of all form. It shows my individual vision

            but the young man said

            Ah, but denial of form is also a form. While you use this method, many others have also denied form, meaning that no form is still form, a school in fact. The only true way to deny form is not to paint, and millions of people do that. It’s so cliché

            to which Hamlet replied

            You’re an asshole

            and the young man walked away. Curly cringed and said

            Very nice, Hamlet. You’re alienating the buyers

            but Hamlet said

            I don’t give a damn if they buy. I’m here to make a statement

            and Curly said

            Me too. A bank statement. A financial statement. But I don’t get any percentage if you don’t sell. So, as a personal favor to me, try to keep your righteous indignation under control long enough to make some fucking money

            and he walked away, mumbling. Hamlet shrugged. He decided to stand in a corner, away from the idiots on the floor. Some sort of crappy music was playing over the PA, possibly Michael Bolton. He hated Michael Bolton.

            Curly was running back and forth between guests, alternately fawning over them and the paintings. He would run to someone, throw an arm around him or her, gesture at one painting or another, run to another guest. At a distance it looked like a mating ritual. Hamlet wondered what a zoologist would make of Curly’s particular species. He was saying

            Now over here is a really interesting piece

            sounding, to Hamlet, like used car salesman. Come on down to Crazy Ham’s. Everything must go. A tall man with a comically large cowboy hat strolled over to Hamlet and leaned against the wall. Hamlet said

            Say, aren’t you Toby Keith?

            The man laughed and said

            No, he’s got more hair and better looks. Me, I own some hotels downtown

            and Hamlet thought

            Oh Christ

            and said

            I hope you’re an art lover, mister

            but the man said

            No, but I get a lot of the artsy crowd. They bitch about the paintins in the rooms, so I cruise these shows looking for somethin good but cheap.

            Hamlet puffed out his chest and sneered, saying

            I assure you that this artist would never, in any number of lifetimes, allow any of his pieces to hang in a hotel room

            saying the words as if they were a curse that hurt his mouth, and the man said

            Yeah I heard he was one of those really snooty types. But it ain’t like I’m ask his permission, you know?

            and Hamlet said

            True enough.

            He called Curly over, took him by the elbow, and pointed to the cowboy, saying too loudly

            Have security throw that shitkicker in the Stetson out on his redneck ass

            and Curly walked away, muttering.

            Hamlet pulled up a metal folding chair. He sat down in front of Nude Sucking Ink and rubbed his temples. A monstrous headache was forming behind his left eye. The show was not going well at all. The pieces were selling, but no one was getting him. No one appreciated his artistry.

            A fat woman with enormous breasts oozed over and asked him how much time it took to paint a picture. He said

            Depends

            so she said

            On what?

            and he spat

            Models, funds, inspiration, the availability of liquor, take your pick.

            She considered this a moment before asking

            Do you sleep with your models?

            to which Hamlet replied

            You are one tasteless woman.

            She laughed and said

            That’s a terrible thing to say to someone interested in your art. Tell me, hotshot, why is your style so—what’s the word I’m looking for—goofy?

            Grinding his teeth, Hamlet turned to her and said

            Lady, my style is bold, rebellious, but never, ever goofy.

            The woman let Hamlet stew for a few seconds, just long enough for him to think she was going to leave him alone, and then she said

            I don’t understand rebellion. How do you consider yourself rebellious?

            and Hamlet groaned and said

            Look, both my parents are English professors who named me Hamlet, for Christ’s sake. The very existence of visual art from my hand is rebellion.

            The woman thought about this for a moment before saying

            Still looks goofy to me

            and walking away. Hamlet stared at her, open-mouthed, and then yelled

            I hope your fucking thighs get a rash!

            as Curly made shushing gestures from across the room.

            Goofy, rebellious, traditional, energetic, chaotic—Hamlet had heard them all, had said a few of them himself, expected to hear more. And as bad as the evening had been, he was grateful that he had, at least, not heard the one adjective that he would not abide—derivative. He could not bear that word, not even when applied to someone else. It was the ultimate curse for artists. It tasted dirty, sounded obscene. He dwelled so much on the term that he had almost forgotten the fat woman when he heard the young man in the ascot say

            So I said to him, Steven, you made a zillion dollars with the first movie. And you don’t have any of your original cast for the sequel. So won’t a sequel utilizing the same concept seem, well, derivative?

            Hamlet stood, slowly. A shudder ran through his body. He took the chair by its legs, its metal cold in his hands, raised it above his head, and then brought it down seat first on the young man’s skull. The young man fell into the fat woman, grabbing at her as he collapsed, ripping a strap from her dress and exposing one massive breast. She staggered backward and bumped into the cowboy, who spilled his drink all over a painting. The show collapsed all around him, but Hamlet did not notice. He was looking serenely at the lines of Nude Sucking Ink, thinking of wind-made ripples on the still surface of a pond.

January 3, 2004

January 3, 2004

            This morning I got up early and ate a bowl of Total, not realizing how lucky I was to have made such a decision without the benefit of foresight or research. Not ten minutes after finishing the last bite and drinking down the milk—a habit I’ve kept from childhood—I saw this commercial on TV about how many bowls of other cereal would equal the nutritional benefits of one bowl of Total. I’d have to consume three bowls of Grape-Nuts and more All Bran than you’d ever want to eat in your life.

             Realizing how much time, effort, stomach cramps, and bowel movements the makers of Total had saved me, I decided to phone the home office and thank them. I called their 1-800 number and followed the instructions on the automated menus; I listened to some sort of what I suppose you’d call music, though it sounded more like Mozart by way of the Armpit, Mississippi Glee Club. I finally connected with Judy, a customer service operator.

            I told her that I was calling to thank the General Mills Corporation for the valuable services they had performed in my honor. I told her that I couldn’t imagine eating three or four bowls (I had forgotten which) of Grape-Nuts, which taste like artificially produced hay, and that I was very happy with their method of providing so much daily nutrition. I finished my speech by assuring her that I would buy Total as long as they continued to produce it at high levels of quality and consumer commitment.

            Judy hung up on me. I stood in my kitchen, still tasting milk and small particles of Total underneath my tongue. The empty bowl gleamed dully under the phosphorescent light.

January 2nd, 2004

As I’m posting some of my existing short-short work (still avoiding writing new short-short work for the moment), I’ve been going out of order, so I’m afraid I may be repeating myself. If I’ve done this one before and have overlooked it, sorry about that. It’s based on our late cat Judas, though it’s really a fictionalization.

January 2, 2004

            I decided to vacuum because of the cat litter scattered all over the bedroom. Our cat has never learned to operate her litter box. She climbs in and out indelicately, tromping through her own piss, dragging litter out between her fuzzy cat toes. I hate it. It would be like dipping my hand in the toilet and flinging water all over the house. It’s not only unsanitary; it’s just plain rude.

            But then our cat has never had any manners. She likes to sit on your chest in the middle of the night, just when you’ve drifted into the deepest of sleeps, the kind that brings dreams of the pasts you’ve lived through and the futures you hope to see. The sweet images of a former lover disintegrate, fade, and you open your eyes to see a ten pound cat staring in your face, her claws prickling your chest.

            Last night, for the fifth night in a row, she ruined a great dream. She leapt onto the bed and landed squarely on my crotch. I cried out and sat up, instinctively throwing her off the bed. She landed on all fours near the closet, gave me her best go to hell look, and padded away to conduct some other cat business. I discovered this morning that she had ripped the duvet when I shoved her away, three neat holes gaping up at me where her paws had been. I can’t explain why she failed to rip four holes. Perhaps she thought it would be in poor taste.

            So today I vacuum her litter, her shit nuggets, probably her fur as well. I do so with aching balls. I do so with my torn duvet smiling at me like a jack-o-lantern. The litter crashes against the insides of my vacuum like gravel against the undercarriage of a car. From the hall the cat watches me, suspicious, and washes her ears.

January 6th, 2004--Flash Fiction

January 6^th, 2004

            You stopped walking long enough to tie your shoe and in that moment everything changed. The cessation of your quick and determined pace allowed your pulse to slow down, almost imperceptibly. Because of the fatigue poisons coursing through your body, took longer than you normally would to make a knot. As you hunched over, the other pedestrians swerved around you, some almost unconsciously, none giving you more than the most cursory of glances. They had other places to be and only so much time to get to them, after all. You did not look at them; you were staring at your shoe, thinking of nothing in particular. The stream of slacks and blue jeans and skirts pocketed you against the wall. And so when the first shot rang out and the first person fell, their brains and their blood marking the wall in abstract patterns of finality, you were hidden, safe, saved not by the jogging you had done every morning but by an untied shoelace that might have remained fast on any other morning.

January 15th, 2004--flash fiction

I don’t think I’ve posted this one before. Sorry if I have. Coming soon–a nonfiction meditation on foul language.

January 15th, 2004

     Another new phone book arrived on the stoop today. That makes three this year. I can’t see much difference in them. One seems to be the usual directory that we’ve been getting every year of my life; the other two seem like commercials. They’ve got corporate logos on the covers, like something handed to you on a tour, along with your key chain and your letterhead notepad.

     I’m using the first two as doorstops. I needed a way to keep my bedroom door from closing at night, because it swings shut on its own, prohibiting the cat from reaching her litter box. I’ve got another one on the bathroom floor, because that door won’t stay open, either, and it gets too hot in there when I’m showering. Once I stepped out of the tub and saw that the cat had somehow gotten onto the counter. She was staring at the fogged-up mirror, as if looking for the image of herself that had always been there before. While I watched, she reached out and brushed the mirror with her paw, wiping away part of the steam. The clear spot looked like a comma without a sentence to punctuate.

     Sometimes she sits on the phone book in my bedroom. Her tail curls up around the edge. It’s as if she’s sheltering it from something, perhaps from disappearing into the mist like the cat in the mirror.

February 23rd, 2004--flash fiction

Sorry for the lack of updates over the last week. I’ve been finishing up the spring semester. Now I’ve got a lot of revising to do, so it may be another week or so before I can write a new column here. In the meantime, here’s another old flash piece I’ve got in my files. I’ll post something new ASAP–hopefully in a couple of days at most.

February 23rd, 2004

     The rapper was shouting something about bitches and bullets, but we couldn’t hear him. The bass was crushing us, driving us against the wall, like the heartbeat of some angry, insane god. Someone near us was pulling out a Gat, but none of us cared. We were all holding our ears, driving our palms into our temples. I felt that something inside me was tearing loose, was being driven out of its hole and into the dark of the club. I saw the flash of the muzzle, watched the gun jump in his hand, but I heard nothing but bass, the backbeat of someone’s death.

A January Afternoon, 2005--flash fiction

     Papers rained down all around her. One fluttered onto her face and she pushed it away, noticing that she had given the student a high B after all. Lying on her back in the puddle, water soaking into her suede skirt and probably ruining her new leather jacket, she remembered how he had approached her, eyes downcast, voice low, obviously embarrassed. He had told her that his grade in her class would determine whether or not his pre-dental program would accept him. She hated it when students told her their problems, asking for A’s or B’s without using the actual language or mannerisms of a request. The paper had not deserved a B, probably not even a C, and yet there it lay next to her, the red pen markings bright and ugly. She sat up, her ass soaking wet, her fingers flinging droplets of water onto the paper. The red ink smudged and ran.

Email me at semioticconundrums@gmail.com

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Publication News

The issue of Folio with my story “The Cat in the Backyard” has gone to print. Look for it soon wherever you get your literary magazines. For more information about Folio, look here.

http://www.american.edu/cas/literature/folio/

February 5th, 2004--flash fiction

February 5th, 2004

     The most frightening part of the trip occurred when they ducked into an Asian grocery store and she saw him steal four packages of soba noodles. He plucked them off the shelf and stuffed them into the inner pocket of his coat in one smooth, practiced motion, and she realized that he had done this before, God only knew how many times. The soba noodles were on sale, four packages for one dollar and forty-nine cents, and she knew for a fact that he had over six hundred dollars in cash tucked into his wallet, alongside three major credit cards.

     He refused to look at her as they left the store. As they turned onto the sidewalk, he broke into a walk that tried to evolve into a trot. She had to scurry around other pedestrians to keep up with him. That night when he cooked the noodles for her, they tasted bland in her mouth, as if all the flavor had come off in his coat pocket.

February 27th, 2004--Flash Fiction

February 27th, 2004

     The phone rang at three AM and I knew it had to be trouble. The moon was full and shining through my window; I could see a deep layer of frost on the ground, like the world had been cast in silver. The frigid house enveloped me. I picked up the receiver and mumbled

     Hello

     and shivered twice, hard, almost dropping the phone. It felt like ice against my face. I halfway expected it to rip away a layer of skin when I pulled it away. The moonlight stabbed into the room, pooling on the floor like blood. From the phone a ghostly voice said

     Is this the morgue?

     and I said

     No. You must have the wrong number

     and the voice said

     Huh. I could have sworn this was the morgue.

     I hung up and rubbed my eyes, feeling the grains of sleep jab into my skin like knives. The house was colder than ever. I wondered who had died and why it had to happen on a frosty night at three AM, when death seemed no more than an ordinary nuisance.

Mardi Gras Flash Fiction

You say you want some apocalypse? Here’s a glimpse of a personal vision…
  
     The French Quarter was a human junkyard, bodies piled on top of bodies, throbbing and writhing with music no one could really hear and would pay no attention to anyway, the movement less rhythmic than sexual, a collective thrust between the legs of the city. The man pressing against my back gurgled, about to vomit, and I knew it would splatter onto my head and run down the back of my shirt, but I was helpless to get away, to move at all save for the almost-gentle back and forth wahhh-wahhh of the crowd. The woman to my right was topless, her breasts too rigid in the chaos to be real. Beads hung from her neck and both ears, her dead-fish eyes glazed over. I watched as a hand snaked around her waist and began pinching her right nipple. She did not notice. For all I knew she was dead. In the thronging masses she would have had no room to fall.

What Is This, Exactly?

A seven-year-old piece I found in my files–flash fiction or journal entry? You decide.

February 15, 2004

     Quentin Compson once broke the face of his watch and ripped the hands from its face in an effort to stop time, but he could still hear the minute ticking of the second hand as it spoke away the hours even in its own absence. In this house there are six clocks and two watches and three VCRs and three computers and one microwave. They all tell time. Sometimes this fact is too much to bear.

Flash Fiction for Your Consideration

February 12, 2004

     He awoke at seven that morning, knowing that the day would bring him more happiness than grief, and yet he still felt a cold ball of dread in his stomach, sitting there like lead, weighing him down. He knew that swinging his body around and allowing his feet to touch the floor would commit him to getting out of bed, and that standing up and getting dressed would commit him to leaving his bedroom, and that appearing in the house would commit him to staying for her party.

     His daughter was now old enough to drive. She could ask for the keys at any moment, and he would have no choice but to hand them over or be branded an uncool Dad. Perhaps he could throw them out the window? But then that would make it tough for him to use the car himself. Maybe he could drop them in the toilet. That would keep any self-respecting teenager at a distance. Hell, that would drive away most adults.

     But he was merely avoiding the inevitable. She was growing up. Soon she would be old enough to leave for college, to get a full-time job, to marry and have kids of her own, to follow that career or that husband to some city on the other side of the country. He might be able to see her once a year, if she could get away. They might talk a couple of times a week.

     He wondered if she would understand this, that he was not afraid of her driving the car or how much taller than him she might eventually become. He was afraid of the first time that car turned a corner and left him behind, waving, wondering if she were even looking back, the first of many journeys that he would not even be able to watch.

More Flash Fiction

     In catching up on all the things I didn’t do last week, I’m still too behind to post anything new. So here’s another old piece of flash fiction. I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote it. Perhaps you’ll have a theory.

     Her lover had come back from the dead and was standing in her kitchen, drinking a cup of herbal tea and eating one of her homemade scones. He was holding the cup with three fingers, as he had done on the mornings after their lovemaking had been most intense and memorable. Steam rose above the rim and drifted toward his face, disappearing in his beard, now flecked with gray and bushier than she remembered. He said

     Hello

     and she screamed. The fear in her voice startled him. He managed to hold onto the scone but dropped the tea, the cup turning slowly one and a half times before it hit the tile and shattered, the liquid spattering his boots and the legs of the table. It spread across the floor like blood, running into the cracks between the tiles where it formed shallow, linear pools.

Flash Fiction

Here’s the first draft of a flash fiction piece. It originally appeared in unedited form on the now-defunct Mischievous Prophet website. Thoughts?

January 1st, 2004

     Your favorite show was pre-empted tonight by the Orange Bowl. I watched you nestle down into the cushions of your sofa, feet tucked neatly underneath you, your legs forming half a Z. The remote control was in your hand, and as you pointed it at the set and pressed the buttons, I knew that this was a moment to remember, the single instant between anticipation and the frustration you were about to feel. I could see the colors of your thumb as you changed the channel: the pale white of your skin, the pink hue created by the pressure, the white iris under your nail. I could even see the three blonde hairs growing between the joints. The moment seemed frozen, caught between what was and what was about to be.

     And then the channel changed, and you saw two teams from Florida clashing on a field of green. The crowd roared as one team threw a long pass, the ball arcing up and out and down in a perfect parabola, falling neatly in the arms of a receiver, his legs pumping comically fast like something out of cartoon, the defender leaping as high as he could and missing by inches. The crowd rose to its feet.

     And you rose as well, spiking the remote control like a football. It hit the carpet and bounced end over end, landing underneath the ottoman. You shouted

     Oh, for Christ’s sake

     and fell back on the couch, scowling. In Miami thousands of fans sat back in their seats, slapping each other on the back or shouting obscenities at the lone defender whose outstretched fingers were exactly one and one quarter inches too short.

We Really Like Your Work, But...

     If you look up the word “bittersweet” in the dictionary (or, as most of my students do, at dictionary.com), you should see a picture of a “good” rejection letter to a writer.

     Every working writer likely keeps three piles of letters from journals, magazines, agents, and publishers. Pile #1 consists of standard rejections–the kind that begin with “Dear Writer” and go on to explain that your work simply doesn’t meet the editor’s needs at this time. When you get one of these, you’re disappointed, of course, but unless you’re already a household name, it’s pretty much what you’ve come to expect. After all, writing success often seems like one part talent, one part sheer perseverance, and two parts sheer luck. You have to get the right piece to the right reader at the right time, a process that is often rewarding and sometimes maddening.

     Pile #3 contains all your acceptances. Some of these come in letter form, others in emails or even phone calls. Unless you’re Joyce Carol Oates or Stephen King, you probably still jump for joy whenever you get one of these, no matter how small the journal or how low the pay. An acceptance means that someone “gets” your work, that they’ve trusted your voice to enhance their publication, that an audience will see your story or article and know your name.

     Pile #2 is where “bittersweet” lives. This pile is where you keep your “good” rejections–the personalized ones that call you by name and speak to your work specifically. Sometimes they come in the form of a personally-written rejection; sometimes they consist of handwritten notes on a boilerplate rejection notice. Most of the time, they tell you that while the piece you sent was not accepted, the editors liked your work and would like to see more.

     The bad news? No publication. The good news? Somebody liked your work enough to talk to you, to encourage you, to let you know that you don’t suck. I keep good rejections close to my heart–not as close as acceptances, of course, but pretty close nonetheless. When you’re in between publications, they give you enough hope and confidence to keep on writing.

     I got a good rejection today. I’ve been shopping a novel for a while now, at a time when agents and editors are understandably gun-shy about taking on new writers. I’ve gotten some boilerplate rejections and a few nibbles, but I haven’t reeled in the big fish yet. These days, it’s a victory when you can move past the query letter stage. I got that far again, and with a New York agent to boot.

      In the end, she passed on the project because the kind of story I was telling simply didn’t appeal to her. But she told me that I was a good writer and that she would love a look at my next project. There’s no guarantee she’ll like it better than the first one, of course; you can’t control your audience, and I’ve always felt that trying to leads only to ulcers and bad writing. When you try to please everyone, you please no one, especially not yourself.

     But she’ll get the first look. She was professional and personable, and she responded promptly. I’ll remember that, as I hope she remembers her kind words the next time I’ve got a book-length work to shop. If she doesn’t, I’ll be sure to remind her. How? I’ve saved her response. I can quote from it verbatim. I can even forward her the email if necessary. But I don’t think it will be, because she doesn’t view her job as a gatekeeper charged with fighting off bad writers. She seems to believe that her job is to support stories that she loves. I can get behind that attitude, even if she doesn’t love mine this time.

      If she ever stumbles across this post and recognizes herself in it, I hope she’ll see this as my expression of my admiration and my thanks. As a writer, it’s part of my job not to take rejection personally, to use any feedback to get better.

     I hope we both keep doing our jobs for a long time.