Patience. Persistence.

"A Scrap of Paper"

At long last, I've heard back from The Brussels Review.

I submitted two stories, "Kim" and "A Scrap of Paper" in March of last year. TBR wrote me back only two weeks later, saying that both pieces had been accepted. I was thrilled, of course; TBR is a fledgeling publication, but it already looks impressive: intriguing stories, captivating artwork, and an international following. It's unusual for a publication to accept two stories from the same author at the same time, but I was not about to object. And the response time unusual, too. Unusually fast. I wondered if they were desparate.

But then I heard nothing for quite a while. It's common to wait three months for a response, but once a piece has been accepted, the publisher will get right back with editing suggestions (usually proofreading issues) or requests for a recent picture or a bio. But three months passed and TBR hadn't tole me when the stories, or one of them, was going to come out. I wrote back. Still silence. I wrote again, and this time got a reply: begging my patience, they explained that it takes quite a long while to put together an issue.

Okay, I get that. So I waited. Of course, in the meantime I had withdrawn both stories from consideration by a number of other publications, so that they wouldn't pre-empt TBR. That's an expectation of all places: simultaneous submissions are permitted, even expected, but give exclusive rights to whoever accepts your piece first.

Time passed. No word. Finally, I wrote TBR again, and this time was told (by an anonymous editor) that they couldn't find my submission, even though they'd found the email announcing that they'd accepted it! Anyway. A flurry of emails, an aoplogy, and it seems that "Kim" and "A Scrap of Paper" are going to appear in The Brussels Review at long last, and apparently soon.

The moral: Be persistant.

When I last posted, I was struggling with a story that was absolutely stuck in the creative mud. I was about 3000 words in, and couldn't see a way out. I was about to give up. As I remarked to a friend when I was complaining about my problem, I knew something bad was going to happen, but I couldn't figure out to whom or what.

I'm not quite sure what drove me to complete it, but I ended up sitting down and just writing until the story was done. It was only a few hours' worth, but it was enough. I showed it to my friend John, who diplomatically suggested that he could understand how the story was smoldering inside me, but that in its present form it didn't live up to its potential.

John's advice wasn't really advice at all, but validation. He was telling me that it wasn't my best work, and yet that there was the possibility that something significant could still be made of it. "Smoldering" was his word; he could see how the damned thing was giving me no peace, and that it wouldn't until I got moving again. He also used the word "potential," which is what I'd felt all along. That was more encouraging than anything else he could have said, I think.

John didn't give me any specific suggestions, but even his interest in the piece was just the encouragement I needed. And I now have a "finished" rough draft of about 5000 words, and that's enough to work with. I can see the overall shape of the thing, and have considence that from here I can mold it into something readible, maybe even something of which I can be proud.

Maybe The Brussels Review will ask me if I have anything else to share. (It's not likely, but you never know.)

The images that accompany this post are AI generated, as you might expect, and not presented as artwork, any more than a dust jacket is. When I'm rich and famous, my publisher will hire a real artist to create an original design, don't you think?

"Kim"