A Jack of All Trades Mindset

I enjoy a lot of hobbies, and sometimes that can feel a little like that means I’m not good at anything. I took up cooking recently because my wife and I were gifted a cast iron skillet that I fell in love with. I started by getting a couple of cookbooks, trying out different recipes, then going off-book and coming up with my own, now slightly-informed concoctions. And it’s been going well. I know more herbs and techniques now than ever before in my life, and I love the creative process of it all. Not everything I churn out is menu-worthy, but some stuff is.

And as with any activity, trade, or artform, there’s always more to learn, and there’s more going on under the hood than appears on the surface. That’s true when you learn anything, and it’s part of what can make everything fascinating. Once you realize everything’s that way – there’s a starting point, a process, progress, and development – anything new you try is at the same time more daunting and more accessible than it was at first glance.

It was that way with rock climbing and running, when I did those back in the day; I’m a big Magic: the Gathering player and it was that way learning the in’s and out’s of the game; same way, albeit simpler, for my recent backgammon obsession; similar to learning how to bend notes and operate your tongue playing the harmonica; and it was the same when learning how to shoot a bow back in the day, learning how to stand, how to use your shoulders and set your hips, how to release without plucking, how to breathe, etc.

Frankly, I’m kinda good at a number of things, because I’ve pursued them with interest. But the downside there is feeling like I also kinda suck at everything, since in each of those avenues mentioned above, there are loads of people who are better at them than me.

I’m better now at cooking than I was a few months ago, and it’s been real nice to impress friends and family with my newly acquired know-how, but next to any truly savvy cook, I’m a total chump. I’m much better than your average person walking the street at using a bow and arrow or playing Magic, but would be a slack-fingered halfwit on the line or at the table next to anyone who trains and/or goes to tournaments. I earned my first ever backgammon against a good friend the other week, but your average club member would probably use me to mop their floors.

But – and this is a big ol’ nice jiggly “but” – being the best at your hobbies shouldn’t be the point.

Kurt Vonnegut had a good story once about being sent a letter from a fan, and while I’m foggy on the details, I do remember the advice he had for said fan: Go home and write a poem. Make it the worst, most stupid and dumb-sounding poem that’s ever existed if you have to, then rip it up into tiny pieces and scatter them. The point isn’t in having the poem to show off, but in having written it. Art isn’t supposed to be done for a sale (funnily enough being said at that point by a profoundly successful professional author – an irony he himself points out). The whole point of art is to do it and enrich yourself by doing it. So write a shitty poem, sing a song that sucks, make a clay pot that’s ugly as sin – just do it, though.

I’ve raved before about how great a lesson the Pixar movie Inside Out had to give out, and up there next to it is the movie Soul. If you haven’t seen it yet, skip to the next paragraph, starting…now, but in essence the lesson of that movie is that a single-minded pursuit is the best way to miss out on life. The main character is so wrapped up in his romantic pursuit of being a jazz musician, he not only misses out on the joys of his daily life and he’s shocked to see the realities of that life don’t fit his ideal once he becomes one. It takes a cartoon cat to show him that life is about the small, loveable mundanities, the variety. No one slacks him for having a dream, it’s just that there’s more to life than that.

Now, there is a certain nobility to giving up a varied life experience in order to power-level one particular skill, to eschew other interests and pleasures in pursuit of mastery of one specialized thing. The star athlete that devotes every waking thought and action toward championship of their sport, the craftsman that locks themselves away in pursuit of perfection of their art, the businessperson that is single-mindedly focused on whatever they heck they’re doing – there is a certain degree of honor due to that lifestyle. But I’ve been stuck with the following quote ever since I came across it, spoken by Lazarus Long in “Time Enough for Love” by Robert Heinlein: “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

So in conclusion, does a part of me lament not being the best at whatever I set myself to? Yes, a little bit. Does the rest of think that’s a pretty stupid thought? Absolutely. I think it’s kind of awesome to celebrate the talents, displays of skill, and ingenuity of our fellow peoples. We, individually, can’t do everything, we never will, and it’s a load off to realize that. Should we strive to be good at what we do? Sure, in the name of accomplishment and enjoying whatever thing is in question, but not to the detriment of that enjoyment.

Shoes for Little Sap

by Evan A Davis

It’s cool knowing a little bit about a lot. 10/10, would recommend.

ALSO! If you haven’t heard, got another story out there, this time courtesy of Abyss & Apex Magazine. So check them out and tell them how much you really like “Shoes for Little Sap” by that Evan guy.

Writing is just a Gambler’s Fallacy (+ News)

I’m gonna do one of those things I dislike, which is writing about writing. It always feels…I don’t know, almost masturbatory in a way, even if it’s self-deprecating. Like in movies or shows, or any of Stephen King’s short fiction where the protagonist is a writer, it strikes me as so obvious that I’m just consuming somebody else’s self-insert fantasy.

Which, I mean, what else am I subjecting your potential eyeballs to with this rant, really?

My point is that rejection letters are a part of this game. They go along with that saying of how success is 1% reward and 99% work that others don’t see. Speaking of 1%, actually, a lot of places I submit work to have an average acceptance rate of 1% or less. I take that to mean that I can expect 99 rejections for every pickup I get, or to put it another way, I have to try 100 times for each success I can expect. Now, I’ve beaten the odds on that a fair bit, but rejections start to get a little brutal when they pile up without a win somewhere in the mix.

But there are things that keep me at the table.

Like when a rejection is personalized. Most are form letters, templates, fine. But when one is personalized to say “Hey Evan, I liked your story. Here’s what it did well, here’s what missed, and we almost accepted it, but have to pass this time. I know it would have been a good pay day with great distribution and you were this close, but nah. Better luck next time. Kisses.”

Boof. Ouch. I think back to Loki’s words in the first Avengers movie, talking to Nick Fury: “It burns you, doesn’t it? To have come so close, but then be reminded of what real power is?” I don’t know what “real power” is in this analogy, but shit, yes, ouch.

That said, my brain can’t help but focus on the huge other side to all that: So…you’re sayin’ there’s a chance?

The truth is that there are a million reasons why work can get rejected. Loosely paraphrasing an essay I read from an outlet, Dream Forge, on the subject: Your story could have been funny and a good fit, but the editor who read it just didn’t feel like funny that day. Could have been the slush reader who happened across your story in the pile just went through a break up and took it out on you. Your story about kickass ninja vampires on the moon could actually be a perfect fit, but it just so happened that the story just before yours on the stack was also about kickass ninja vampires on the moon, and they accepted that one because they saw it first.

So submitting fiction is a lot like playing the lottery, if you don’t have an agent or a hook-up (and maybe even then, I don’t know). And knowing that I got super close to a win makes it feel like I’m about to, you know, just like the logic that the steretypical gambler that uses to lose their house at a blackjack table.

And there’s also the rush to consider. Either when an acceptance comes through, or even just when a new prospect or idea surfaces. I get a lot of my news about available submission windows through newsletter services like Freedom With Writing and Authors Publish, and most times when I send out a bevvy of submissions, it’s like sending a bunch of soldiers out on a suicide mission. I know most of those aren’t coming back.

But you have to try.

And when a fresh wave of new submission opportunities pops up in my email, scanning through them to look for anything promising…ooo, the rush of potential is what keeps me addicted to trying. And in the background, I try to always have something cooking, some new grist for the mill.

And sometimes those come through.

My story, “Shoes for Little Sap” is coming out with Abyss & Apex Magazine on the 1^st. It’s cozy, quick, and has a special place with me, both being a former NYC Midnight piece of mine and something I read to my mom when she was in hospital some years back and got her to smile. (I remember thinking then and there that the story had served its purpose, and I’d be okay if it never again saw the light of day after that. Of course, pretty thrilled to have it be published, but still, you get my meaning.) So yeah, check it out! I’ll be bugging folks about it on here more between now and then, but mark your calendar anyway.

My One-Way Rivalry with Christopher Moore

Wow. Say that ten times fast.

Motivation can be difficult to find in the best of times, especially when you’re trying your damnedest to hone the Powah of the Pen. And part of what makes it difficult is that what we each find motivating is different for each of us, dang it. Some of us are really propelled forward by the support of family and friends, others are set ablaze by a really inspiring example someone we admire sets for us, and others don’t get a push by anything other than a negative, “I’ll show you” mindset.

Despite my best efforts, I’m a contrarian at heart, especially with my self-esteem. As such, no matter what motivational force is in front of me, part of my brain/heart/soul/whatever finds a way to blockade it.

Friends and family support what I’m trying to do? Ah, well, they’re friends and family, and so of course they say that. It isn’t real, it’s obligatory, so it doesn’t count.

Those same friends and family are understandably apathetic to my pursuits? Well, the real, objective kicker is that nobody is obligated to give a damn about what you’re striving for. They’re not. And so, sometimes, that means you can feel like you have to care extra hard about it to make up the difference, and that’s incredibly taxing over time. So in those weak, tired moments, the weight of it can really easily translate into, “Who even cares? And why should I anymore?” And that’s a difficult hole to dig yourself out of.

My problem with the last one about folks being negative or dismissive is actually its absence. I don’t know why on Earth anybody would, but I don’t have anybody in my life who’s actively rooting against my writing career.

Ah, okay.

There was one.

QUICK SIDEBAR

A few years ago when I was preparing to try and make writing more of a serious pursuit, I went to a friend’s birthday party, and there was a lady there who was in a similar boat. She was a housewife without kids, and was seeking it as a way to occupy her time. Very much to her credit, she went to a few seminars, did a bit of public speaking at an event in the City, and through that linked up with an editor for The Bold Italic, a magazine out here that covers life n’ stuff in the San Francisco Bay Area. When my fiancee Amanda mentioned my plans, she replied, “Oh, I wouldn’t if I was him.” The implication being rather clear: “You don’t have what it takes, honey. Don’t quit your day job.”

And from there, when things got tough, there would be dark moments of doubt, before any sort of measurable success had occurred, and those words would ring in my head, burn in my chest, and weigh heavy, sure.

But a year later, we were back at this friend’s next birthday party, and there was this lady again. We get to talking, and she mentions that she remembers me as “that writer guy,” and asks “How did that work out?” (Politely spoken, in tone, but I did note the use of past tense.) This is when my friend, and wife to Birthday Boy himself, answers for me, saying that I’d been published–twice.

No matter how things should go from here, the look in her expression is something I will happily take with me to my grave.

Thank you, Claire. And I will forever be a fan of yours for that awesome, awesome defense of my honor. You rock.

She then motioned me to continue and explain that I had, to that point, been published twice, had a couple of podcast appearances, and had more work on the way. The sweetness would redouble when I reciprocated the question and found, as she told it, that she was no longer with the Italic because her editor had moved and stopped answering her emails, and the podcast she had founded couldn’t get off the ground because her co-producer sucked, etc etc. (And I know this reads as bitter, but it truly doesn’t extend beyond that given conversation. I genuinely hope she’s doing well at whatever she’s pursuing–now. And in fact I’m grateful.)

SIDEBAR OVER

Anyway, the next time I needed to rage-channel my creativity against someone, I chose a famous guy.

Over my thankfully busy month of March, one of the things I got to do was take part in Flame Tree’s Author Q&A. In part of it, I got to talk about one of my favorite novels: Lamb, by Christopher Moore. I got to meet him a long time ago, and I have a signed copy of Lamb on my bookcase at this very moment. It’s one of those possessions that I’d make sure to save in the case of a housefire, if that carries my meaning.

But Lamb was one of two signatures I got from him the evening I met him, and the second one was the more formative of the two.

Now, I want to say here that when I met him I was eighteen or nineteen, and it was the first time I’d met someone whose name I had already known for famous reasons. I was nervous, excited, and I’m sure that I fan-boy’d pretty hard and that it was probably kind of awkward. I own that. So when I gave him my copy of his book Fool to sign, a story about King Lear’s jester, Pocket, he addressed it: “To Evan, Who Tries Really Hard! And fails -Christopher Moore”

Well’p. I had to try pretty hard to keep a happy face after reading it, I can tell ya that.

I also want to put that I’m sure- nay, positive that he wrote it in a kind-hearted way. And when you’re on a book tour like he was doing, and you have a hyperactive teenager in front of you, not every joke or fun jab is going to land the way you want it to. Wit is going to run dry every now and then. And in those cases it’s not your fault when that thing you mean as a playful inside joke stays with that kid for eleven-plus years, in those dark moments during the late nights at his desk, when passion evades him, words escape him, and the obsidian claws of doubt and weariness pry into his mind, and when his muse refuses to show itself so he forges a new one from your haphazardly scribbled words…

…

<ahem>

So I took up a sharpie and made a little addition:

It may read a little corny, and that’s fair, but as the old adage goes: “Fall seven times, rise eight.”

I’ve never really been bullish or tenacious, but I sure am willing to be persistent.

It’s about the Long Haul, bay-bee!

I’m not finding a link to it to put here, but when I was first getting started, Amanda found a book for me called “How Did I Get Published?” and it was a collection of blurbs and testimonials from successful authors on how they got their start. Chris had an entry and, to put it in brief here, he said that by the age of 30 he’d published precisely one short story in a magazine, and that he’d never seen a copy of that magazine; then he’d go on to publish his first novel in his early-thirties.

In a move that’s either pitiable or a little creepy (though I choose to see it as motivating), I decided I would race Chris’s schedule, putting me in a one-sided rivalry with the man without his knowledge.

Published one short story by the time he was 30? Through a blend of persistence, good fortune, and I’m sure I had to lie to somebody somewhere, I have ten, with more on the way.

Published his first novel in his early-thirties? I have a novella that I’m currently shopping around, but a full-fledged novel is also on its way, and Chris’s signature up there is what pushes me to finish that manuscript before my birthday in August.

And when it’s done and ready, this will definitely be part of the heroic origin story that I’ll be shoveling onto whatever literary agent gets saddled with me to shove my book at publishers.

In fact, one of the shiniest gold stars on my life’s story would be to one day meet him again, thank him for signing my book the way he did, and to give him a signed copy of a novel I’d penned.

Ah, to dream.

One day.

Epic Dreams of Dirt (+ Announcement)

I eat a lot of hot sauce. I used to put it on everything and get the really spicy ones so that I could be that guy, but I’ve calmed it down a little in recent years. I also used to specifically eat something spicy right before bed, because I noticed doing so gave me really vivid, really strange and surreal dreams.

Now I’ve stopped doing that entirely, but I guess I conditioned my brain enough to think it’s alright to give me strange dreams most nights. One such was just the other night…

Oh! I should put here that I’ve been playing a lot of Deep Rock Galactic recently, and I only say that because it’ll soon become obvious the ways that game influenced the dream. (If you haven’t heard of it and you don’t feel like following the link, in short, it’s a game where you play as a space dwarf mining crystals and minerals out of a giant asteroid-planet-thing.)

Anyway, the other night…

Like most dreams, I don’t remember how I got to the start, but I knew I was being hunted by the Italian mafia. Somehow, at the beginning of the dream, that meant I GUESS that I was in a motel outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico while on the run from them. Of course, one of their hitmen finds me and I’m sure you can guess who it is.

That’s right, Danny Trejo.

So Danny Trejo shows up going full Machete on me, showering the motel in bullets while I run, duck, and dodge behind cover.

^In case you wondered, this is what “going full Machete” looks like.
It’s a fun movie.

Eventually, he runs out of ammo and hops in an old car, trying to run me down. Now my memory gets kind of spotty around this point in the story, but the end point is that I successfully kill him in self-defense. (I think I trick him into crashing the car, or something. Let’s just assume it was something clever.)

That dramatic scene winds up placing me in Witness Protection. I remember they handed me a special form to fill out for, like, my preferences of what kind of Witness Protection I would prefer, and in the special comments section I just wrote “No Italians, please.” Which is several shades of stupid, but made sense in the moment since I was on the run from the Italian mafia.

It doesn’t wind up working.

So Witness Protection places me in a sort of special boarding house that looks like an old Victorian manor out in New England. (Heh, I just noticed the dream keeps taking place in “New” places. New Mexico to New England. Weird.) The boarding house is run by a kindly old woman with red hair and she shows me to my room toward the back of the manor. My paranoia sets in, and on one of the first nights, I remove a couple panels from the floor and I start digging.

The logic at work is that I’m going to construct a series of tunnels to really live in, or at least have as a getaway in case the mob ever finds me. I think I distantly remember reading about or hearing about an either Roman or Chinese emperor who did the same thing with their palace, filling it with a hundred rooms and sleeping in a different one every night to confuse would-be assassins.

Which is basically what I did.

I dug a whole bunch of tunnels into the ground beneath the mansion, and I filled those tunnels with a bunch of dummy routes, dead ends, tunnels that looped back in on themselves. I dug enough dirt to last eleven lifetimes to make sure the mob would never find me.

Along the way, I met another resident of the house, a young girl named Alyssa, who found my series of tunnels and asked to help me dig more because she thought it was cool. At first I said no, wary of outsiders and not wanting to share my masterpiece with another, but ultimately relented.

I also found this awesome, green, furry mole-ferret creature while digging. I never really thought of a name for him, but he was adorable, helped me dig, and loved to snuggle while making this soft purring noise. He was great.

At this point, there’s a bit of a time skip, or a fast-forwarding. I met Alyssa, found my giant ferret creature, at one point we struck ground water and essentially dug out a massive underground grotto or lake. We brought in bamboo from the Overworld (just the regular world, but we’d become underground people) to build scaffolding and walking pathways around this body of water. It was a good time.

But nothing good lasts forever.

One day while I’m hanging out on the big wrap-around porch of the house, I see a car with tinted windows drive slowly by. The window rolls down and a bald man with a scar on his cheek stares me down for a moment, before rolling the window back up and driving away. (No idea why, but I name him Spencer.

My God. I’ve been found.

I have a discussion with the headmaster lady of the house, and she gives me a sort of “Ah, alas. I feared this day would come” sort of monologue, and says she’ll prep the house for battle – or something of the sort. Eventually, it falls to dusk, and a train of twelve cars pulls up in front of the place. Out of each one, a uniquely dressed, themed, and deadly hitman steps out with an intent to kill. They charge the house, and I kung-fu fight with about four or five of them around the house, killing or incapacitating them mightily before I begin to tire and worry for the worse. All around the house, the headmaster lady and other residents are doing their own righteous battle with these (apparently still supposed to be Italian mafia) hitmen.

I’m wounded, and the headmaster lady tells me to fall back, and that they have it from here. So I do, and retreat into my tunnel system. While down there, Alyssa finds me and tells me that our ferret isn’t doing so good, she thinks he’s sick. So I pick up the little guy, he purrs against my chest and neck while I carry him down one of the tunnels, across our underground lake (taking up the bamboo walkways behind us), and into the deepest tunnel that is my Sanctuary. For extra security, I lay a couple of satchel charges in the dirt (which I apparently have) and lie in wait with my ferret creature.

The End

I woke up at that point, but I assume that Spencer the Hitman followed my trail down the tunnels and would have fallen upon me and my ferret, but got blown up by my booby traps. That’s my head canon and I’m sticking to it.

Anyway, if you’ve stuck with it this far or just skipped down until you saw “The End”, either way: The News!

I’ve stopped announcing these sorts of things with any regularity, both because life is busy and because I’m not sure who’s listening with bated breath on this, my tiny, eensy weensy slice of the internet, but we’ve got another publication in the books! (lol Pun.)

Flame Tree Publishing is coming out with their Gothic Fantasy ‘Alternate History’ anthology early next year and are including a reprint of one of my first ever stories, “The Sixth-Gun Conspiracy Letters”, wherein we learn the tragic, twisted truth behind the cloak-and-dagger game which shadowed the American Civil War and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

It’s an oldie, but a goodie, and I’m extra stoked about this one because Flame Tree is based out of London, UK, which means ya boi has gone international! And I think that’s worth a nod. -cheers- (<– the polite gesture at a dinner party, not a crowd erupting with applause)

Anyhoo, that’s all for now. Thanks for sticking around. Ciao, everybody.

Quick n’ Dirty Promo

Just like goodbyes at parties, I’m bad at these. So let’s be quick and sloppy about it.

We did it again! Got another couple of folks to say yes to the squiggles I write up!

Had a couple of publications this year, but these latest have definitely been the luckiest. Wrote a romp about some time traveling hijinks and someone said, “Hell yeah.” Then, wrote up a tale about knights and monsters and ACTUALLY convinced someone to say “Hell yeah!” to that too! lol Y’all, technically now I’m a bona fide sci-fi AND /high/ fantasy author now. Which is rad. Kade over at The Common Tongue Magazine is a wickedly sharp editor, and Jessica with JayHenge Publishing was one of the coolest to work and correspond with. Plus, the collections are dope and my contributions are a couple of my babies. (A COUPLE of them…I should have more news…like this…y’know…on the way. I been busy.)

PLUS, Common Tongue gave me a friggin’ Writer Page found here. I feel like a pirate ship that finally got its flag. So check out CTM’s Issue #3 and look out for my story, “The Bells of Kraeden,” here. And if you’re too busy or lazy to read, they honored me deeply by also adapting it into a podcast episode!

Lastly, go look’it Jessica’s “The Chorochronos Archives” collection with my piece, “30,000 B.C.” here.

With both and/or either, please feel encouraged to leave them a comment or some sort of review like this: “AhmyGodthiswassogoodbutdefinitelyEvan’swasthebestusemoreofhisstuffyeswooooow!”

Okay. <phew> As you were…

Keep Swinging the Axe

First things first: it bugs me to no end that often times spellcheck will give the little red squiggle to “axe” if you spell it with an ‘e’ at the end, but “ax” is perfectly fine even though “axe” is already perfectly fine.

Whatever.

That was stupid.

What’s up everybody?

I’m not sure what reminded me the other day of the following story, but I’m glad whatever it was did. Back in 2016 was when I tried submitting my first-ever piece of fiction to an outlet. I didn’t know how to format it, hadn’t really tried writing like that ever before, never tried researching a market before, or had any practice addressing editors – I just went for it. You know who the outlet was?

Tor.

For the uninitiated – they’re big; at the very least much, much, much, MUCH bigger than a kid trying his first EVER tale had right to reach for. But they were cool, polite, and cordial when they dutifully rejected the piece I rushed to compile for their submission window.

But I thought that was how you did it. I thought you went for the big fish. Adjusting my approach (still incorrectly), I then thought it was about thoroughly researching a market, tooling a piece of fiction tailored to them specifically, and spending months finely polishing it for them before perfectly and carefully crafting the impeccable cover letter to whet their appetite for the fruits of your labor; like a sniper lining up for a half-mile bullseye: check the wind, curvature, your breathing, your trigger discipline, time it between beats of your heart.

Turns out, a better approach is a lot more like laying down on the trigger of an uzi. Spray and pray, til you’re empty, reload, rinse, repeat. Tenaciously.

There’s a publisher called DreamForge that’s pretty great, and on their site they have an essay that attempts to outline why a story submitted to them might be rejected. And the answer in a nutshell is thus: any of a million reasons.

It could be that they find it poorly written; could be too many typos; could be they didn’t understand it; could be they didn’t care for the expression of the stated genre; could be they find it doesn’t fit their project’s theme tightly enough; could be word count conflicts with their budget; or it could be that it’s well written, but the editor wasn’t quite in the mood the day they read yours; or they love your story about kickass ninja vampires fighting ogre assassins on the moon, but they just happened to read and accept another story in their stack about kickass ninja vampires fighting ogre assassins on the moon right before finding yours.

The point is that it’s sort of a lottery, if you’re an independent writer starting out. Making sure your work is well-written, cleanly done, strong in concept, and appropriate for the market you’re submitting it to are all the right ways to increase your chances, but in the end you’re still competing with an unknown amount of other writers, of unknown quality, against unknown standards and tastes – a gamble.

Captain Picard said it best:

It is possible to commit no errors and still lose ... " ~ Captain ...

This tortuously long preamble brings us to a few summers ago in 2018. I was working in an optics lab at the time, preparing to leave that job for a writing sabbatical. I was feeling burnt out, tired of my day-to-day, and wanted to embrace the daydreams I kept cooking up. The budget I wrote up figured I had about a year to do that before reality would come calling. (Reality would catch up way quicker than that, and I’d find myself caring for my ailing mother two weeks after leaving my job – but we’ve talked about that life-asteroid to death already.)

About a month before leaving my job, Mandy and I were at a friend’s birthday party. Also present was a young woman we’ll call Delilah. Before I say anything moving forward, I want it clearer than crystal that I’ve nothing but fondness, respect, and best wishes for her, for reasons we’ll lay out here and in great part for the lesson my encounters with her taught me.

Turned out, Delilah was also going into writing freelance at about the same time, or had started about a month or so before. She talked about how (I believe I’m getting this right) she was a housewife at the time, and wanted to pursue it while she had the time. She went to an event or workshop of some sort down in San Francisco, delivered a stand-up set she’d prepared, met an editor, and snagged a gig for a that outlet.

On the one hand, easy-peasy; two weeks into freelance writing and you’ve bagged a job and a contact. On the other, it takes guts and no lack of panache to do what she did.

So she shares this with us and while the group dissolves a little into its various chat circles, I overhear Mandy and Delilah talking. Mandy’s sharing that I had an intent to pursue something similar, and Delilah’s asking questions. I’d wandered away, but was told later than Delilah’s response was more or less: “Oh…that’s his plan? I wouldn’t, if I were him.”

Even though it was just birthday party hearsay, probably said off-hand, it was a little dismissive remark that stuck with me. It bit me with this sort of stinking moral superiority that would gnaw at me for months later. The first five months of my sabbatical were literally nothing but hardship and rejection; and every time, I would think of Delilah’s quick-won success and her “I wouldn’t if I were him,” remark.

And every time, I would close my eyes, tell myself to shut up, and get back to it. I didn’t have a network, hadn’t made contacts, was learning through trial and error, had a lot outside of writing work on my plate, but dammit I would make it work out.

Then, luck struck, and I had my first story picked up. Shortly thereafter, lightning struck twice and I had a second acceptance, which came with being an interview on the podcast where the story aired (as well as a follow-up appearance later to talk movies). And since, I have had three more fiction sales, some traction in fiction contests, and been fortunate enough to work for a few local papers and magazines. It’s been hard-won, organic, independent, and with large amounts of tenacity and dumb luck.

A year after that party, the birthday boy had another (as is usually the case with birthdays), and we bumped into Delilah again. We caught up around a little campfire circle and naturally were each asked about how well writing was going. Delilah recounted how it was going well, but [paraphrasing] “her editor had relocated to a different outlet and gone radio silent, so that was dead now and a bummer; and while she was going to produce a podcast with a partner, said partner was being a c*** and so hadn’t come to fruition yet.”

When the question came to me, the host of the party (birthday boy’s wife) did me one of the greatest compliments/blessings I’ve received in my life.

“And you were going to be a writer too, right?” came Delilah’s question. And the host interjected with, “He’s been published, in fact,” then motioned for me to explain.

Doing me that honor, saving me that modesty, and acknowledging that achievement all in one swoop has been, to date, one of the deftest moves in etiquette I’ve witnessed in person; and I was thrilled to be its subject.

I did my best to continue that modesty through my explanation, but I’m sure some pride leaked through. I give myself a pass, though, because the truth is I was proud of it, and especially in that moment I felt vindicated. The slow, steady, organic grind of failed attempt after failed attempt after failed attempt finally becoming a small success triumphing over – at least as was the way my mind viewed it – over the model of quick but fleeting satisfaction…felt great.

But in that was also a lesson. And the markets and guidelines I’ve seen all point to an average acceptance rate of somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-3%; but usually it can be more like 1%. That means, if you do everything right, you can hope for or expect one success for every one hundred attempts.

So, try one hundred times. And after that, try a hundred more. So on and so forth until you can begin to count your successes. And be okay with them being small, they’ll get bigger.

At least, this is what I tell myself. But I will say that the math checks out.

My plan was to join the California Writers’ Club after my third independent fiction sale, and while I still plan on it because I’m eager to see what opportunities that might afford, the struggle of the independent author has been one I’ve come to enjoy the fruits of.

Ah, I just remembered what kicked this all off, actually. The other day, I was looking on my body of work (which feels hilarious to say, given how tiny it is) and feeling unsatisfied where I used to feel proud. And so mentally running back through the journey of the past couple of years was a good chance to review, take stock, and realize the accomplishment it is; especially as any beginning writer would likely agree, five months is actually a startlingly turnaround for one’s first printing. So I recognize the element of luck in this experience.

In the end, the message doesn’t really change. Help or not, friends or not, network or not: keep swinging the axe, keep trying.

Hasta.