Remember when this used to be a fiction writing blog?

Yeah, me neither.

I was thinking the other day about the stories I wrote that I managed to get published. They are:

1) A story about an Ethiopian refugee who became an Olympic long-distance runner.
2) A story about two refugees from Eritrea who were kidnapped in the desert while trying to escape.
3) A story about a second-generation Eritrean-American trying to help his family pay to bring a refugee family member out of Africa.
4) A story about a poor kid in Baltimore and his role in the 2015 riots.

and:

5) A story about a working-class white guy who accidentally kills someone on his first day on the job as a truck driver.

1-3 are all about Eritrean or Ethiopian immigrants/refugees. #4 is still about the marginalized, and its main character is still black. Only #5 has a white person who is, if not rich, at least scraping to reach the middle class.

Politics, or something else?

Absent other information, if I had to guess, I'd assume the editorial boards of most literary journals are left-leaning politically. That would mean, among other things, a preference for diversity, for wanting its content to be about more than the realities of white, male American life.

My own success rates seem to bear this out. I've written about 30 short stories in the last four years. Only six have been about people who weren't white. Four of those got published. Only one of the other twenty-five has been published.

Some white writers complain about it being harder to get published as a non-minority. I don't think that's exactly true, and I don't think it's as closely linked to political beliefs of editors as one might think. Every journal gets hundreds of stories and can only choose a few. Many of them are of similar quality, and it's very hard to pick winners from similar products. It's not always a political decision to pick writing either by a minority or about a minority. You're just trying to put together a good collection, and that means you don't want all the material to seem the same. The diversity isn't ideological, it's pragmatic. The magazine just seems better that way.

Not that it's never ideological. It used to bother us on the Baltimore Review that our journal was named for a majority black city but our contributor page was always so lily-white. I was always on the lookout for writing from black writers or about black, urban issues that reflected the city. We seldom got it. That meant that if you were black and sending us a story, your chances improved. The other editors once picked a story I didn't think was very good, but had been written by a politically active trans-gendered woman. It was about the evils of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Or something. I really thought the other editors picked it because it said what they thought enlightened literary journals ought to be saying.

This isn't new advice, but make it new

It may sound like I'm writing one of those oh-so-precious "It's-hard-for-a-white-man-to-make-it-in-the-world" pieces, but that's not my point. If there is a bias in favor of minority writers, my point is that this is natural. Every writer has to struggle with the difficulty of writing something that seems fresh and new. Minority writers maybe have just a small advantage at making it sound new, because what they're writing about may seem new to editors and their readers. And I have no problem with that.

The lesson for everyone else is nothing novel. You have to write something people haven't already seen a thousand times. That show "This is Us" that literally even woman I know is crazy about is an interesting example. It's really about the realities of white, middle-class America. One character defends his family to a snobby theater-type, " So what if we're normal?" Except that they're not normal. They're triplets. Well, twins who lost their triplet in birth, so their parents decided to adopt a black child who'd been left at the hospital on the same day as their twins. One of the twins is a well-known actor; the other is a 300-pound woman. So, not normal.

You might be even whiter than I am, if that's possible. You might not know a couple of languages and have worked inside communities that give you access to good stories most people haven't heard before. But nobody's normal. Everyone has something weird, different, and new to talk about. Find that and write about it.

Because as much as people want a story that's strange, they also like to see themselves in stories. Finding what's abnormal in your normal life allows you to combine the shock of the new with the shock of the familiar.

Dialect--yeah, I've got no good answers, either

Mark Twain and Uncle Remus are well-known examples of great American literature with a heavy use of dialect, but nowadays, excessive use of dialect is generally frowned upon. It isn't so much that you can't use it, it's that the generally accepted advice on dialect now is to aim for moderation.

Even in a novel that calls out for some use of dialect, like Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railraod, the dialect is very sparse, mostly not going beyond the occasional "ain't." Whitehead partly manages this by getting his main character, Cora, an education before she's too far along in the book. But even before that, the dialogue in the book probably doesn't very closely represent the actual speech patterns of Georgia field slaves in the 19th Century. A few examples:

-Ain't this a nice mansion?
-Mighty fine work. That a little bed in there?
-"Nothing today, Cora? Alice said. "Too early," Cora said.
-"Almost had it," Cora said.


The main technique Whitehead uses to achieve moderation in use of dialect is one common to a lot of modern high fiction: he just avoids using a lot of dialogue at all. The book really doesn't have any of those sections where you get through four pages in about sixty seconds because it's all back-and-forth. Not only is the dialect done sparingly, the dialogue is.

I wonder why fiction has chosen to go this route with both dialect and dialogue. Why are both treated almost with suspicion? One obvious hypothesis is that fiction feels the need to give its audience something different from drama or cinema/video. If you want dialogue, they can do it better, so a fiction writer would be wise to avoid going head-to-head with those media. Instead, better to try to render narrative using techniques only available to those who traffic exclusively in words.

It's funny to me that in this one respect, fiction seems to have tried to distance itself from cinema. When I was in graduate school, instructors often invoked language from film theory to explain ideas in narrative. The concepts of method acting were often used to explain how to determine authentic character choices. One instructor explained scene by talking about where to place the "camera." The fiction how-to books I've read are full of this kind of talk. So why the divergence here? If Hollywood was going to do a slavery-era movie and the actors didn't use dialect, we'd criticize the hell out of it. Being able to deliver a killer accent is considered a mark of a good actor.

I don't have a good answer to either why fiction is avoiding dialogue and dialect, nor to what you, as a writer, need to do to cope with this. In "A Cinnabon at Mondawmin," which is probably the best story I've written yet, I had a main character who was a young black man in Baltimore. If he was going to talk, there was a specific way for him to authentically talk. But I didn't think I, as a white, middle-class man, could really do justice to it. It felt like a literary form of blackface. So I came up with a narrative technique. It was an epistolary story in which the boy was writing in his school journal, but constantly asking his white teacher from the suburbs to "make it sound right" for white people. That allowed me to have echoes of the boy's voice, but mostly write in a way that is more like the way I, Jake Weber, actually talk and write. That worked there, but I can only use that trick once.

It's too bad that good authors are mostly staying away from using heavy dialogue and dialect these days. I see a lot of bad use of dialect as an editor, but that's probably because good writers know that these things are out of fashion and therefore hard to get away with. That means the only people still trying them are hacks. So the use of these things gets caught in a vicious cycle where we think only hacks use them, then hacks do, in fact, exclusively use them, and our prejudices are confirmed even more.

In conclusion, I don't have a lot of easy fixes if you're writing a story where it just doesn't feel right for the characters to be talking like the cast of Friends. Just know the expectations and be careful, I guess. 

Why I care if people read what I write

I posted last week about how to deal with it emotionally when a writer seems to get more than they deserve. Frequent commenter Badibanga--who is a friend of mine in real life--asked why I care. His comment:

...why do you want to fit in so badly? Great fiction is a coterie of usual suspects who will be unknown and unremembered 30, 20 years from now. That is the rational gamble here. The "great" writers often were not appreciated by contemporaries. So do you want to be of the moment? If so, then behave accordingly. Do you want to do what suits you, then do that, accept the consequences, and do not whine about it. Rare, rare is the person who is appreciated both by contemporaries and subsequent generations. I guarantee, however, that many of the truly great did not give a shit about fitting in or being some sort of also ran to a bunch of celebrated hacks.

We discussed this in person last week, after the ablutions demanded by sacred tradition were first performed, but because I thought it was an interesting conversation, I'll share my view here.

Badibanga has a point. And lately I've been thinking a lot about that Borges story...the one I referred to in that post, where a man writes his masterpiece entirely in his head a split-second before he is gunned down by a firing squad. I think anyone who's going to write seriously will have to internalize that story at some point, because the odds are long for nearly every writer that anyone will ever seriously give a shit what you write. So yes, on some level, you have to write to please yourself.

That being said, what primarily motivates me to write is a sense that some disconcerting truth about existence has lodged itself in my brain, and nobody that I know of has ever mentioned it before. Am I wrong about it, or is this really a truth nobody has ever mentioned? I pick at it and pull at this notion and keep trying to give words to the thought it until I'm done. But the only way to know at that point if I've really arrived at some hitherto unspoken truth is for others to read on it and comment. So I need readers.

As much as folks romanticize the writer who was only discovered after death, that's actually not all that common an occurrence. And I have to believe it will become even rarer as time goes by, and the world is ever more and more caught up in the moment, caught up in today, and forgetting whatever happened five minutes ago.

As Badibanga says, it's likely that even if I became a well known writer today, I'd be forgotten soon after. It's far, far more likely, though, that if I am unknown when I die, I'll remain that way. It's very hard for me to imagine a future where a child or a widow goes through my thumb drives after I'm gone and manages to find a publisher--if such a thing even still exists--who will take them on.

Even many of the authors cited as examples of people who were discovered after death had at least some recognition in life. Phillip K. Dick was a well known Sci-Fi writer, he just hadn't crossed over into mainstream appeal until some of his books became movies. Edgar Allen Poe achieved mild success in life, albeit not the financial kind. Long before critics hated Moby Dick, they liked Melville's Omoo and Typee. Even Emily Dickinson had a few poems published before she died. In order for future generations to find gold floating in the detritus of the past, you have to at least get your work into that detritus. And the more of it you get there, the more likely it is to be found.

So yes, I do want to be read, which means I crave publications and awards and notoriety. That leaves me with a tough choice ahead of me. The more seriously I pursue writing, the more it becomes clear that what I want will probably elude me. The latest round of stories I have sent out were the best shots I had. I put everything into them, and they're coming back rejected. So I either have to keep plugging away with a growing sense of hopelessness or give up.

Gradually, I am arriving at a position that is something of a paradox. If I write only to be published, then I won't write anything worth writing. But having written that true verse in the darkness, I have to then become another person who cares very much about getting them published. I have to not care what people think when I write, and then care very much what people think when I'm done writing.

I used to not understand why writers so frequently suffered from a variety of psychological maladies, but the longer I'm at playing out this paradox, the more sense it makes to me.

Confessions of a literary journal reader: overcompensating, and not the penis kind

I've written before about the fallacies, logical and otherwise, that might befall a literary journal editor, and how these fallacies might affect whether your story gets picked for publication. Editors are humans, and sometimes, the things we do are just weird.

You can control a lot with the way you write a story. Your skill as a writer can probably control, with about an 80% degree of accuracy, whether your story gets looked at more closely by the front-line readers or tossed aside. But when it gets down the the tough decisions of whether to publish the many stories a journal gets that deserve publication--many more than they can actually publish--there may be some things going on that you can't control.

Here's one I've caught myself doing lately

Although I neither like cars nor guns, in other ways, I kind of fit the male American stereotype. I like sports. I like sex. I like a particular kind of narrative voice, aggressive, quick-hitting and jocular, that tends to come from male writers. I'm aware of this tendency, and sometimes, I find myself overcompensating for it by intentionally trying to vote for female voices, sometimes even ones I don't really like. Maybe I'll vote down that hilarious story about the misogynistic womanizer with a secret soft side, or I'll vote up the story about consignment needlepoint workers in Kenya even though I could barely get through it. I don't exactly keep affirmative-action type quotas, but I am aware, usually, of whether the last few stories I voted for were written by men or women, or whether they featured male or female characters.

In case you were wondering--ladies--I do not drive a sports car. I have an old Corolla. So I'm not overcompensating. Or am I aware that people know men with sports cars are overcompensating, and I'm overcompensating for that? Hmmm...

This is similar to the other fallacy I wrote about, where I am more likely to vote for a story if I haven't voted for one lately, and less likely if I just recently voted for one. I'm not sure exactly what kind of cognitive bias this is--it's something like an availability heuristic, but maybe also something like the gambler's fallacy. I'd call it a fairness bias--a sort of one for you, one for me, incredibly clumsy kind of thinking.

Even being aware of it, this is still lurking at the back of my mind. I'm not only aware of it, I'm also aware of being aware of it. I don't want to give in to it, and I also don't want to swing too far the other way trying to avoid it. It's a very uncomfortable thought looking over my shoulder as I read and do my best to get it right.

There's really nothing you, as a writer, can do about this kind of thing. Which is why one point I keep trying to get across is to take all rejections with a grain of salt. It'll be a grain of salt in your wounds, I know, but really, just don't beat yourself up too much. 

Spamming the A button: the end of subtlety with submissions

I don't know why I've been overthinking how I submit stories lo these past four years. I try very hard to find the appropriate venue for each story. This doesn't mean actually--as every journal suggests--purchasing and reading a few sample copies of each magazine before submitting. That would be insane, and far beyond my budget or the budget of nearly every writer. But I do read at least some free samples, if available, and I try to gauge whether the journal's aesthetic matches mine. At most, I've only been submitting to maybe half a dozen journals at a time.

That ends now. Back when my son and I still played video games together (which was back when consoles still routinely made games that had split-screen as an option), he used to get really annoyed with the lack of subtlety I showed when playing. Rather than approach situations with finesse or a sense of style, I'd just whack at the enemy with straightforward attacks. "Spamming the A button," in his terminology.

The thing is, I actually got decent results from this approach. It's never pretty, but bit by bit, it does tend to level up a character until I can use it to get past the tough levels. I might have trouble with some bosses, because those usually have some trick to them beyond AAAAAAAAA. But we ended up beating most of the games we played together, and I wasn't always the weak link.

This is the approach I'm taking from here on out with submitting stories. I'm just sending out a lot. I might end up giving away opportunities in this manner, by publishing in a smaller journal when I might have landed a top-notch one, but I think getting in the big ones is so hard to figure out, I'm just not counting on that. I'll still submit to them, but I'm not going to do that thing where I submit to them first and then wait months to get rejections before I send to others. I'm just sending out lots and lots of submissions and hoping that it all works itself out.

There's only so much time I can give to writing. I need to spend as much of it as possible writing the best stories I can. Every extra second I spend futzing with the best way to handle submissions is taking time away from the thing I need to be working on the most. And it's just not useful time spent: who the fuck knows the right way to handle submissions? Who knows who is going to like what? Six months as a fiction editor has made it clear I don't even know what I'm going to vote for or why sometimes.

I'll still follow my resolution to support every journal that publishes me in some way, even if it's just to subscribe for a year after publication. I'll give them something. There's no reason to feel guilty that I'm drive-by submitting, any more than someone should feel like they're cheating on an eventual girlfriend by posting an online dating profile to thousands of people before meeting the one.

So, from here on out, head down, dwarf mace out, AAAAAAA. If that means I only get published in South Paducah Vignettes from here on out, so be it, and the folks of South Paducah shall have my gratitude.

Very short P.S.A. from your friendly, local literary journal reader

The word "amble" and its various conjugations appears a lot in stories sent to literary journals. I understand you want something more descriptive than "walk" or "move," but I don't think this is your choice quite often. Just like you've probably read not to overdo fancy words that are just dialogue tags (e.g., just use "said" instead of "remonstrated), it's maybe better sometimes to use "walk" or "move" than amble, when amble really doesn't seem to fit. I won't disqualify your story because you said "amble." Just FYI, since a lot of stories are of nearly equal merit, and every little bit you do to not make the judges squirm in their seats will help you.

Carry on writing.

Counterpoint: Readers are sometimes great

In my last post, I wrote about how readers can be terrible. They can, and this has some ramifications for writers. First, you have to realize how easily you can lose a reader. That doesn't mean you've got to always spoon-feed or hit them with pap or otherwise try to compete with less demanding forms of entertainment. That's likely to end badly for you: cat videos will always be more cat-video than you can ever achieve, and you'll just earn contempt for trying. Fiction isn't something people read primarily because they have to. They do it for enjoyment, and people enjoy being challenged a little bit. Just don't take that willingness to take on a challenge for granted, or push it beyond its natural limits.

Secondly, you can maybe sometime give yourself a break as a writer if you think you wrote something great and you got feedback that perplexes you. It's possible that your reader was distracted, in a weird mood, or just isn't a very good reader. That doesn't mean you can just dismiss all advice you don't want to hear because the guy's a knucklehead anyway. But it's a factor worth considering.

All that truth about readers often being ass hats remembered, though, sometimes readers really are pretty great. I mentioned two stories I gave up on early on for bad reasons. I eventually finished both stories. It just took me a while to work up to them. Readers are people, which means they will often (most of the time?) confound you with their thickness, but they'll also knock you over with their perceptiveness. They'll make you feel grateful for the loving, giving way their read your stuff.

I mention this because I don't think it's helpful when actually writing to think too much about the asshattery of readers. If you worry too much about it, you'll never write. Instead, picture a really good reader (maybe you), and write to that person. Don't exhaust your good reader more than you would someone you really like, unless you happen to like being exhausted. But write with confidence and certainty that your work will find a good reader if you accomplish your goal in execution.

Considering what twats readers can be is something you should only do after you've written and gotten feedback either pre or post-publication. Consider well what you hear from a reader, and be willing to be humble enough to make changes.  But also take everything with skepticism. A lot of people just comment to have something to say. Many people weren't paying much attention when they read. (Obviously, I think almost everyone in my college workshops fits this description. They were just overworked, and probably more interested in getting, rather than giving, good feedback.)