Category: writer

The End of a Dry Spell

Photo by Tijs van Leur on Unsplash

—

 

This crazy ol’ 2020 has been weird in a lot of ways. I think we are all getting used to a “new normal,” whatever that means.

During this time of shelter in place a lot of things have changed. Our old routines may be out of whack. How we go about the day is certainly different.

But these crazy days also have a lot of us searching for comfort in the same routines, if they are possible to keep. “Trying to normalize,” is what I keep saying. What did I do before? How did that go? Can do I that now and will it help me to feel normal during a time that is anything but?

One thing I have kept up with is my submissions of short stories. I have been doing my best to keep my work out there for well over a decade, and I didn’t want to let that drop right now. Even as most days I just want to slouch in a big chair and forget about the world outside.

I have found that being creative is very hard for me right now, too many things are occupying my mind. Working on getting submissions of work already complete out to the world is a normalizing process these days.

Despite my keeping the submission train running on time, 2020 has been a bit of a dry spell for acceptances. I had a lovely story published for Valentine’s Day in February (which had been accepted in December) and then the well dried right up after that.

Part of working to be published is knowing that these dry spells happen. They are normal and to be expected, and possibly a little more expected during this time of pandemic as we all figure things out.

So it was with great joy that in mid-September I opened an email from the editors at Bindweed Magazine with an acceptance. Whew! Feels good, you know? I get hundreds of emails with a no, so that yes every once is a while is tonic to a hardworking writer’s soul.

I’m now pleased to share my story “Possibilities. And Turtles.” with you. If you have a moment to give it a read, I would greatly appreciate it. And stay a while over there at Bindweed, there are some beautiful works to find in their pages.

Now more than ever, supporting the arts and artists matters, so I thank you in advance for the read.

Now if you’ll pardon me, I need to go do a whoop and a little click of the heels, then get back to the business of submitting my stories.

 

 

On Un-inspiration

And My Own Fallacy of Un-motivation


Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

—

The last time I wrote a story on the Medium platform (and this blog) was February 1, and that was something I had written before, reworked, and published. I’m very proud of it.

My last brand new work on Medium (and this blog) was January 28.

I have lost followers, views, and dolla dolla bills, ya’ll. I used to be a top writer in Photography. No longer.

I feel guilty. I chastise myself for my lack of focus. I complain that I have no motivation. I say that I’m waiting for The Muse, but she’s reluctant.

I have a familiar Greek chorus singing songs of “you suck” rolling loud, bumping the bass, in my brain.

So what really happened?

I got uninspired. It happens. I would not call what this is writer’s block. I can and do write. Honestly, I just got a little uninspired about writing on Medium. It isn’t fatal, I’m still here, but after letting my momentum lapse, I have some work to do. Or maybe, you know, not.

I needed to take a hard look at myself as it pertains to my own use of Medium. None of this is Medium’s fault, the platform and its algorithms roll on with our without me. No, this is just some good personal introspection. Needed. Necessary.

I’ve lived long enough on this planet to know a few things about myself. I will never live long enough to know everything and I can’t seem to stop repeating the same mistakes, but I do try. I amuse and surprise myself almost daily. May I always be a source of comedy to my own mind.

Here is the lesson that I learned about myself again. And again. And again: Numbers, stats, measurements…they make me crazy. I’m not talking some ha-ha-ha isn’t that funny, I look at my stats, count my steps, weigh myself, SO darn much kind-of-cute crazy.

No, I mean that obsession with measurements of all kinds can make me slip off my carefully balanced nut. I know this about myself and still fall down a hole far too often.

That stats page on Medium? Oooh, yeah, that is a long cool cigarette to smoker trying to quit.

Partner Program earnings? Just one drag won’t hurt.

There are so many well-meaning and helpful writers on Medium with tens of thousands of followers who will describe the large amounts of dollars they make each month and how you can too. How if you aren’t publishing every day what are you even doing here. How they are a top writer in 82 different topics, and are you even trying?

This seeps into the folds of my brain like black mold and grows if I leave it unchecked. Turns out I must carefully curate what I let in and what I leave behind.


Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash


I love writing. I have been seriously writing for the better part of 20 years and less seriously all of my life. I work hard at it. It matters. It is who I am.

Writing on Medium would seem a perfect fit, wouldn’t it? And it is. But I was starting to make myself crazy. I was going nuts looking at stats, chastising myself for not having more views, wondering how to get more reads, bemoaning every story that was not curated and hating myself for not being better, faster, more, more, more.

The inner voice told me I must suck as a writer if I can’t even make $50 a month (my best month is $18 and I am super proud of that).

In the same timeframe that I have been riddled with guilt and convinced I lacked both inspiration and motivation, I have had three short stories published in respectable literary journals. One. Two. Three (will be published tomorrow).

I competed in a short story contest and worked my ass off on a story I am incredibly proud of in a genre (sci-fi) that is a challenge for me. I turned that story out like a boss.

I created a beautiful photograph that took second place in my photo club’s monthly contest (the theme was reflection/symmetry) and had it published in a newsletter with a reach of about 5,000 people. That publication returned to me such amazing feedback and compliments, I rode on a cloud of good words for days.

When people say that to make it on Medium “you have to do the work,” I am in complete agreement. So when I chastise myself for not “doing the work” here I realize I have for damn sure been doing the work, just somewhere else.

I have to give myself a little credit, even when that credit is a little less measurable than pretty crooked numbers on a clean crisp stats page.

—

As artists, we judge each other, but we judge ourselves the hardest. I am humbled, once again, by just how mean and dark my own brain can be.

Today I’m here. I am a writer. I’m putting down words. I am saying what is on my heart. I might get two views (from my two family members also on this platform — hi!) or I might get 100. I might get curated. I might not.

I am going to try to ignore the reads and percentages and pennies and just write for the joy of letting words flow from my brain to my fingers to this electronic form.

I wrote something today, and I am proud of these 700+ words. They are all mine and they are beautiful.

—

This item first appeared on Medium, find more of my work @karenfayeth over there.

A Moment Matters

And So Does Kindness


 

Photo by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash

—

It’s morning and I’m waking up rough after some really painful dental work. I’m running late for work but I’m trying to stay calm and just get there.

I’m traversing a road that is something of an unofficial border. On one side is a series of slightly rough neighborhoods where gentrification is coming hard and fast. And painfully.

The other side is the “good” side of the road (scare quotes used intentionally). Gentrification has already arrived to this side of the road, for both better and for worse.

I stop at a red light at a major intersection. I am first in line and there is a long line of cars behind me.

“Who Can It Be Now,” plays from the oldies station on my radio. A popular song from my high school years is now an oldie. Don’t get me started.

I tap my thumb on the steering wheel and hum along when to my left, a local denizen, a gentleman who has seen better days, enters the crosswalk taking something of a slanting route over the white lines.

In his hand he’s carrying an open tall boy and holding it close to his chest. He’s smiling, though his face and his skin looks like he’s seen some things.

I am alternately like “right on!” because why not beer at almost nine in in the morning? Then “oooh, damn” because beer at nine in the morning possibly means chasing a few demons somewhere around nine o’clock the night before.

But I don’t know this guy’s story, so I don’t judge.

As he ambles amiably in front of the grill of my very old and very tired car in the center lane, in the right lane an oblivious driver in a black Mercedes whips right into the crosswalk, intent on turning right and doing it right now, and damn near hits the guy.

Our beer drinking friend pulls up short, steps back and slightly bows, waving the Mercedes along. It pulls out in a huff, if I can attribute huffiness to a car.

Then the man in the crosswalk turns to me and smiles a lopsided smile and waves. I do what any decent member of the human race should do, I wave back. I briefly entertain a “I should not have done that” thought because I have learned through enough years living near and in big cities that sometimes it’s just better not to engage.

But I was wrong for thinking that. As I wave, he smiles a little wider, peers around the corner of my car to be sure the coast is clear, then makes his way safely to the other side of the road.

My light turns green and I drive on, thinking about the guy, this city where I now live, the ever growing division between rich and poor, and the implications of gentrification. I also think about how delicious the lemon scone sitting in the passenger seat is going to be when I get to work and gobble it up.

I get to the place of my employment, find a parking spot, quick yank the parking break and start my day. Something about the man with the tall boy sticks with me and I can’t quite figure out why.

One thing I know for sure is that I have to write about it, to capture the fleeting moment and memorialize it for myself as much as for anyone else.

And so I have.

—

This item first appeared on Medium, find more of my work @karenfayeth over there.

Do You Have To Let it Linger?

Word Sprints for Writer’s Block, With Apologies to the Cranberries

My word of the day is linger. This word was given to me by the good folks at RandomWordGenerator.com, a place I visit when I need to do a word-based workout.

Like running sprints or doing calisthenics, allowing the fates to give me a word then writing something around the 750-word mark is how I keep the literary muscles supple and smooth. (This as my post-holiday actual muscles are quite lumpy and stiff)

Today I was in the bath, where I do all my best thinking, and realized that I hadn’t written anything in days. And days. It’s fine, I have plenty of good reasons for this, but wanting to get back in the saddle and bereft of any really good ideas, I got out, dried off, and hit the random word site.


Screenshot from RandomWordGenerator.com

The rules of my game are: I have to take the word given to me, or in the parlance of golf (a game I know nothing about) I have to play it as it lays. No repeatedly hitting the “Generate Random Words” button to find a word I like. Nope. Get the word and get to work.

So linger it is. As in…don’t linger, get to writing. Boom, done.

Well not really.

The first thing I do is Google the word to see what’s what. Read a definition, see where the word shows up, find some sort of context or concepts around the word that provide a creative spark.

Of course, one of the top hits for linger was that angsty song from the Cranberries that was everywhere and all the time in 1993. A song I once liked but was ruined for me by a coworker who told me the story of her boyfriend standing outside the bathroom singing it loudly while she was doing a number two.

Do you have to let it linger? Well, when it comes to a poo, sorry, it can’t be helped. I can light a match?

Now I can’t think of that song without that memory. So let’s not linger on that to write about, eh?

Next I navigated my way over to Unsplash to see what they had to offer under the heading of linger. The pickings were, surprisingly, slim. Same with Pexels.

Pixabay didn’t have much that I thought fit my own interpretation of linger, but did offer up this very cool photo:


From Pixabay, and the license states no attribution required

I have no idea what’s going on there, but I have never seen a Zen stack made with ice, so there’s something new I learned as I lingered over the Pixabay site (a stretch there, stay with me).

Though as I look at the photo, I wonder why the photographer didn’t get behind the ice to try to get the low golden sun lighting up the slices. It’s a beautiful photo but I feel a missed opportunity.

Unsplash did offer up this one under the tag linger, which, uh…that’s not lingering. That’s walking very fast.


Photo by Chiến Phạm on Unsplash

Lovely photo, nice composition, just not my idea of a good ol’ fashioned linger. So that’s irksome.

Back to the Google, this time I navigate to Wikipedia and try my luck. It’s there I learned that there is a city in Luxembourg named Linger. The population of 577 means the Wiki entry is quite brief, in fact just a stub. So I had to linger over this idea for a moment.

I’ve always really loved towns with weird names like Hell, Michigan or Sandwich, Massachusetts. I mean, I could write a whole story on the weird town names in New Mexico, where I grew up. Actually, that’s not a bad idea, I think I will tuck that story idea away.

See, lingering over Linger, Luxembourg got the ol’ juices flowing.

This random word thing is an almost no-fail writing exercise for me. There are plenty of things that the word linger can introduce into the post-bath, post-holiday brain.

Granted, linger is a pretty good word, lots of ways to go with that. I do occasionally get words that are clunkers and try to make the best of them.

Well, if you have made it this far, I thank you for reading through my writing exercise to ease my writer’s block. Maybe this is helpful in some way? Perhaps if you also have writer’s block, you will stumble across this lingering little story and linger over your own ideas, hit the random word generator and then linger over some fresh, piping hot ideas of your own.

I’ll have you know that the word “own” was word 758.

See? Knocking out 750 words is just as easy, or rather just as difficult, as that.

A Baseball Story of My Own

A few years back, I participated in a flash fiction writing event and drew the genre of Historical Fiction as my prompt. Historical Fiction! I had no idea what to do with that. None. At all.

I believe the full prompt was Historical Fiction, a dentist’s office, and a leather jacket.

Uh. Okay. Sure.

So off I went and wrote a story. My own little sort of baseball story and turns out it did pretty well in the competition, meaning it was good enough to get me to the next round.

After finishing the story, I’d had a bit wish that my sorta kinda baseball story would get to see the light of day, and be published during the baseball season.

Well, my wish came true. “The Dilemma” was published this past April in issue 13 of SLAB Literary Magazine.

My baseball story! Published in April! During Spring Training!!

So why am I telling you this in June?

Well, it came out in the print version in April and I decided to wait for the issue to be loaded up online before sharing. Well, Issue 13 is online, however…..my story is listed in the table of contents but it’s not printed in the online version.

Grr.

I’ve sent a few notes but I think the editorial team is off on summer vacation.

While I love the folks and SLAB and am so very, very grateful they published my story, I don’t really want to wait anymore to share my little story with the world.

So I scanned that bad boy and you can read my little baseball story today, a few weeks before the All Star Break.

Here it is: The Dilemma

You can also find the link in the right side of this page.

If you take a few moments to give it a read, I’d be quite grateful. If you don’t wanna read but just wanna send “yay you” thoughts, also fine by me.

Either way, I’m going to be over here feeling pretty darn proud of myself for taking a bit of an oddball prompt and making something good.




Issue 13