All those using Writer's Market!!

Don't get me wrong, I adore my Writer's Market. I love it's thick solidity and it's deep lavender cover and the assurance it promises, the years of expertise, the way they immediately flag those who aren't worth bothering.

But it is, after all, an expensive book. And for someone trying to sort through short story markets to determine which are best for my work, it's tedious. I have my huge tome propped up on my knees while I steadfastly enter listing after listing into an Excel file, always certain that I've missed something. I know I have. Writer's Market is limited by the weight the human arm can bear, and there are always publications missing.

I just discovered Duotrope. It's an online listing of short story, poetry, and long fiction markets, organized by a search engine, so that I can list my genre (literary), desired payment (semi-professional and up), and type of media (print) and it lists all the publications it can find, with little codes next to them to indicate what genres they accept, the length of submissions, payscale, and media type. If you select the publication you're interested in (say, Paris Review - hey, my ambitions are absurd) it will clarify further how to submit to that particular publication (by mail, with no simultaneous submissions and no reprints) along with statistics from the users of the site as to the percentage of rejections and acceptances. The best button, to my mind, is the one that allows you to eliminate publications that are not currently accepting submissions from your search. If a publication doesn't accept submissions between May and September, and you do a search in June, that publication will not appear in your search, and you won't waste time trying to determine if they are a fit market for the story you just finished.

It's a wonderful site, and it's absolutely free, and it organizes this information in just the way I would want it organized, if I had any idea how to write up a website, which I do not. I am glad Duotrope does this for me. This means I can put off learning HTML for another decade. Well done, Duotrope. Well done indeed.

Getting work, Part 1: The clips

I confess. This blog has arisen out of some extraordinary rejoicing on my part. I've landed a copywriting job at the Brooklyn Public Library, after only five weeks in New York City, the first three of which were largely devoted to recovering from a five-day road trip across the United States, and adjusting to the new city. It's the first job I've ever applied for, in my life, and I landed it.

First and foremost: you have more experience than you think you do. Writers always do. In my case, it was copyediting I used to do for my mother, and a handful of projects I did as a teenager for a non-profit. Beyond actual material you may or may not have produced in your career: you can make things up. This is not against the rules, particularly not in copywriting, where creativity counts for everything. For magazine writing, it is usually necessary to have had your work published, and of course it is completely unethical to indicate you have published work for a magazine when you have not. For copywriting, however, as long as the words and ideas are your own, it simply does not matter if this work has ever been professionally produced. If you can write good, compelling copy for a brochure, you need not have graphics designed for it, you do not need to produce anything other than the words. If your portfolio is completely empty, start writing. Find companies you know something about - people your parents have worked for or who have worked for your parents. Got friends with small business ideas? Offer to produce some of their material for them.

When you have this material gathered together, choose some pieces that are significant to the job for which you are applying. For the Brooklyn Public Library, I chose a press release I did for a online educational community and the text of a brochure I did for a non-profit dedicated to helping children in abusive or impoverished homes in Oakland. The first mirrored the BPL's dedication to education, the second demonstrated that I understood non-profit companies. If you don't have materials that match the job you're going for, go ahead and produce something. Even trying your hand at a fictional brochure or website content can give you some insight into how best to write for a particular industry - insight which will serve you well in your cover letter and interview.

Other things I should be doing.

There are so many things I should be doing right now.

I have two short stories I ought to be final-editing before I print them, paste stamps across their fronts, and throw them in the mailbox on their way to Tin House and the Kenyon Review. I should be drafting copy for the two companies I currently work for, the Brooklyn Public Library and A Hard Day's Knight. I could be researching magazines and typing up some pitches for articles, because I have a wonderful idea for a feminist piece I think I'm pitching simultaneously to Bitch and a knife lover's trade magazine.

Instead, I'm writing a blog. And browsing around online, trying to find more work to add to an already-full plate.

Jobs and Taxes

There are things they don't tell you before you set out to become a freelance writer. Things about money, and how while there will be more of it than you anticipated, it will rarely actually find its way to your bank account. You will (in theory) have three thousand dollars, for work tendered, but it will be floating out there in fiscal never-never-land, and you will not be able to touch it. Instead you will call your parents for a loan, and write a check to your landlord you're praying sideways won't bounce, and grumble quietly to yourself about the flippancy of people for whom you work, who have money. They even have your money. But you can't have it.

I have discovered something significant, however. I have never in my life known how to write out my taxes. I realize I am not alone in this, but it seems that it should not be such a great mystery. I'm a single woman, writing. I know where all of my 10-99's are. I keep my receipts. I'm not a subset of some larger corporation. Me, myself, is as complicated as my finances get. I ought to be able to manage this.

I was recommended the Nolo series, who write law books for you and me and everyone you can imagine. They also do something that I highly recommend everyone do when discussing numbers with me: they talk down to you. A lot. And it's wonderful. Hopefully I won't owe the government anything this year. I don't see how I can. I didn't make anything last year.

Auspicious

Yesterday was manic, wretched, me in high heels walking through wet snow to an interview with a friend of a friend, a thin and bent woman in her thirties with a mouth that looked as though it hadn't set right, the way noses can do. I couldn't get to the Brooklyn Public Library in time to hand over my writing samples and beg an interview. I shut myself up in my room with my feet in slippers and a pile of books, only coming out to debate the merits of children with Jojo when she came in for the night. Stayed up until three, unable to sleep. I should stop masturbating just before bedtime but when else am I in the mood?

Then this morning, printing the samples, preparing myself for uncomfortable dress interview clothes and the wet and cold day outside, I got an email from the BPL. They liked my cover letter; they wanted me to email them my writing samples. Done and done. An hour later and they email me again, wanting an interview. I lapse into cheers and recline on the bed for the rest of the day.

Stepping out to the grocery store, I run into a beat-street player, the sort of smooth that runs well over the level of woman it's meant for. He needs a writer, and likely hopes for a bedmate. He'll get one but never the other, if he knows what's best for him, or none at all.

I'm hoping hard for the job at the library. I've always loved libraries, books, words in general, and to generate loving words to describe this institution would bring me such joy. I try not to think of it but everything is so good, they must be permitting of my sense of humor because my cover letter was so tongue-in-cheek, they must like my samples or why would they ask for me, they must be willing to hire someone my age or else they would offer more money.

Still in the hole and broken. Writer's life. Make me tea and swing me, it's beautiful.

Pillow fight and Puff Dumpling

New York is not a home. It doesn't seem to be a place of permanence. Everyone here is here for a reason; it's a jumping-off point, a place to start a career, a family, a new life. Those who have lived here all their lives speak dreamily of living elsewhere someday, but most people who live in the City, Manhattan or Queens, come from other places and these other places define them. They come here to see if they can do this one thing. It's a conquering place, a dreaming place, certainly a place for adventurers. New Yorkers seem to know this. They are constantly challenging each other to accomplish something unreal.

Like the pillow fight in Union Square.

It was just an email, floating around. The sort of thing I likely would have ignored in my other cities, in any of my other lives. A pillow fight in Union Square. 2:00. Costumes welcomed. Jojo and I arrive in pajamas and boots and wool hats with ears knitted onto them. We look like wandering mercenary cats, like Puss in Boots. There are camera people and photographers everywhere; we don't know if we should pretend we can't see them or look directly at them, and so we do both, but hardly ever at the same time. We see a girl in a pink tutu holding a plush hot pink pillow. Several young men wearing black ski masks who stuffed their pillows into T-shirts with skulls on them, being interviewed for a local TV channel. A tall Asian kid dressed as William Wallace, blue clay on his face and a teddy bear for a shield. We see an older couple wearing hats similar to ours, though theirs are bright blue and purple and shaggy. We hail them as our mercenary-cat brethren from the north. One woman has a glorious hat. A long, drooping leather hat trimmed in fur. For the most part, though, the crowd is nicely dressed, in good coats and nice shoes, expensive scarves. New Yorkers are wonderful dressers but there is a place for costumes and this is it.

The fight begins without any warning. I imagine someone whacked someone else at the far end and it spread like a contagion, quickly, through the crowd, and suddenly everyone is hitting everyone else with pillows, fairly gently, and laughing. The laughter is amazing. A few screams and squeals, but mostly two hundred people having a pillow fight of epic proportions, grown adults who haven't played this game for years, and laughing and laughing. There is hardly any talking, except the occasional "Get the panda!" or "Get the Scotsman!" whereupon those individuals are barraged, disappearing under multicolored pillows. And laughing.

Jojo and I find each other before the greater part of the fray is finished. She tells me she met Batman in the midst of a crowd, and he screamed "Catwoman!" and she screamed "My nemesis!" and bopped him on his bat-ears. We go to get frozen yogurt, kicking back in our chairs, exhilarated, sweaty, our pillows piled on the table next to us. People keep looking in the window with questioning eyes. We smile and recount our battle.

We go to the cat shelters after this, where we finally fall for a small white cat called Snowbella, which we will not permit her to be called again. At the moment, she rejoices in the name of Puff Dumpling, which we may translate to Chinese so that it will be less offensive. We pick up Brent on the way home, and I cook chicken marsala while they settle Puff Dumpling into her new home. She seems so content here, exploring easily, begging attention. She's so lovely. She's Jojo's cat really, but I will be happy to live with her. Cats are always third roommates.

Pillow fights in New York. Wonderful.

So it begins.

I moved to New York at the end of January, driving in my ancient Honda Civic, a brave vehicle reveling in the name of Billy Markham. He has a sweet temper and the good grace to only develop massive engine problems when a mechanic is close to hand, and my bank account can handle it. Not that my bank account can handle very much these days, but he tries, he tries. He lost an ignition coil in Colorado during a snow-filled night, and he's loaded with all the books I own. Well, not all. A few boxes wouldn't fit. But close.

I drove with an old friend, to whose dreams and projects I have always been so devoted I call him, only half-joking, 'Milord.' He was thinking a lot that trip, scratching his beard and gazing out of the window, and he glanced over at me suspiciously from time to time. He knew I was thinking about Jason. He felt it his duty to come with me on this venture, to guide me with whatever words of wisdom he could fashion out of the space that came echoing toward us through the wind. This strange skill is double-edged, as so often gifts are. He always speaks the truth, but his words never echo in the same way for him. He is as changeable as the people he encounters, and this makes him fragile. A ridiculous word, for him. He resembles nothing so much as a Viking warrior. We think it is because of this resemblance that hats suit him. He never looks quite himself without a helm of some kind.

We came into the city at five in the morning. I was rocking in my seat with anticipation, joy, the moment when you step over the cliff and all you can think is, "I'm falling now." His silence had a terrible weight, an exhaustion I tried not to touch very much with my trembling curiosity. An ill match, but we managed not to scream at each other.

New York doesn't feel like home. Nothing ever has, not since I was a child, not since the house in Oakland with my sacred space under the stairs, full of apples and chocolate and books, my flashlight dangling from a string fastened to the sixth step. The dark wooden smell under there. So New York is not home, but it is beautiful in our apartment, and dangerous on the street, and everything smells different, sounds different. It's an adventure-palace. It's here. Here it is.

New York is where I try to become a writer. It doesn't seem to get more specific than that, and perhaps it shouldn't. Writing as a profession is usually pigeonholed, wrestled into a manageable form. I write short stories and one hopes someday I will finish a novel that I am probably not just yet old enough to write. I have written business documents, ad copy, web copy, white papers, correspondence and mailing advertisements. And then there are those things I have never tried but would love to - the newspaper articles, the columns, the lengthy magazine scripts. There are two plays knocking around in my head right now. One screenplay - perhaps two. This blog, I suppose, though I never considered blogging a writing form. But then, I was ever resistant of the digital age. I like my life to take on ancient tones for the beauty of history, but then, I've found so many blogs online I read again and again, until I forgot.

I mean this blog to keep me writing, to remind me that Writer is an occupation, an art, a lifework. Perhaps to provide whatever guidance I can to any out there who wanted to do this, this writer's life, and are as afraid as I am. I am terribly afraid.

But today it begins.