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.

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.