On an Acceptance to Short Breasts

Short Beasts

 My short story “Poop Sprinkler” appears in Short Beasts today. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to be featured in Short Beasts, and I wonder if grateful is too light a word for it. I am delighted, elated, beyond description of my emotions. If you have a few minutes, please read it, and when you discover you have a few minutes more, please take a closer look at Short Beasts and the other writers they have featured.

The truth is, I have more questions about this than anything else. Some of you know me as a graphic designer, some of you know me as a waiter, others know me as the editor of Umbrella Factory Magazine and I hope more than a few of you know me as a writer, a writer of fiction namely. I have spent much of my life fiercely protecting my time so that I would have time to write. I cannot add up the years I have spent with my trusty composition notebook and my pen. They have been the only constant I've known. For many years I wrote full time. I got to spend 8 to 10 hours a day, every day, writing. I was living the dream, and to pay the rent, I was a waiter, every night. The only real difference between “writer” and “waiter” is one letter.

I don't write short stories anymore, I haven't for years. I'm unsure when I wrote “Poop Sprinkler,” but I think it was in 2014, maybe 2015. Recently, I have been making a real effort to connect with the literary magazine community. My avenues for this are my magazine, of course, but that puts me on the editor's side of it. Umbrella Factory Magazine has truly been the highlight of my writer's life. But, it's Anthony the editor. Anthony the writer was lacking connection. For the last few months I've done my best to research online magazines and faithfully submit a story daily. For those of you in the know, this is a daunting task. It's a lot of work. Aside from all that, it's a exercise that is not really stacked in a writer's favor. I have discovered that I get 10% acceptance to 90% rejection. While rejection doesn't feel good, it's all part of that 10% acceptance. That said, I have had great success this year.

Another truth, I have stories that hold very deep emotional value to me. I have some stories that I believe so much in that it hurts, it really does, when I get a rejection. Some stories have been rejected several times before they get an acceptance. When I talk to people who want to write, want to published, I hate telling them about being vulnerable, about being disappointed, about being rejected. It's all part of it. Like I said, it's about the 10%.

What I find really fascinating in this whole process is that you never know what will turn an editor on. You can read back issues of a magazine. You can follow (and you should follow) the submission guidelines to the last detail and still not that acceptance letter. For those of you who haven't worked as a editor, I can tell you, when I open up submissions, I don't even know what turns me on. Over the years I have accepted pieces and run them in my magazine and I had no clue why I liked them. It's a fickle business, that's for sure.

But what I do know is that I didn't know Short Beasts before I researched them. I love their magazine. I am in the online literary magazine community, after all, and I love to see how other magazines do it. Short Beasts is doing very, very well. As far as my short story “Poop Sprinkler,” well, I don't know. I'm glad it's found a place.

For you writers out there, keep writing. When it's time to share, you'll know. Don't lament the rejections, you don't have time for that.