How to talk to an editor

If you write something shorter than novels and you want to see your poem, essay, memoir, cartoon, or story published, you can publish it yourself or you can submit your work to a literary magazine.

If you self-publish, class dismissed.

If you choose a litmag, carry on reading.

Litmags (I prefer zines, but litmag is by far the more common word) are staffed by editors. Editors are people just like us. They are in love with language. They have worked their way up from fetching coffee and bagels to reading the slush pile1 to assisting the editors to being the editors.

To find your target editor, choose a litmag. Do you like their material? Do you like how they present their material? When the saints go marching in, do you want to be in their number? Our example tonight, which I just invented, is Thrilling Wonder Stories. (I would call it Litmag, but there already is a Litmag.)

Thrilling Wonder is a scrappy little litmag that opens their submissions portal on the first of every month. They have a cap, though: They only read the first 200 submissions. Today is the first day of the month, so let’s move like we have a purpose, people.

Find Thrilling Wonder’s masthead. This is usually under About. The masthead lists all of the editors and everyone else on their staff. NEVER SUBMIT TO A MAGAZINE THAT HAS NO MASTHEAD. If you don’t know who you’re dealing with, go deal with people who aren’t in a Witness Protection Program.

Once you’ve located the editors, go to the Submissions page. Submissions does not involve whips and black leather corsets. This is writing, remember. It’s not that much fun. Submissions will include the litmag’s guidelines. Read the guidelines! This is where you find out all of the following:

  • The magazine is open or closed for submissions. They read all year or, like Thrilling Wonder, they have some kind of limit.
  • The magazine pays for what they publish. Or they don’t.
  • The magazine charges a fee for each submission2. Or they don’t.
  • What they want and what they don’t want. For example, Thrilling Wonder has issued a call for submissions based on a prompt: “For our spring issue, we’re looking for stories about heroic bloggers who fight every day for truth and justice.”
  • Word count. Don’t send them a 10,000-word poem if they only want a 100-word poem.
  • Just read the whole thing. You never know what you’ll find. They might accept reprints; they might not. They might make you wait a week for a reply; they might make you wait a year. Etc.

You’ve read the submission guidelines. You’re bursting with hope. There on the screen is a big fat SUBMIT button. This is it! Click!

Uh-oh, they want a cover letter.

Stay with me.

You’ve visited the About page, so you know who’s running this thing. That’s half the battle.

Thrilling Wonder has an executive editor, two fiction editors, three poetry editors, 12 people listed as readers (they are the ones who make the first pass through the slush), and the office dog, Romeo. That’s a bunch. When you write your cover letter, don’t begin by saying “Dear Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, and Golf.” They are not an accounting firm. I always say, “Dear Delta, your fiction editors, and your readers.” Or simply, “Dear Delta and readers.” Don’t get cute and write to Romeo.

The rest is even easier.

Dear Delta and readers: I’m submitting a memoir of 5,000 words, “How I Found My Car Keys.” Thank you for your consideration.

If you’ve published before, mention it.

Dear Delta and readers: I’m submitting a memoir of 5,000 words, “How I Found My Car Keys.” Thank you for your consideration.

My work has appeared in Crochet World and Gardeners World. I recently wrote about the World Cup for the World Almanac.

Regards, Steve Bieler

Editors are in love with language, but they have a staggering pile of manuscripts to read every day. (The exceedingly popular magazine Tin House reported, in 2019, receiving 20,000 submissions annually.) When editors start reading a story or whatever, they want to find out ASAP if they’re wasting their time and should move on or if they’re really onto something.

They want to be onto something. When an editor loves a manuscript, she can’t think of nothin’ else. So make her job easier. Read the guidelines, find the editors’ names, and write ’em a nice short cover letter. It’s the work that counts.

Bonus: What do you do if they also want a bio?

They almost always do. The best policy is to keep it short and keep it in the third person, as if you’re looking at yourself and trying to be polite. Or keep it short and in the third person, but with a twist only you can provide. I refer you to the best advice I’ve ever read on this subject: “How To Write An Author Bio That Isn’t Boring AF.”

That’s it. Don’t overthink this, but don’t skip any of these steps. And if you want to find out what life is like on the other side of the fence, I recommend this investigative piece from Chill Subs: “So You Want to Join a Literary Magazine?”

You can do this. Good luck!

1  “Slush pile” is a term for manuscripts the magazine didn’t ask for, but here they are anyway.

2 I hate paying for what most likely will be a rejection, but litmags are not rolling in dough. They can use some love. If I’m into the zine, I will do it.

10 more simple things you can do to have more fun as a writer

In my last, very exciting post, I offered 10 simple things you can do to etc. Here are 10 more.

11. Submit what you write.

If you are only writing for yourself or your friends or your turtle, you can bail right here.

After I wrote, read, rewrote, read, and proofed my latest story, “Return of the Chess-Playing Dog,” and after I typed THE END, how did I know where to send it?

The internet is Chock-ful o’Nuts. Also full of places that offer guidance on markets. Here are two sources I trust:

Chill Subs

The Practicing Writer

“Keep the manuscripts in motion,” Harlan Ellison advised us. Rejections are potholes, not roadblocks. Every magazine that rejects you, unless they leave a horse’s head in your bed, is open for your next submission. And if the editors in their rejection invite you to send them another story, then SEND IT!

12. “Waiting is every author’s second job.”
I’m quoting an editor, Pat Walsh, in his book 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published. “After talent and dedication, patience is an author’s greatest tool,” he continued. His advice is to use the time you’re waiting to work on whatever comes next.

I know that if I submit 100 stories to 100 magazines on January 1, 100 editors will hate me for carpet-bombing them. No, they won’t hate me; editors want to find a memorable story or a poem that thwacks you between the eyes. But editors are also swamped. Most editors will get back to you within 3 months (source: Chill Subs). But nowhere near all.

All you can do is be patient, write something new, and keep the manuscripts in motion.

13. Make the editor’s job easier.

This is important. I’m going to write this up in a separate post and link back.

14. Don’t read anything about agents until you have a book to send to an agent.

Time, time, time
See what’s become of me
While I looked around for my possibilities
I was so hard to please

Well said, Paul. My people: Don’t squander your precious hours! If you are working on a book, as I have since I received my first rejection from Leif Erickson when he was the editor-in-chief at Viking Funerals, you can get so excited by the future and all the success that’s about to fall on you like whipped cream and fresh strawberries that you stop writing. Instead, you start reading profiles of agents. Interviews with editors. Analyses of what publishers want. And, my favorite, looking for photos of publishers writing checks.

Stop that right now. Any information you run across about agents and everyone else who works in publishing should go straight into a shoe box or a file folder or your sock drawer. Don’t spend a second on this until you have a finished book to submit to an actual agent. It takes guts to write a book. Don’t waste what you’ve got. Absolutely totally for sure for sure, good buddy, finish your book first.

15. Take a day off.

Ride a roller coaster. That is not a metaphor. Ride a fucking roller coaster. Go to work and concentrate on work. Do you have a kid? Spend some time with it. Multiple kids? Hand out nametags. “You probably have time to be a halfway decent parent and one other thing,” according to David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas. “Neglect everything else.”

Do anything but write, just for one day.

At the end of every Friday, the chief of sales at a long-ago job I had told his discouraged salesmen, “Go home. Refill. Come back strong.” Same to you.

16. You don’t need a social-media platform.

Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something.

The only way to gain an army of online followers is to start with an army. Are you a highly-placed bureaucrat with a secret Only Fans site? A Cabinet minister with a bedroom on your luxury plane? A disgraced politician who shoots her pets? If not, your chances of budging the social-media needle off zero are zero.

Look at all the time I just saved you.

17. There are no shortcuts. You have to do the work.

Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something.

An email from someone with a weird name claiming to control thousands of book clubs, all of them clamoring to read your latest book, is running a scam.

An email from someone with a weird name who promises to turn your book, Sunday the Chess-Playing Dog Slept Late, into a major motion picture, is running a scam.

An email from someone with a weird name who wants to produce a promotional video for your book, or who promises to represent you to organizations you’ve never heard of, or who claims he or she can jump you to the head of the line, and all for a fee, is running a scam.

“There isn’t any secret,” Elmore Leonard said. “You sit down and you start and that’s it.”

18. Avoid Artificial Intelligence, Super Intelligence, or Politically Stupid Intelligence.

Editors are swamped by stories, poetry, essays, memoirs, and cartoons excreted by AI. Editors hate that shit. They are really good at detecting it.

The editors at New England Review have placed this notice on their submissions page:

We expect our contributors to engage honestly with their own creative minds and not to outsource their writing, translating, and thinking to generative AI. Spell-check and grammar-check are permitted, but writers and translators must affirm that the work submitted is their own and not the product of artificial intelligence tools, software, or generators.

The editors at Barrelhouse are not so nice:

Anyone who uses AI to write something they submit to us is a loser, and we want nothing to do with them.

Ron Carlson said that the job of the fiction writer is to get to the next sentence. If your own brain can’t handle that task, find something else for your brain to do.

19. Keep good records.

Do you have a memory? Take it from me: Memory degrades. You will soon forget where you submitted a story, when you submitted it, and who the editors were. You’ll forget when you wrote it. Some editors receive so many submissions (there are few of them, and many of us) that they ask you to wait a year between submissions. You must know this stuff. Write everything down. You’ll need it for your taxes and for your peace of mind.

20. Celebrate your wins.

Lilliam Rivera advises us to keep our expectations high (shoot for the stratosphere) and our attachments low (if and when we fall back to earth, we go to the next thing). Keep trying.

Publishing is wonderful. Celebrate your outcomes. But celebrate your efforts, too.

I always submit stories with high spirits. I always assume my work will find a home, even when dozens of editors have already said Oh no it won’t. If nobody wants “Are You There, God? It’s Me, the Chess-Playing Dog,” at least I wrote it. I got it out of my head and now it’s a story.

Who knows what might happen next?

Thank God It’s Monday 20

How well I remember the year 2000, and all the fun I had flying!

I could spend the day harassing travelers, engaging in public foreplay, riding the baggage carousel, and violating the airport’s operational security!

Not like flying today, which is dull, slow, and does not count as foreplay:

This card was stamped by the gnarly yet visionary mail artist Rudi Rubberoid. Rudi loved rigid airships: “If I had my way, I’d put blimps on just about everything!”

A century ago, Germany was the leading printer of postcards, but the inconsistent use of color, and the heavy hand of whoever painted that building in the middle, tells me that this card didn’t come from Germany. German colors (all of these old cards were black-and-white photos that were tinted before they went to press) were sharp and correct.

I have several blimp stamps I inherited from Rudi, but not this one. This card was published after 1907 but before the start of the war in 1914. Someone started a message on the back, in English, but never finished. Perhaps it was too beautiful a day.

Fun facts: The U2 video was filmed at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. Fake Bono was played by a 23-year-old actor named Emmanuel “Mac” Macron, who traded acting for politics and became president of France in 2017.

10 simple things you can do to have more fun as a writer

If you want to read the Wizard of Earthsea, The Lord of the Rings, The Greenlanders, and all 800 Conan books, there are maps to guide you through those worlds. Even Kidnapped has a map—the island Robert Louis Stevenson painted on the wall of his stepson’s nursery.

There’s no such guide to the literary world. I’ve quested there for years, which is why my name tag at the annual convention of the American Association of Writing Programs reads STEVE THE CIMMERIAN. Can I help you navigate this world? Probably not. But I’ll try anyway with 10 simple things you can do etc. I’ll keep them short and expand on some of them in future posts.

1. Read.

Even at my nerdiest, when I was 12 and I devoured the Foundation trilogy in a weekend, I also read other things. I’ve met too many mystery writers who only read mysteries, too many romance writers who only read romances, and too many writers of mainstream, prestigious, mature novels who wouldn’t be caught dead curled up with a two-fisted Western. Read widely. Don’t limit yourself.

2. Write.

Every day. Of course, you won’t write every day. Life will intervene. Someone will get sick. A crisis will erupt at work. While you’re off having a root canal. Your partner might want to interact with you. Partners always want to interact with you. Some nonsense about relationships.

Don’t despair. Play nice with your lover. Clean up the crisis. Work will always wait, unless you’re the safety director at a nuclear power plant. You’ll write tomorrow. I can’t say this enough: You can write your novel in 15 minutes a day.

3. Music? Silence? Write on your phone? Write on the sidewalk with chalk?

Rudyard Kipling, in his poem “In the Neolithic Age,” wrote, “There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,/And every single one of them is right.” “Tribal lays” means songs. Whatever works for you, works.

Everyone quotes this line. But few mention that in “In the Neolithic Age,” the writer hero deals with his competitors by killing and eating them.

4. Take a class.

Every community college has writing classes. Take a few; find an inspiring teacher. Listen to the experts; listen to your fellow students. Learn how to gratefully receive feedback and how to gracefully dole it out.

Should you go to school to get an MFA? I’m not the person to ask. I don’t have one. The last time I had anything to do with academia, the Berlin Wall was still a wall, phones connected to a wall, Pink Floyd had not yet released The Wall.

If I had had the money and the time back then, and if I had wanted a job teaching writing, I might have gone for an MFA. Looking back, I’m content with attending a writing conference every 20 years and taking the occasional class.

5. Join a writing group.

“To get published, you have to do what every writer in history has done,” Chris Offutt wrote. “You have to sit for thousands of hours and hundreds of days in solitude.”

Many people like that degree of solitude; it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy, and God, I know, I’m one. I’ve even heard the term “desk ecstasy,” which I thought meant having sex on your desk until I was informed I was mistaken.

But many more people don’t like solitude at all.

One thing you can do to alleviate the loneliness is to join a writing group, either in person or virtually. You might find people on your wavelength in one of your classes. You might find them online. Warning: You’ll be critiquing each other’s work. Other people’s reactions to your work are incredibly valuable, but you’ll have to sacrifice many hours to reading and reacting to their work. It’s only fair. But that time will have to come from somewhere.

6. Find someone you trust to read what you write.

Your partner, who is already cheesed off about you spending so much time behind a closed door having sex on your desk, is not always the best choice. Haruki Murakami’s first reader is his wife, but they fight so much about his drafts that he refused to name her in his memoir, Novelist As a Vacation.

My wife is a good critic. No, you can’t borrow her. But last year, in addition to her reading, I gave the first draft of my novel to somebody who didn’t give a shit about me. I hired an editor, who did a wonderful job. I was fortunate to find someone just starting out who was willing to charge less to gain her first paying client. There are plenty of professional freelance editors, if you can afford one. Start saving.

7. Don’t be afraid to rewrite.

Sooner or later, Robert A. Heinlein’s rules for writing show up in lists like this one. Heinlein said you should never rewrite unless an editor tells you to. I’m sure that saves time—for the writer. It makes the editor’s job harder because you end up bombarding him or her with half-baked pastry. Heinlein formulated his rules in 1950, when there were dozens of markets in the science-fiction field and a desperate need for content, most of which was created by amateurs, dolts, subliterates, and people who were happy to perpetuate the racist and sexist stereotypes of the past.

When English critic Kingsley Amis (father of Martin) published his survey of science fiction, New Maps of Hell, in 1960, he said that Jules Verne had established a standard of low-quality writing, which his successors had “reproduced with great fidelity.”

Writing standards are far higher today. You can’t get by with an original idea and a vague gesture at intercourse. Finish a draft. Put it away for a while. Your instincts will tell you if that means a day, a week, a month, or a year. Reread it. Too many glittering sentences? As we say in the writing game, kill your darlings. That glitter might be a stumble for a reader. Maya Angelou said, “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”

Since I mentioned Kingsley Amis, here he is again with one of my favorites: “If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.”

8. Don’t be afraid to not rewrite.

If you have a story or multiple stories or just a clever opening from earlier in your career that you have never been happy with but can’t part with, don’t rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. Move on. Start fresh. That thing you wrote when the world was new is calling to you out of nostalgia. Or maybe you hate waste. Or it just needs a polish. It’s this close to being done.

I have been in this position too many times. My advice: Give up!

Though John Updike is the only writer who ever died and left a hole in my heart, it was years before I understood what he was trying to tell me: “If a thing goes, it goes for me, and if it doesn’t go, I eventually stop and get off.”

I keep all my fragments and false starts and stories I can’t sell in their own folder. After a few years, I don’t feel like opening them anymore. In the case of one story I couldn’t leave alone, despite the passage of many years, I took drastic action. I deleted it.

You’ll decide for yourself what’s a practical expiration date.

9. Read your work aloud.

A working novelist told me that she read the publisher’s proofs of her latest book to her husband while he was driving them on a long trip, and in so doing she discovered errors and inconsistencies that she had missed—as had her editor, copy editor, and proofreader.

I find that reading my work aloud always gives me a new perspective. At the very least, I hear weak verbs and suboptimal word choices. Reading aloud is the secret weapon in Jack Hart’s A Writer’s Coach: The Complete Guide to Writing Strategies that Work. The book is aimed at journalists, but any writer can profit from it.

Before you start declaiming to an empty room, negotiate non-interruptible time with the rest of your household.

10. Stay off social media.

Do I really have to say this? You will never get anything done if you spend your time trying to go viral or updating the world on the health of your cat or constantly checking your email. Don’t like. Write.

I hope your cat is OK.

Next week: 10 more things you can do to have more fun as a writer!

The first name in crisis is Cornell

I’m back from my trip to the red rock cliffs and dry valleys of southern Utah. As I predicted, I didn’t do any writing. But guess who else didn’t? Cornell University!

Yes, Cornell University, the most prestigious school with the most important graduates and the most disgusting rape scandal, is keeping it real. Quiet. One of their female students was kidnapped and gang-raped by the Chi Phi “Future Male Rulers of America” fraternity, and yet Cornell University’s home page remains a placid pool of faculty achievements and alumni goings-on. Cornell University is following the classic strategy of saying nothing and wishing this wasn’t happening to them.

Last week, Cornell University President Michael Kotlikoff posted a video on the school’s About page in which he promised to work tirelessly to keep his job. I may be misremembering what he said. I can’t check this because Cornell University has removed the video posted by Cornell University President Michael Kotlikoff. I guess an old and privileged white male trying to reassure everyone that everything is fine, we got this, was not reassuring.

Is Cornell University doing something? They’ve had two years to do something. The governor of New York, Cornell University’s HOME FUCKING STATE, has declared war on Cornell University. How will Cornell University respond? Pack the school into a Ford Econoline van and move to the Arizona desert?

A modest proposal for the quagmire that is Cornell University

I found this book at our recent library sale:

Lifetime Encyclopedia of Letters was published in 1991. Check out that informative subhead: 850 model letters for any occasion! Thank yous. Job applications. Dear Grandma and Grandpa. Dear John.

Lifetime Encyclopedia of Letters also tells you how to write an apology letter.

Perhaps, Cornell University, while rebuilding your school into a safe place for students of all genders, you should write an apology letter to the young woman whose life has been changed for the worse because she made the mistake of trusting you. It won’t reverse what happened, but it would be something. Then write an apology to her parents.

OK, you have probably already done that. Proceed then to the next step: Write an apology to every one of the female students currently in your care. Remember them? Your students? Then write to their parents. The ones who send you money to pay for such things as safety.

And now on to all of your female alums. Apologize to them. And to their parents. And while you’re at it, please write an apology to every young woman in the United States and the rest of the world in case they are considering attending your school.

Maybe after you write all of those apologies, and turn your campus into a nexus of learning rather than a crash course in survival, we could collectively hold our nose and readmit you to academia.

Episode 4: A Vacation Hope

This is the first postcard I ever enhanced. I added the ship and the corgi. The ship’s wake turned out well, and I somehow managed to line it up so that the hull seems to reflect off the water. The card is from the 1930s. I attacked it in the 1990s.

As I prepare for yet another awesome vacation, I am reminded of all the bad writing advice that exists in the world, some of it provided by me. This stands out: “Bring your book on vacation with you.” This tidbit comes from Unstuck: A Supportive and Practical Guide to Working Through Writer’s Block by Jane Anne Straw (2003).

After extensive testing, some of it chronicled in this space, I can attest that this advice is nuts. You are far better off bringing your flip-flops.

However, if you’ve established a daily or almost daily writing practice, there’s no reason to abandon this on your vacation. You can always sneak away for 15 or 30 minutes with your laptop or tablet or pad of paper or Olivetti portable typewriter. I like the final page of the benefits statements I receive from my health insurer, the page that’s printed with THIS PAGE LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK.

Describe your day or the inside of your head. Try out openings or a big head-butting scene. It’s all practice and if you never keep any of it, you will eventually write something based on your beach-blanket or poolside scribbles. Good luck. Aloha.

Vacation countdown: Reasons to Be Cheerful, Pt. 3

Another find from the library book sale, and another brick in the wall of fiction. Cavalcade of the North, published in 1955, is still an impressive-looking tome. I only just winched it off the bed of a truck, so I can’t tell if I will be as surprised and delighted as I was when I read A Treasury of Short Stories from the same decade.

However, I have owned this book long enough to have uncovered some warning signs.

  • There are only two women in the lineup.
  • There are zero indigenous writers.
  • French Canada has been cordoned off in its own 19-page ghetto (leaving 621 pages French-free).
  • The French stuff was written by Thomas B. Costain, who was a best-selling author but not in any way French.
  • Costain begins his introduction with “I have been convinced that few readers pay much attention to the introductions prepared for volumes of this character” before plowing on for 10,000 words that I know I won’t read.

(I would’ve written, “Here’s why you should read this introduction,” but it’s easy to play the Monday-morning quarterback. It’s hard to write a best-seller.)

I will, as always, report back. If there’s one thing that makes me cheerful, it’s a long book of short fiction.

Vacation countdown: 2 Fast 2 Furious

I found the Chicago Manual of Style 16th Edition at the library book sale. It was published in 2010; it was the first edition of Chicago to go online. They are up to the 18th edition now. It is pristine and built like a linebacker, a 1,026-page, vacuum-packed guide to writing English words, sentences, and paragraphs that make sense, make your argument, and make angels sing.

Chicago was my brother…my captain…my king when I was a copy editor. I used to hum “I will survive” while paging through it. These days, I can live without Chicago. I write, someone else edits. And frankly, although searching a 101-page paper index is charming, it is infinitely faster to search online.

I opened Chicago 16 (not the album by the stupid band) to find the definition of the comma splice. Comma splices run free in Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, The Things We Never Say. I am impressed by this book, but not by the copy-editing.

“Comma splice” was not included in Chicago 16’s index. I finally found what I wanted under “sentences, run-on.” If I subscribed to Chicago, I could’ve found it online in their searchable version. I could also have found it in seconds at grammareer.com or any other free grammar resource.

Oh well. It was the last day of the library sale and they were charging $5 per bag of books just to get rid of them. I couldn’t resist.

Our tomato plants are gone, but Lucky (in pursuit) and Tango (spinning out) rock on.

Vacation countdown 1

Counting down to my vacation (all I ever wanted).

RMS Berengaria had an interesting early life.

She was launched in 1912 as the German liner Imperator. She had some teething troubles, and was nicknamed the Limperator. After spending World War I heroically tied to a pier, she was seized by the victorious Allies. The U.S. used the ship to transport troops home from Europe. In 1919, she was handed over to the British government, who handed her off to the Cunard Line. Her first Cunard Line captain was Arthur Rostron, who captained the Carpathia when that ship rescued 700 survivors from the Titanic.

The Titanic, of course, was the definition of teething troubles.

Cunard merged with White Star in 1934, and the merged company retired the Berengaria in 1938, so there’s the date range for this postcard. Berengaria ran aground several times, and if you had her wiring in your house you’d keep a fire extinguisher in every room, but she also came to the aid of a foundering liner in the middle of the Atlantic.

I inherited the rubber stamps from my friend Jack, and he received them as unmounted rubber images, so I can’t tell you the manufacturer. Probably a company that went out of business in the 1990s.

Girl smashes chess barrier

In honor of today’s female theme, I am happy to announce that Bodhana Sivanandan, an 11-year-old from England, just became the world’s youngest Woman Grandmaster in history. She played first board for the English team at the Women’s Olympiad in Samarkand. In her 10 games she was defeated once, by the 33-year-old WGM Deysi Cori of Peru.

As a chess player, I am far above average. But if I were to play 100 games against Ms. Sivanandan, I might manage a draw or two. I might win a game if she got bored or wanted to watch Stranger Things or The Baby-Sitters Club.

Weird girls unite

Chess-playing girls are not weird. But there is today a literary trend called “weird girl lit.” “Weird girl lit” is a reader’s label, says agent Danielle Bukowski. “No deals in Publishers Marketplace have ever been announced with the phrase ‘weird girl lit.’ ”

Instead, publishers announce weird-girl books “for fans of” Ottessa Moshfegh, Mona Awad, Melissa Broder, and Jen Beagin, even though these authors did not choose this label. Just guessing here, but I’ll bet Ottessa, Mona, Melissa, and Jen call them “books.”

Bukowski: “Everyone generally understands a weird girl book to be about a young woman who can’t cope with modern life and makes a weird choice to try to evade conventional expectations.”

This sub-sub-subgenre has gained so much steam that it’s also gained a backlash. Bukowski recommends Jesca Dawn’s TikTok series “Weird Girl Lit that doesn’t center white women.”

When I told Deborah about this, she said it sounded like a High Times headline: WEIRD GIRL, LIT.

Gone girl

Berengaria (1165–1230) was a medieval English queen. She might have played chess, though if she had there wouldn’t have been a queen on the board. She might have written weird-girl lit. Who else in that era could read and write except monks and royals? She might even have taken an ocean voyage, as her husband, Richard, took her with him on the Third Crusade. He must have thought she was weird because he dropped her off in France.

Perfection is the thief of joy

I worked with a reporter who always filed his copy on time. He was done. He was proud of being done. And on time. Except he had to check one last fact. He had to land one last quote. He just had to write a new lede or a more satisfying ending.

Editor: So you aren’t done.

Reporter: Oh no, I’m done. Except for one more thing.

This man suffered from perfectionism. This is surprising, because he worked for a newspaper and his life was deadlines. The surest way to defeat perfectionism is to face a deadline.

Where do you go to get a deadline?

If you’re a writer, you will have to create your own deadline. For example: I will finish the second draft of my novel by Dec. 31.

Or you can meet an editor’s deadline. There’s always a contest somewhere, or a special issue, or an editorial call for something only you can write.

Of course, unless you’re working for an employer where they have the power to fire your procrastinating ass, there is no penalty for missing your deadline. The coffee shop to which I sometimes flee will put coffee in front of me in January if I’m still working on my novel. This is a mind game, and the game is being played in your mind.

So let’s win it.

I recommend that you pick a realistic date to work toward. And when that date arrives, your story or novel or creative nonfiction hybrid is done. If you have to check one last fact, land one last quote, or rewrite every fucking thing, then your story isn’t done. It may never be done, because you will never be perfect.

Unless you are writing solely for an audience of one (you), it is now time to submit what you wrote to the test of the market.

Always remember Richie and Carl, the school board administrators in Community. After reviewing a new commercial for their pathetic school, Carl says with satisfaction, “It’s better than good. It’s good enough.”

Make your work as good as you can and then shove it out the door. Move on to your next idea, your next project, your next obsession. If an editor wants some improvements, that editor will ask for them. They are not shy.

The suspense and thriller writer Dean R. Koontz once said that he rewrites every page dozens of times before moving to the next page. I am not going to argue with Koontz, who has published more than 100 books while I am struggling with up to one (1) book. Perfectionism works for him. But for the rest of us…frankly, we don’t have that kind of time. We have a deadline.