Last week I received an email with this subject: HOW TO LAND A JOB IN INDIE LIT. I read about a class I could take, taught by a person who is a fiction editor for one literary magazine, a guest editor for two others, and a non-fiction editor for a fourth. She could’ve listed a fifth litmag where she was the editorial intern, but that zine stopped publishing in 2018. To land the job you love in literature, you must be prepared to work hard, not just at one job, but several at the same time. Be prepared not to make a pile of money, either.

And then I thought, why am I reading this? I have a job: Writing novels. So far it pays nothing, but guess what? I’m retired. The last thing I need is employment.

But I get distracted.

A newsletter arrives and offers me a list of 13 DAMN FINE LITMAGS WITH 5-10% ACCEPTANCE RATES. Later lists up the ante to 22 and 51 of these things. Literature moves slowly, but not if I submit a story to 13 LITMAGS THAT RESPOND IN 7 DAYS OR LESS. How about something prestigious: 10 LITMAGS TO LAUNCH YOUR WRITING CAREER and 9 INDIE PRESSES THAT WIN AWARDS FASTER THAN TAYLOR SWIFT.

I haven’t submitted anything to any of these places, but I think about them. Time is money. Thought is, too. Thinking about DAMN FINE LITMAGS and editors who respond to submissions in seven days or less because they live in another dimension is wasting money.

But then I received a newsletter from Barrelhouse (“Serious writing. Pop culture. News about things and stuff.”). If you’re wondering where the cool kids hang, it’s here. I would love to see my byline in their pages. The newsletter was a call for submissions for their “Dirty Issue”:

Barrelhouse wants the dirt. From playing in the dirt, to dirt on a rival, to the filth of humanity, to the grime or greenery of your particular locale, we want it all. Go ahead, tell us everything, you dirty birds! We want the kinds of stories and poems whispered behind cupped hands, the ones that giggle and scatter when you enter the room, the ones that draw grimaces and gasps. The stuff you find scrawled on the bathroom walls of a dive bar. Talk dirty to us, if that’s your thing. Talk about the feeling of “dirty” or being labelled as such. Got a dirty job? Tell us about it. Take us back to our childhoods, digging for worms and building mudpies; talk about the spaces, sensations, and memories full of dirt that mean a lot to you. 

By the Flaming Sword of Taylor Swift! That set me scrambling. I didn’t want to write something new, but what did I have that was old that I could fix up and that was about dirt, dirtiness, dirtitude? This wasn’t one of those times where I gave the submissions call 15 or 30 minutes of my day. I read my old blog posts. I read the files I had stashed in my SALVAGE folder. I considered past jobs where I couldn’t stay clean. I considered secret things I knew about people, but there weren’t many people or things and some of these folks are still capable of stabbing me in the pancreas. I considered secret things I knew about me, but those things are secret because they’re boring, not dirty. Where’s the dirt? Where’s the beef?

At last, I waded into my GIVE THE FUCK UP folder. And gave up.

What did I learn from this exercise? That when you’re occupied with something you shouldn’t be doing when you have something you should, two hours can pass like the snap of your fingers. That I should stabilize my rear deflectors, stay on target, and watch for enemy fighters. Because they can come at you even while you’re congratulating yourself for outrunning another day of internet distractions.

Contending with the distractions of Red Five and Gold Leader.