Tag: writing

Why is Submitting so Scary?

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Good evening everyone. My name is Hagan Maurer and I am the new blogger for Periphery Art and Literary Journal. I hope to entertain and say some smart things sometimes for this spring semester!

Since it is less than two weeks away from the writer’s submission period deadline, I thought I’d spend some time on submitting work to literary journals. I sat down with Yasmina Madden, an editor for Smokelong Quarterly, a teacher of fiction and a published author, to discuss submitting and all the fears that go with that process. The fear of submitting is something most writers can relate to. It is a vulnerable place to put oneself in. In your private space, you create something very personal and to send it in to an editor, to be marked as publishable or not, is a scary business. But it is a part of the business of writing. “You can’t have your work published…if you don’t submit,” Yasmina says. “I understand the fear of doing that especially if you’re a young writer who’s never submitted even to a literary magazine on campus. That is where I started.” For some of you reading this, this might be your first time ever submitting anywhere. It may seem like a big step to submit. And it is a big step! “As an undergraduate…I couldn’t imagine anyone outside of my college, like a journal outside of my college, thinking my writing was worth anything.” Yasmina Madden is now a successful writer published in numerous journals and a teacher of fiction. “The first time is always the hardest,” Yasmina says with a slight smirk on her face. “But when you do it, it becomes a practice.”

I remember my first time submitting anywhere. It was to the very same Periphery that I write for now. I submitted six pieces of work that I scrambled together because former Editor and Chief, Graham Johnson, hounded me to submit my work. I had zero confidence in my writing capabilities. I thought my writing wasn’t worth publishing, but simply to remain in my own notebooks at home. But Graham pushed me to submit and now I find myself in the same position: attempting to convince fellow undergraduate writers to submit their work.

            “Start with university publications,” suggests Yasmina. And this is plainly a plea to submit to our journal, but I think that submitting to a college journal is an amazing way to begin the submission process. Mainly because most college journals’ goal, and periphery included, is to facilitate an artistic community. Our end goal, of course, is a literary journal, but as an editor I want to find out who at my school is writing and what they are working on. I often feel alone as a writer. I have no idea who around me is writing on their own and I absolutely have no idea what they are working on. As an editor, I have the privilege of seeing a collection of submissions to prove to myself that everybody is working on something and is proud of their work and that I should continue working on the projects I have given up on.

Submitting to a journal is scary. Writing is scary. But the point of writing, to me, is to share one’s work. To submit to a college journal is to actively engage in the writing community on campus. And you have ten chances! Ten excuses to fulfill that weird idea you had on the drive home from work that you, hopefully, had to pull over to write down. Ten excuses to continue editing that list story of queer teen vampires. Ten excuses to finally finish that poem you have been working on since high school about the nuclear apocalypse and how that will lead to you finding your soul mate. There’s nothing to lose!

The worst that can happen is being told no. Yes, that does happen. Writers are told no more often than told yes. Why do I include this fact in an article attempting to encourage submissions? Because no is an opportunity to learn how your writing works and how it doesn’t. No is an opportunity to reevaluate what you have written and to ask the question: how do I make this better? How do I become a better writer? So please submit to Periphery within the next two weeks. All of us editors are dying to read the weird, whacky work all ya’ll are writing. It is a tricky business writing for the self and then allowing others to look at it. But it is all part of sharing the works of art that we create and growing as writers within our community.

Badly Behaved Cephalopods: Why Perspective Matters

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Badly Behaved Cephalopods Lead to Amazing Occurrences by Madelyn Lemons, is a story from Periphery 55.  It can be found in our archives as well as under the story of the week tab.  The Periphery Blog is a blog about writing, narrative, art, and everything in between.

            A question I hear a lot about perspective in storytelling is, ‘when should an author choose the first-person perspective versus a third-person perspective?’  The best answer I can give is the story Badly Behaved Cephalopods Lead to Amazing Occurrences from Perphery 55 by Madelyn Lemons.  Lemons’ story relies heavily on character narration.  The main character Jim’s internal monologue not only sets the scene, works to characterize every character we meet in the story, but is damn funny the entire time.  Few stories we receive at Periphery are so effortlessly comedic, but more importantly, use that comedy for a very specific purpose. 

            Take a look at the opening paragraph of the story.  Notice all that it does simply using character voice.  How would this scene have been different if it was narrated in the third person?

Be an octopus research scientist you said. It would be fun, you said. No no, they can’t steal things. Absolutely not. They don’t memorize night guard patterns and steal fish from other exhibits. They don’t open their tanks, slip their grubby tentacles out, reach into your candy drawer, and steal your Almond Joy. Not them. Dumb fish, yes they are.

Everything you need to know about the entire story you get from the opening paragraph, and all of it comes directly from the character’s voice.  It is Jim’s opinions about Lenny’s actions that matter here.  Lemons could have easily told us about how Lenny has escaped in the past and Jimi is made about having to find him.  A flat description here would have worked well enough.  By seeing those events through Jim’s eyes, however, the reader understands so much more about both the events and Jim as a character.  The reader knows that the protagonist is an Octopus research scientist who is bitter about their job and sardonic to a fault.  The reader knows the antagonist is a clever octopus who’s exploits not only show how intelligent he is, building up a persona and background for the story itself, but also are able to deeply characterize Jim, and show his crass nature.  Only by seeing the world through Jim’s eyes is so much content able to be put into simple descriptions. 

            Another great example of how Lemons is able to use descriptions to deeply characterize Jim is how she describes ‘Bill’: “I’m pretty sure his name isn’t actually “Bill the orange fish man” or even “Bill” at all, but I’ve never actually talked to him”  Like Jim, the reader still knows nothing about Bill, but hears all that Jim thinks about him.  The comments about Bill’s outfit, the mocking nickname, work to push the story forward while at the same time working to characterize both men.  These comments show the reader how judgmental Jim is in a much more powerful way than if Lemons were to simply tell us. 

            Lemons never has to say that Jim is judgmental, or angry, or well versed in octopi because the reader is able to understand that simply through the work Jim’s point of view does.  The odd phrases like “ugly yellow linoleum” or “I know his pissy eyes when I see them” show how bitter Jim is about his job, surroundings, and having to find Lenny.  Comments like “Octopus vulgaris” and “he’s a cephalopod without the ability to even perceive sound the way humans do” show how much Jim knows about taxonomy and octopi without Lemons having to spend time telling the reader these things.  Through character voice, Lemons is able to be incredibly efficient with her prose, having each line pull a lot of weight and tell the reader many things.  A telling aspect of the story is that the first time Jim speaks is six pages into the story.  We don’t hear a word from his mouth and yet we know so much about him.  By the time he does speak, his actions and motivations are clear to the reader. 

            So far I have glossed over just how funny Jim’s narration is, and I don’t that that is fair when talking about all that Jim’s perspective is and does.  The line, “Oh no, bad idea don’t do it danger zone he’ll eat you Jesus Christ Lenny’s one mean little bastard when he wants to be-” can only work in its breathless terror because it comes from Jim.  Even in this joke though, Lemons is moving the story forward.  The reader, just like Jim, is watching Bill try to wrangle Lenny, and through Jim’s perspective the reader gets more information about it. 

            Why then is Lemons’ Badly Behaved Cephalopods Lead to Amazing Occurrences an answer to the question, ‘when should an author choose the first person perspective versus a third person perspective and why?’  Because the story doesn’t function without the character voice.  Every line in this story works in several ways either to describe the surroundings, characterize Jim, talk about Jim’s job, or characterize Lenny or Travis.  A story that relies so heavily on a character’s perspective demands to be told by it.  If a story does not, it shouldn’t be.  Madelyn Lemons shows us a wonderful example of that through Badly Behaved Cephalopods Lead to Amazing Occurrences

There is a Man on a Tall Bench Reading a Book: The Use of Symbols and Legends

Graham JohnsonLeave a comment

There is a Man on a Tall Bench Reading a Book by Lucius Pham is a story from Periphery 55 and can be found in the archives as well as the story of the week.  The Periphery Blog is a blog about writing, narrative, art, and everything in between.

            I have always had a soft spot for surreal or absurd stories.  I think they are able to capture a mythic quality that is meant to be thought on: meant to be savored.  These stories do a really good job of creating symbols and themes overtly, showing them immediately in the foreground to force readers to think on them.  There is a Man on a Tall Bench Reading a Book by Lucius Pham does just that.  Images of towers of books and bodies tumbling from them are effortlessly evocative, and inherently deeply symbolic.  The story is reminiscent of legends and tall tales, where a lesson or warning is lurking behind the story and symbols.  How then, does There is a Man on a Tall Bench Reading a Book achieve this mythic quality? 

            The most notable way that There is a Man on a Tall Bench Reading a Book strives towards a mythic quality is the lack of defined sentences.  Despite the many commas and quotation marks, there are three periods in the entire story.  The lack of differentiation between sentences just begs for this story to be read aloud.  The passage that sold me on it was this one:

I am mesmerized by it’s handwritten lettering

Entranced by it’s hypnotic text

Studying each line, singing every word in my heart

There is something about this book

Time passes and I check my timepiece

The books topple behind me as I get up to leave

It is a genius stroke of using prose to mirror narrative.  Each incomplete phrase leaves the reader hanging, waiting for the next one to fully understand what is going on, stringing the reader along word to word, phrase to phrase.  Then the narrative shifts suddenly, describing the books piling up around the protagonist, mirroring how time rapidly passes for the protagonist.  The stark shift surprises the reader just as it surprises the protagonist.  The wonderful metanarrative of the story of a young person becoming consumed with stories is perfectly shown through how easily readers become hooked with these sentence fragments.  The mythic quality comes from allowing the reader to feel the same interest that consumed the protagonist.  It makes them wonder if there is danger lurking within handwritten lettering or hypnotic text. 

            The use of symbolic imagery is key to There is a Man on a Tall Bench Reading a Book is key to the mythic quality.  There is something inherently evocative about a throne of books.  Ideas of knowledge, and enlightenment spring forth from the books, while power and regality are associated with the throne.  The man atop that tower of books brings to mind monks on top of mountains or hidden away in remote vistas safeguarding knowledge.  Everything that happens to them begs to be analyzed on a symbolic level.  What does it mean that the tower of books stands only a short while after the man dies?  What is significant about the height of the towers?  Whether or not Pham meant anything by these details, the symbolic nature of the images assigns meaning to them, and makes readers stop and think on it, just as they are meant to think on legends or myths. 

            Finally the cyclical nature of the story not only mirrors the structure of legends, but gives readers direct access to it.  It makes the tower of books seem like a perpetual entity.  Something that always has been, and will be.  Moreover, the failure to name characters allows the reader to insert themselves directly into the story, as if they too, might stumble upon a tower of books.  From there it is up to the reader to wonder if that is something to be celebrated, or feared.  Either way the story is meant to be thought upon, and it is a goal effortlessly achieved. 

Who’s Missing from Aunt Deb’s Wake: A Study of Efficiency

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            The short story as a conversation is a format we get a lot of at Periphery.  It is a framing device that I particularly enjoy; I find it to be a wonderful way to bring focus to a story.  That focus, however, comes with it’s own set of drawbacks.  If a story consists solely of dialogue, that dialogue has to do many things: provide background, characterization, and context, while at the same time actually tell a story.  In order to fit within the confines of a short story then, each line of dialogue has to be incredibly efficient at doing each of these tasks.  A beautiful example of that efficiency in dialogue comes from Tess Lydon’s Who’s Missing from Aunt Deb’s Wake. 

            The introduction of Mar within the story hooked me the first time I read it.  It does a great job of avoiding of the major pitfalls of dialogue heavy stories, and is efficient at introducing characters and the context.  Take a look:

Evan: What are you doing out here?

Mar: It’s raining.

Evan: Come inside

Mar: It seems almost a little too on the nose if you ask me.  Rain on the day of a wake.  The universe is pathetic. 

Evan: Mar, please come inside. 

Mar, Forecast says it should rain harder on the day of the funeral.  It’s like the universe couldn’t resist the cliché

Evan: Everyone is looking for you

Mar: Then tell them to come onto the front porch

In a story of only dialogue it is perilously easy to slip into a single voice, where the author is talking to her or himself instead of characters having conversations.  Lydon sidesteps that pitfall by having the characters initially talk at each other rather than with.  When the characters initially attempt to talk over each other two distinct voices are able to emerge.  It takes Mar eight lines to even acknowledge what Evan is trying to tell her.  It is within those eight lines that the reader gets a deep look into both characters, and it makes both of their introductions memorable.  The reader instantly knows Mar is self-centered, ironic, and not shy about showing her feelings.  About Evan we can see that he is obedient, more pragmatic, but still cares for Mar and is used to putting up with her.  Not only do these lines efficiently characterize the two main characters, and develop two distinct voices, but also sets the scene.  It is incredibly efficient writing. 

            Again and again the efficiency of the story is impressive.  The efficiency overcomes the lack of tools usually available in prose when a story is restricted to dialogue.  The conversation between Mar and Evan is carefully crafted so that each line does an incredible amount of work.  As Mar is talking about all the ways that Aunt Deb was ignorant, she is giving context to both her and Evan’s character, and while she is ranting, Evan is trying to distract her with carbs, again informing both their characters in a different way.  I would challenge readers to find more than a handful of lines within this story that don’t serve multiple purposes.  I know I couldn’t. 

            A comparison I wanted to make here was between Who’s Missing from Aunt Deb’s Wake and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.  When I recently read Gaiman’s Hugo award winning novel what surprised me most about it was how inefficient it was.  Long segments of chapters detailing characters never to be seen again popped up several times.  Page-long descriptions of places only seen once in the story before being quickly cast aside were not uncommon.  A look into how a story specifically uses inefficiency can be telling into how it can and should be used. 

            Before I go any further it is important to note that short stories by definition have to be more efficient than novels, simply due to size.  To tell a complete story in less words necessitates efficient storytelling.  It is something that Gaiman uses knowingly.  The inefficient style is used for a specific purpose, but the different formats is worth noting. 

            The inefficiency of American Gods ties into the central themes of the novel.  One of the main themes of American Gods is what happens when people forget.  What happens to the old gods when people forget about them in a modern world?  Do new gods take their place?  Where their older gods before the ‘old gods’?  Does that mean there is an endless string of newer and older gods gaining and losing worshippers?  Questions like these greatly apply themselves to inefficient storytelling.  If people worship a endless string of gods one after the other, that system relies on inefficiency: one then the next, and then the next, rather than many at one time.  That concept easily parallels Gaiman’s descriptions of places and characters quickly discarded.  A more specific example of that inefficiency is in how Gaiman uses conjunctions:

“The Lights were off, and there was silence, mostly, nothing but the hum of the refrigerator, and, somewhere in the building, a radio playing” (Gaiman 256)

I noticed early in the novel that Gaiman tends to use several conjunctions in sentences, rather than lists of commas in order to elongate sentences and lists.  The sentences become diced up into discrete clauses, all jumbled after the other.  Does that sound familiar?  It is an inefficient style all the way down to the syntax, but it is used for a specific reason. 

            Between these two stories one can see the disparate ends of efficiency within storytelling.  What initially drew me to Who’s Missing from Aunt Deb’s Wake was it’s focus.  The conversation seems monolithic alone on the page, like its message is supposed to ring out.  It is a finely tuned story where every aspect ties to itself or does many jobs.  Keeping stories tight and short is a much more reliable way to achieve that effect so finely captured by Lydon.  The beautiful exception to prove that rule is American Gods.  It shows how powerful the space can be to develop character and place at the expense of efficiency.  Gaiman uses the inefficiency knowingly and purposely; it is a wonderful example of how to break convention through the understanding of it.