Tag: Writing Process

The High Line extension, before the renovations
Writing About Writing

The Path Ahead

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The High Line extension, before the renovations
Photo by Pamela Weis – The High Line 2013

Writing goals are difficult for me to make. I tend to have multiple projects moving about in my head (and on my computer) at once and I don’t like pinning myself down to anything too specific or rigid. Last year, my only goal was to submit short stories 100 times (In other words, among the 15 or so stories I had ready for submission, I wanted to submit them, in total, 100 times). And I got close. In the end, those subs resulted in four acceptances. Two of those were published last year and two will be published this year. I’m very excited about the two coming up. And just last week I received my first short story acceptance of 2026. Hooray!

So, do I have a goal for this year? Yeah. The same one. I want to hit 100 short story submissions. Some I may only submit five or six times. Others I may submit twenty times. It all depends on the markets that fit the stories, how long they take to respond, whether they accept simultaneous submissions (i.e. sending to more than one publication at a time), how many are acceptances, how many stories I can get into shape, etc. Many variables here. But I got super close last year so I think I can do it this year.

I’d also like to finally pull together a short story collection. And I’d like to get a second draft going of the novel I wrote last year. And I want to get the final draft of the novella I workshopped with my critique group last year. And…yeah. It’s always a lot.

In the meantime, here are details on one of the forthcoming publications: Dim Shores will be releasing Suffering the Other, an anthology that will benefit the Transgender Law Center and National Immigration Project. My story, “An Abomination,” is one of my more philosophical yet grim tales. I’ll be sure to post the link to the anthology when it’s available for purchase.

On a final note, I had a lovely surprise about a month ago. Ellen Datlow, who is one of the great editors of horror fiction, compiles the annual anthology, The Best Horror of the Year. She also publishes a recommended reading list after the final selections for the anthology have been made. I did not make the final anthology, but I did make the recommended list and wow, what a huge honor! It was my 2024 story in Not One of Us Magazine, “Did You Pay for This Room?” I’m proud of that little story. It will definitely show up in my short story collection, once I manage to get it finished (and published).

Photo by Erich Kasten from FreeImages
Writing About Writing

A Grimm Tale

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Photo by Erich Kasten from FreeImages
Photo by Erich Kasten from FreeImages

Sometime in the late ’90s, I had a delightful part-time job at Shakespeare & Co. booksellers in Manhattan. No relation to the famous Parisian left bank store, though I suspect the New York owners did not choose that name by coincidence. I loved working there. I started at the Upper East Side location, helping Hunter students find their semester course books, but soon moved to the Village location on Broadway across from NYU’s Tisch building. It paid okay for a retail gig. Plus, I got lots of free books and plenty of down time to read on the job. I even had time to write poems while sitting at bag check. It was fantastic and I learned so much more about contemporary literature than I’d known before. Authors I’d not heard of, like Ursula Hegi, Barbara Kingsolver, and Louise Erdrich, had their works prominently displayed on tables, inviting me to pick them up and discover their secrets.

My tenure at the bookstore lasted about a year and a half, but in that time I absorbed a great deal…and acquired a lot books. One of my favorites continues to be a complete collection of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. It is a trade paperback, and as you might imagine, quite hefty. The cover is a silvery gray and has an illustration on the cover of a prince and princess surrounded by a border of magical filigree. I was enchanted by this book, and having grown up with Disney versions of Grimm’s tales, I was eager to read it. I knew they were more violent than Disney would have us believe.

And read it, I did. The whole thing. But there was one tale that stood out – about a girl whose hands were chopped off by her own father. It was disturbing, but more than that, it was a story that did not completely make sense to me. Like reading the Bible, I felt there were too many holes, leaving the story open to interpretation. In retrospect, I realize that all of the tales are like that, but for whatever reason, the inconsistencies in this tale bothered me most.

At some point along the way, I discovered the reimagined tales of Gregory Maguire and fell in love with his creative visions. I long thought I would like to read more reimaginings of Grimm’s tales, and while some of them have been done to death, so to speak (Hansel and Gretel, Snow White), others have never been touched, including the one that haunted me.

Now that I am becoming more comfortable with my own fiction writing, I decided to try my hand at taking this particular Grimm’s tale and giving it new life. I gave the girl a name and a personality. She’s clever and just a wee bit sassy. The basic plot arc is the same as the original, but I changed a lot of details and filled in some of those bothersome gaps. I also took out a bunch of nonsense about purity, among other things. Initially, I thought…short story. But it turned into a somewhat longer short story than intended…maybe a novella.

The first draft is done. It’s not quite happily ever after, but we’ll see what the second draft brings. The experience of writing a story based on a story was exciting. Making changes to certain plot devices felt rebellious. Now and then, I would internally look to my left and right and think, is anyone looking? I’m about to do something radical. Teehee!

Fairy tales are meant to convey lessons. I suppose my version does this too, but it’s richer, more complex. The people have more layers than in a typical bedtime story. And it doesn’t end the same way. The girl has much more agency than in the original. Hey, I’m a feminist. I can’t write about a girl who just happens to live a happy life because she’s pure and kind and so nice things happen to her. No, she ultimately lives a good life because of the choices she makes. Besides, her life is not all that happy, I mean she does have her hands chopped off early on, but it has moments of happiness, and that’s all any of us can ask for, right?

In the late ’90s, I had no real ambition to write fiction. I loved it, and I kind of wished I could do it, but I was a musician and a poet. I was in my 20s and focused on my social life. I was not thinking about my career or what life would be like 5, 10, or 20 years down the road. I was not thinking, hey, it would be great to be a writer for a living; maybe I should try writing fiction! But that bookstore job expanded my literary horizons and provided me with a foundation that would affect me in unforeseen ways far into my future. So who knows, if I work very hard, and have a little bit of luck, maybe I will make my living as a writer. There is no shortage of fairy tales to reimagine.

Morning on the east coast of South Africa
Writing About Writing

Writing Every Day

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Photo by Pamela Weis – Morning in South Africa 2008

I did it! For two weeks in a row, I managed to get up a little early every day and write at least 800 words. On the weekend I managed about 2000 words per day. And there was one weekday on which I hit 1000 words! This is a huge milestone for me. Waking up in the morning is painfully difficult, but for whatever reason, the motivation was there. And what a difference it makes…it is so much easier to hold onto the thread of a story when you write a little bit of it every day.

But this is a one day at a time process. I do have a little bit of a social life, and getting up early is not always possible when I have been up late the night before. Late for me is about 11:30. So I wrote in the afternoon on Sunday, and that worked because, well, it was Sunday. I don’t have that luxury during the week, but I managed to get back into the rhythm of it.

This settles my indecision about NaNoWriMo. If I can write every day, I can do NaNoWriMo. I may not hit 50,000 words, but damnit, I’ll try my hardest to make it happen. As for what I will write? Ah well, I think I’ll make that decision when I start writing on November 1st (gulp, today!). I have an idea for a new story – a new circumstance for a new character – but I will see how it goes. Either I will stick with a new project for that month and return to my primary project in December, or I’ll switch gears midway through and return to my primary project. It doesn’t matter. It’s all so exciting! It also feels really good. I have finally found, or rather, finally accepted, that writing is one of my favorite things to do.