The Big Dump

While they're not exactly State Secrets, I've recently been dumping my unpublished (mostly) fiction and poetry faster than Hillary Clinton can utter the words "Julian Assange."

As I wrote on my other blog, I've been writing for a good while, and I'm not getting any younger. I've had an agent for the last five years and have still not had the privilege of seeing my novels in print. So what did I do? I started a little blog called "Random & Entirely Coincidental and posted stories and poetry that I have accumulated over the past 10 years or so. 15 stories and 15 poems...and I'm just getting started.

And don't think I don't understand the consequences. Some magazines and websites who publish literary fiction (and otherwise) consider posting your stuff online as "publishing" and very few publications consider fiction and poetry that has been published elsewhere. You get the drift. These stories and poems will never see the light of day...outside of their debut on my little blog.

I don't give a rat's *** about any of that. While a few of the pieces have appeared in print, the overwhelming majority of them have not. And I can count on my left hand and part of my right how many times they've been submitted out into the world only to be rejected. In the publishing world, that's just getting started. In my world, that's too many. And quite frankly, if one of these pieces were to be published elsewhere, I would be lucky to get a free copy of where they appeared, much less be paid for it (there are few exceptions).

So here's the deal: that little blog now contains enough material to fill up a nice sized book...stuff I've written over the past ten years...and I thought it was a shame that they were collecting dust in the proverbial bottom drawer.

I can't tell you how liberating a process it has been. For years, I had the conception that I got an agent and he submitted my stuff to the publishing world and I sat back and collected royalty checks. Okay, I never put much credence in the "royalty checks" idea but I definitely thought waiting had to be a part of the process.

And while I'm not going to be posting my novels any time soon, I'm finished waiting. I'm ready for my fiction to have an audience. And if anything, my daughter will have something to remember me by when I have moved on to a higher plane.