Short but exciting post today: Rose Metal Press has accepted my book, It All Felt Impossible, for publication. You can read the full release here. Many more details, including release date, cover, pre-orders, etc. to come, but I’m very excited to work with such a great independent press.
This is me pointing at (what is allegedly) the world’s largest root beer barrel, which is in no way related to the contents of this post
I have some new essays to share, and I’m pretty excited about them.
Late in 2018, after a deeply unproductive period of writing— maybe 8 months in which I’d written 10 pages of a novel draft and 1 short story— I finally listened to the advice I’m always giving to students: I tried to break out of my rut by imposing constraints on my writing. Specifically, I started a project at the beginning of the year that was bound by the following rules:
Write 1 essay for every year you’ve been alive
They must be strictly limited to 1500 words, preferably in the range of 900-1200
They should always broaden out to something bigger than just a single incident
Write one each day, for 37 days, in chronological order
I broke the last rule almost immediately, because I wrote two on the first day, and on the 2nd day, I jumped ahead to 2014, but that doesn’t matter because of course all the rules are arbitrary. They were just there to give me some structure.
I had more fun working on this project than anything I’d written in a long time. It was my first serious effort at longform nonfiction in a while, and it felt good to work those muscles again. It also was nice to be excited to get back in front of the computer again every morning, knowing I had a specific goal in mind. In all, I wrote and revised (and revised and revised) about 46,000 words in 5 months, and then I spent the next couple months submitting these essays all over the place. 8 have been accepted so far, with 22 more out there on submission and the remainder still to be sent out. If I’m extremely lucky over the next year, I’ll end up with a memoir in flash essays scattered across the literary landscape.
As they appear in the world, I’ll add them to the list below (in chronological order, not in order of publication, for ease of searching).
2001 (The Laurel Review) (in print, now available online)
2008 (Gigantic Sequins issue 11, print only)
2016 (Cherry Tree Issue 7, print only)
Here's a chapter from my memoir, Bury Me in My Jersey, which I wrote mostly in 2007-8, and which was published in 2010. Why share it now when the book is out of print and nearly every athlete mentioned in there has retired?
Because it's week 1 of the NFL season; because, at every author event I've ever done, I'm always asked about how the Eagles are going to do next season; because so much has changed in the way I think about sports and the way I watch football specifically; because nothing has changed at all, really; because this chapter was the first thing I ever published; because I both recognize the person in this book and also do not recognize him at all; because this book opened many doors for me; because I still feel okay about it overall; because in the years between this and my novel, I had more than a dozen conversations with more established writers asking when I was going to write a "real book;" and because it's Sunday and I don't know what else to do with my time.
The memoir is still available as an ebook. Maybe you'll like it. It's almost impossible to calculate how much has changed, but my dad is still dead and the Eagles are still an entity that soaks up way too much of my attention. I still feel pretty good about the book, though I also don't think I could ever write it again.
Barrelhouse recently opened for nonfiction submissions, and though our previous call was quite restrictive (we were looking exclusively at essays between 18k and 35k words), this one is wide open. Having lost faith in most people to even read the submission guidelines—our call for very long essays elicited a surprising number of young adult novels, in addition to flash fictions, one-page essays, and dozens of poems—I decided to avoid the frustration of writing out detailed guidelines only to have them ignored anyway.
Still, I thought it might be helpful to share some expanded thoughts on the essay types I see most often, and the reasons I feel burned out on them. Two of the most common questions any editor gets at conferences are, “What’s your biggest submission pet peeve?” and “What topics are you tired of reading about?” Every editor’s answer will differ, but I think it helps to be transparent about how all of this works. My goal here isn't to be discouraging, but to share some insights into my thought process, and also to maybe save both of us some time, so you're not submitting work that has little chance of getting published, and I'm not reading essays that aren't right for Barrelhouse.
Some important disclaimers before we get started:
Okay, let’s get into it.
1. My Time At Summer Camp- Maybe it’s because I never went to summer camp, or because in every undergraduate nonfiction course I’ve taught I’ve gotten a half-dozen summer camp essays, but I would be fine never reading another one ever again. I get that camp is a formative time, there are some important coming-of-age moments, there’s usually a sex scene, and usually a drugs-and-drinking scene. There’s a young person feeling alienated and lonely, and there’s all the funny and sad stuff kids do to fit in. There are lots of potentially fascinating and dramatic elements in play. And yet, every summer camp essay reads the same to me. They typically end with a rote lesson about growing up. They offer no surprises. More than any other essay type I’m listing here, the summer camp essay can often be very well-written and indicate the author’s talent, and yet still be incredibly boring. Please, if you must continue to write about your important summer camp experience, include some werewolves or a sea monster or something.
2. I Remember the 60s, Do You Also Remember the 60s? I’m 35 years old. For 25 years of my life, I’ve been bombarded by paeans to the life-changing effervescence of the 60s. Every time I type “the 60s,” that Buffalo Springfield song starts playing in my head. I acknowledge the importance of studying history and I also acknowledge that great writers can mine strong essays out of territory that has been covered a million times before. But also, let me assure you: these are the most formulaic of all essay submissions I receive. They too often rely on stock imagery and phrasing. They too often exalt the radicalism of the Baby Boomers, who right now are devoting their retirements to dismantling all the fundamentally good things about our country. They say things like, “Vietnam changed all of us,” in a way that suggests it’s meant to be profound. Nostalgia is poison for memoir; it has only a passing resemblance to the truth, and it glosses over all the ugliness and darkness that generate energy and tension.
3. Better As a Blog Post – Or maybe even as a tweet. About ten percent of the nonfiction submissions we receive are better categorized as “reminiscences,” not so much essays as brief forays into memory. Often a lighthearted, sweet memory of a dog the author once loved, or a car they restored one summer. There’s usually a clever observation or a nice line in there, wrapped in 600 words of window dressing. I’ve read and loved some very short essays, so this is not a rejection of flash pieces in general. A great flash piece is a monument to compression, to concise, sharp language that can often read like poetry. The pieces I’m talking about here have low word counts, yet still feel baggy. They feel like first drafts that could eventually turn into something better. Like good anecdotes to share over dinner.
4. “Courageous” But Hollow- There’s a big market for confessional essays, and I’ve both published and written pieces that fit that category. Confession and revelation are at the heart of a lot of the best nonfiction. But too often, even in essays that get widely celebrated online, I find that authors are relying on the act of revealing as the whole essay. They’re celebrated for being brave for confessing to having terrible thoughts, or to having hurt someone very badly. A great writer starts there and then builds on it. A lesser writer just keeps repeating the confession. People like to call this kind of writing “brave,” and it is, in a superficial way. But I want a piece that’s not looking for high-fives just for having admitted a bad thing. These essays would benefit from the author asking themselves, “So what?” over and over again until they come up with a good answer. Okay, you bulled someone in eighth grade – so what? Why should your reader care?
5. Man In Bar Thinks Trenchant Thoughts- Often falling into the category of DFW-lite, often written by Guy In Your MFA, often written by me circa 2005, these essays purport to be revealing some deep, meaningful truths about the world, but rarely transcend the misanthropic ranting of a pretty smart Philosophy minor. The most disappointing thing about these essays is how often their Big Ideas are facile repackaging of conventional wisdom. I love Thomas Bernhard too, so I get the appeal. But the bar to clear here is so high, because you’re asking a stranger to sit with you in a dank bar while you just pontificate and opine about things with no particular structure. I know this is a submission type that plagues many fiction editors too. You can get away with more pontificating in an essay than in a traditional story, but still, you have to give me a reason to care. And the things DFW and Bernhard had—and most other writers do not—were fucking genius brains and the ability to write some of the most complex, brilliant sentences in the world.
6. Why My Ex Was Wrong To Dump Me, I'm not Mad I'm Actually Laughing- Guys, don’t do this. Please stop doing this. Please understand that no editor in the world is interested in publishing a 6000-word essay about what a bitch your ex is, especially not if that essay is loaded with transcripts of all your texts with her. Please consider the possibility that if you’re writing (and trying to publish!) revenge essays, then you are not the protagonist of this story. It’s pitiful, and sometimes creepy, and it makes for very bad reading, and we’re never going to publish it. Why do I address this only to guys? Because in seven years as nonfiction editor, I’ve read a couple hundred of these kinds of essays, and they’ve all been written by men who are determined to let the world know that [REDACTED] from [REDACTED] blew her chance at true love because she’s too selfish or immature or stupid or whatever. About a quarter of these pieces have included interludes where the author stops to personally address the ex, in case she’s reading (and I’m sure the author eventually emails it to her too). Anger and rejection and misery are the motivators for countless works of great art; they’re also at the heart of the world’s worst writing. It’s on you to evaluate the piece objectively and determine whether your piece is petty revenge, or if it’s trying to elevate the story of your breakup to something much more complex and interesting.
I know the impulse of someone reading this list may be to immediately pick one of the items above, write a great essay that fits that category, and send it to me just to show me how wrong I am. I would probably think the same thing. And if that’s what you’re thinking, please go for it. All I want is to read great essays, so whatever you have to do to get there is fine with me.
If you are interested in submitting your essay to Barrelhouse, submissions will be open until July 15.
UPDATE: Berry Grass checks in on twitter with an egregious oversight by me.
@t_mcallister @barrelhouse All these, plus the "white person travels abroad in college & thinks their Columbus-esque cultural observations are original" piece
— Berry Grass (@theBGrass) May 16, 2017