Women Who Submit

February 27, 2023March 16, 2023

Intersect: 5 Common Questions and Answers at WWS Submission Parties

By Rebecca Gomez Farrell

At the end of 2022, I stepped down from leading the long-running Bay Area chapter of Women Who Submit (WWS). Over the five years that I organized the chapter, I noticed that the same questions came up time and time again. Our answers to those questions illustrate what makes WWS submission parties so encouraging and productive. The positive reinforcement they provide turns the drudgery of the submission process into inspiration.

When we meet, our members ring a call bell whenever they hit “send” on a submission and everyone bursts into cheers. Doing so fulfills an important purpose by providing an easy way to inject excitement into the room. You might even call it Pavlovian: endorphins surge once the bell rings, bringing affirmation with them and a smile on all the faces as we celebrate the person who submitted a manuscript or query, or fellowship application. Everyone else is energized to earn their turn to ring the bell by submitting again. It’s so simple, yet such a beautiful way to support each other.

Like ringing the bell, WWS members encourage each other through useful and uplifting answers to those common questions that crop up at each submission party. Through reframing the submission process as part of a writer’s work, rather than something to dread, each click of a “submit” button becomes something that validates, rather than dulls, our creative dreams.

Here are the common questions and answers I’ve encountered at Bay Area chapter submission parties over the years.

1. My short story doesn’t quite fit this magazine’s guidelines. I shouldn’t send it, right?

Yes, you should! It’s one thing to submit a novel-length work to a submission call for 5,000 words (don’t do that), but if a market lists a flash fiction limit of 1,500 words and you’re at 1,610? Send that manuscript. Or maybe an anthology’s theme is surrealism, and your piece feels closer to abstract and you’re not sure it qualifies. The worst an editor can do is reject it, and the best? Well, you may just make it into one of your top markets! All because you had a slightly different understanding of those styles than the editor did. It’s their job to decide what submissions fit their call, and it’s your job to give them your piece to consider.

2. Does anyone know what markets might take a funny novella about cello-playing vampires?

Many of our Bay Area chapter members are seasoned writers and quite willing to share their experiences with newer ones. They also dabble in multiple forms, from speculative fiction to personal essays to haiku memoirs. Part of the value of our submission parties is learning that we are each other’s greatest resources! Nearly every time this question is asked, another writer in attendance will have a suggestion. And it’s almost assured that another member will then also submit something to that market they just learned about. Everybody benefits from asking questions and taking the leap.

3. I can’t take another rejection. How do you deal?

By celebrating them! Or at least contextualizing them. Inspired by another member’s suggestion, I offered fifty-rejections stamp cards to our members, redeemable for a free beverage on me once those cards were filled. That’s a fun, tangible motivation, but the real one is this: rolling with rejection is part of a writer’s work, or at least the work of a writer who wants to be published.

Creative pursuits are emotional minefields, for sure, but if you’ve decided you want your masterpiece to appear in the pages of an esteemed publication? You have to keep sending it out. Making the publication happen is a numbers game. If the piece hasn’t been accepted yet, then you haven’t pulled the right number yet. What’s that number? The right editor reads your piece for the right publication on the right day when they are in the right mood. All that has to come together for an acceptance to come in, and none of it is controllable. So control what you can: the quality of your writing and placing it in that editor’s hands in the first place by submitting a rejected manuscript out yet again.

If you think of rejection as part of a writer’s work, it becomes routine, just another task to be managed. Another rejection? Another opportunity to send that manuscript out into the world. Then…Ding! Ding! Ding! Ring that bell! You’re doing the work of a writer. And you totally deserve that extra scoop of double-chip mint, too.

4. Is it okay if I don’t submit anything and just work on this poem?

Absolutely. Yes, WWS submission parties run on peer pressure to submit our pieces. When eyes light up, applause breaks out, and another member gets their deserved praise, it’s infectious! But sometimes, you don’t have the emotional reserves to keep hitting those “send” buttons. Sometimes, you need to refill your well first, and allowing yourself to do that is also the work of a writer. Sometimes you just want to bask in the presence of other women taking those leaps and use it as motivation to get that poem into shape. Even if you’re not taking part in the submission process right now, you’re taking part in the creation of that supportive atmosphere at the party. Maybe next time will be the one when you hit the send button and finally ring that bell.

5. Yes, you did it! You submitted! Now, where will I read that essay once your acceptance comes in?

I admit it, I’m the one asking this question whenever someone rings the bell. Sure, we need to harden our exteriors to deal with all the noes that writers accrue. But it’s okay to let ourselves dream of yesses, too. Ringing that bell generates happy feelings, and so does allowing ourselves that glimmer of possibility, welcoming the potential that this time this piece is going to win the numbers game. I’ve seen it happen for so many chapter members over the years, with a lengthy list of credits to their names. I’ve had at least twenty publications of pieces I’ve sent out during a submission party. If we control what we can—the quality of our writing and our willingness to risk acceptance—sometimes the magic comes together in just the right way and our number is pulled.

Making the choice to step down from the Bay Area WWS chapter was hard. But I’ve been neglecting a different part of the work of a writer in recent years: the writing itself. With the pandemic and a new day job, and the life changes that came with both, I stopped prioritizing writing new fiction. So I need to reclaim that writing time first before I’ll have submissions to send out again.

I know that when those new pieces are ready, my local chapter of Women Who Submit will be too, ready to welcome me back and cheer me on as I ring that bell.

Rebecca Gomez Farrell’s Wings Rising epic fantasy duology, Wings Unseen and Wings Unfurled, is published by Meerkat Press. Her short works have appeared over 30 times in magazines, websites, and anthologies such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, It Calls From the Sky, PULP Literature, and A Quiet Afternoon 1 & 2. Website: RebeccaGomezFarrell.com. Social Media: @theGourmez.

February 20, 2023March 16, 2023

Intersect: Meet Me Where We Intersect

“Who’s got next?” Noriko Nakada asked in her last post as the blog managing editor. The week after I read it, I ran into her at a party. With a glimmer in her eye, she asked me, “You thinking about applying?”

“Kind of,” I said with my shoulders up to my ears telegraphing doubt.

” You should.”

I have written several times for the WWS blog series. Each experience was gentle, kind, and nurturing. The idea of holding space for other writers’ work, accepting submissions, soliciting voices I admire, and running a series close to my heart were too tempting to forgo.

So I applied. And…

I got next, but to be honest, I am more of an artist than a jock, but I will gladly take the court from the talented and compassionate Noriko Nakada and turn it into a found object sculpture of a new series called Intersect. Let’s see where we meet.

Perhaps we have already met, online through the WWS Open Mic (I hosted from April 2020-February 2023), or other areas I stepped in to support or take part in WWS programming, or you may not know me at all. If that is the case, I’m Thea. Like many members, I was financially and emotionally impacted by the pandemic. The WWS weekly online meetings in 2020 assisted me in becoming more resilient and adventurous in writing, submitting, and putting myself out there.

WWS also provided me with community and a culture of support. Something I desperately needed when the shutdown impacted me professionally, and I had to adapt and change. The business I spent over a decade building was not sustainable. Since I joined WWS in 2019, I saw my writing practice flourish and my publication numbers increase exponentially. With my newly found confidence in writing, I applied and accepted a contract to write ESL readers (the first time I was paid for my fiction). After writing 20, I realized the company, and I were not a good fit. I then went back to technical writing to supplement my lost income from my business and, of course, continued my literary writing to feed my soul.

Thanks to the WWS community, I have been able to access resources and knowledge bases that I never knew existed. Including scholarships, financial support, and other opportunities. As someone who wrote solitary for most of their adult life, I felt blocked from many opportunities. Primarily, because of lack of access, connections, and information. I didn’t have resources for letters of recommendation for residencies or fellowships. I wasn’t familiar with how to apply for personal grants. The list goes on. In my short time with WWS I learned much, and I am excited and honored to be named the WWS Blog Managing Editor for a paying market and help provide further information, context, and experience through your words to our members and the literary community at large.

The Road to Joy and Advocacy

February 8th, 2023 I found myself in one of the many places that WWS, and the literary and arts communities intersect. Cody Sisco invited me to read in person along with WWS board member Luivette Resto, WWS members Lisbeth Coiman, Hazel Knight Wittman, Carla Sameth, Flint, Traci Kato-Kiriyama and eleven other writers and poets at the WeHo Reads: Mindful Journeys Toward Better Futures event. It was held at the West Hollywood Public Library and included a tour of a photo exhibition led by West Hollywood Arts Coordinator Mike Che. WeHo Reads is a literary series presented by the City of West Hollywood, produced by Bookswell and supported by UCLA Extension Writers’ Program with media partnerships with Bookshop.org, Book Soup and Los Angeles Review of Books. Find out more about WeHo Reads here and how it intersects to resilience, justice, legacy, motherhood and more.

The Beginning

Women Who Submit was born through the lens of intersectionality in the literary landscape with a vision to bring parity to women and nonbinary writers in publishing who experienced rejection, limited access to opportunities, limited representation, bias, and barriers due to gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability. The goal of the organization is to submit as much as much possible as a community to gain parity and visibility. Find out more about the beginnings of WWS here.

The Intersection

Let’s sculpt something beautiful together in my year as blog managing editor. In this series, I invite you to submit work regarding where we intersect. I’m looking for articles/essays about (but I am open to other topics as well):

Where identity or community overlap in the literary landscape

The merger of creative communities

Barriers or removal of them regarding access and opportunity

Difficulties or adaptations of being a creative in the sandwich generation

Experiences and/or applying for residencies, retreats, grants, or scholarships

Rejecting the scarcity model in publishing

Experience in shared leadership and mentorship

What inclusion and accessibility look like to you

Resilience as a human with lived experience

Your role as a literary citizen or community activist and how it intersects

On top of personal essays and articles, I am also looking for book reviews of marginalized and underrepresented voices.

The Facts
I look forward to reading your words and serving as a resource to this amazing community. Intersect will publish bi-monthly on the first and third Monday of the month. Familiarize yourself with the WWS Core Values prior to submitting, only work that adheres to them will be accepted.

Thea Pueschel is a nonbinary, neurodivergent, emerging writer and artist, the managing blog editor for Women Who Submit, a facilitator for Shut Up & Write, a California Arts Council Panelist 2022, and a Dorland Arts Colony Resident. Thea’s first solo mixed media exhibition “44: not dead, just invisible” ran at The Center of Orange from September 2021-December 2021. Thea has been published in Short Edítion, and Perhappened, among others.

January 30, 2023

January 2023 Publication Roundup

It’s hard to believe how quickly the first month of 2023 has flown by. While many of us are still trying to comprehend that we’re officially one month in to the new year, these Women Who Submit members have already been out there publishing their work in amazing places.

The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during the month of January. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.

Please join me in celebrating our members who published in January!

January 12, 2023January 12, 2023

On Bearing Witness

a book review of Melissa Chadburn’s A Tiny Upward Shove

By Hazel Kight Witham

The title of Melissa Chadburn’s debut novel comes from a flashback in which young Marina, the main character, attempts to rescue a bird stuck in the drain valve of a water heater. Her mother, Mutya, comes along, in a hurry to get to the beach with her boyfriend. She needs Marina to abandon the girl’s vital mission, but Marina is too worried about the bird to leave it. Mutya, not to be slowed by some doomed bird’s plight, first tries to pull it out, but cannot get a good grip, and instead shoves upward, breaking its wing, and not so much freeing it as mortally wounding it. The bird flaps in pained circles before falling still. Marina is crushed, but Mutya brushes it off as “helping a hurt thing” along with a “tiny upward shove.”

A copy of the colorful hardback cover of A Tiny Upward Shove by Melissa Chadburn next to a candle and a plant.

Through its many twists and turns, this novel jolts the reader in a manner similar to Mutya’s no-bullshit approach to bird-rescue. The novel’s vivid, disorienting, furious opening paragraph introduces us to the singular voice of an Aswang—a protective, vengeful spirit from Filipino folklore— who takes us from the world of the living into another realm to bring justice for Marina’s murder. This omniscient Aswang fills in Marina’s battered backstory, introduces several supporting characters, and then hopscotches through the six previous generations of the Salles family the spirit inhabited. The Aswang also delves into the neglected childhood of the murderer: the real-life Willie Pickton, a man who killed 49 vulnerable women—or more—on his pig farm in Vancouver, British Colombia. These characters’ fates are intertwined and offer wrenching views at the damage we do to each other, particularly to children, when we do not pay attention, when we are too consumed with our own busy lives to stop for the fragile birds.

Chadburn starts the novel with Marina dead but renders her vividly alive through the whole of the book: as a child with her lola and mother, as a smart girl in a new school and a new city, trying to care for and contain her restless, reckless college student mother, and later, as a girl navigating the wilds of the foster care system, with all its lonely rituals and rhythms. Chadburn peppers in Tagalog terms for some of the most explicit words, deftly offering context, but then moving forward, trusting the reader to remember them. The Aswang brings us into the most pivotal moments—scenes of hideous cruelty and carelessness that follow Marina into places she never should have gone, places where her mother and others do not protect her. Eventually we meet Alex at a foster care campus, who brings warmth into Marina’s life, but who also carries some of the worst trauma children endure.

A Tiny Upward Shove reveals the vital work fiction can do to expose corrupted systems and spotlight abuse in a way that is a call to action for the reader. To do so in this case required a depth of knowledge on the part of the author, and the courage to mosaic lived experience and careful research into a propulsive story, rendering something new and transformative. In Chadburn’s case with A Tiny Upward Shove, it required delving into the brokenness of our foster care systems and researching the horror of Willie Pickton, his victims, and, even in the midst of so much wreckage, finding a way to have curiosity and compassion enough to explore what led Willie to such violence.

Chadburn’s use of the Aswang narrator, Tagalog words and phrases, and her extensive research renders a world of wrenching stories so real that they become a part of us and force us to look at the awful when we so often choose comfort by averting our gaze.

For readers who seek escape, a splash in the shallows of a beach read, a bird easily freed from entanglement, this may not be the book for you right now. But for those able to trust an author as skilled, caring, and badass as Chadburn to take us into the deepest woods, to bear witness to callous sexual violence, remorseless slaughter, and crushing systems, but then lead us back out again, is a way of honoring the women at the heart of this story, as well as their real-life counterparts. Chadburn, righteous Aswang writer, memorializes women unable to share their stories and urges us to take more care in this world of beauty and devastation.

As a Women Who Submit board member, Chadburn continues to support this network in submitting writing to agents, journals, contests, and presses. In 2020, Chadburn offered the WWS community a workshop on literary citizenship—modeling ways writers can support authors with reviews, and nudging us to find ways to uplift and nurture each other’s literary pursuits in the midst of deeply challenging times.

Chadburn’s debut novel asks readers and artists: where do we put our money, our time, our creative efforts to make change, to spotlight injustice, to bear witness? In what ways can we—especially those of us with the privilege to have avoided systems like the ones Chadburn explores—channel our energies for good? The courage it takes to stay with Chadburn’s narrator is just one small step toward greater courage in honoring and protecting women’s lives and caring for those on the margins and in the shadows. Melissa Chadburn’s A Tiny Upward Shove is a powerful catalyst for holding accountable the systems designed to support our most vulnerable.

Hazel Kight Witham is a mother, teacher, slam poetry coach, and writer who was made in Los Angeles and still calls it home. She has published work in The Sun, Bellevue Literary Review, Integrated Schools, Mutha Magazine, Cultural Weekly, Rising Phoenix Review and other journals. She is a proud public school teacher in LAUSD and was a 2020 finalist for California Teacher of the Year. She is a member of Women Who Submit, and gathering with them throughout the high seas of pandemic kept her afloat as a writer. Find her work here: www.hazelkightwitham.com.

January 4, 2023January 4, 2023

Breathe and Push: Who’s Got Next?

By Noriko Nakada

It was December in 2016. In the warmth and light of Avenue 50 Studios in Highland Park, I attended my first, in-person Women Who Submit workshop. Our presenter, Sara Novik, attended via video conference to speak with us about writing and activism post-election. On that cold LA morning in those waning days of the Obama presidency, I hoped the nightmare of a Trump presidency wouldn’t materialize, that the election had been a bad dream from which I might startle awake. But as I listened to Sara and the work she engaged in as a refugee and deaf writer, I resisted closing my eyes and falling asleep to the reality of our country’s future. I galvanized myself for the fight ahead.

Next in blue block letters and outlined in green.

After Sara’s presentation, I participated in a WWS orientation, and then I got started submitting. All around that room, women were writing, sharing stories, submitting work and cheering one another on in the process. We were setting goals and pushing back against a world that was poised to work ever harder against us. As a new WWS member, I set goals for my creative work and this organization helped me submit that work for publication. Since then, I have averaged over 50 submissions a year. I have prioritized my creative work by applying for and attending writing residencies, and I’ve leaned into literary citizenship with this community.

A couple of years later, I volunteered to start a column for the WWS blog, and Breathe and Push was born. Inspired by Civil Rights attorney Valarie Kaur’s words: “What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb? What if our America is not dead, but a country that is waiting to be born? What if the story of America is one long labor? […] Because if we don’t push we will die, and if we don’t push our nation will die. So tonight we will breathe, tomorrow, we will labor.”

This metaphor helped me through several challenging years and this column helped many of us breathe out essays pushing against gun violence, family separation, and state-sponsored police violence. We reminded ourselves that in the midst of busy lives, our creative work could push the world toward justice.

When I joined WWS’s leadership team in 2019, I took on management of the blog and a year later, we moved almost exclusively to virtual spaces. Throughout the pandemic we navigated a shifting and uncertain world by continuing to write essays, poems, stories and books. These past few months, we were able to celebrate so many members’ hard work with in-person book launches and readings, while continuing to acknowledge both publications, and passes. I am thankful to WWS for continuing to clap and cheer along the way.

This space will continue to allow us to connect in our increasingly fragmented world, to press against the cracks and let the light come in through so much darkness. The words that I have had on repeat during much of the past few years have been those of Colson Whitehead from his acceptance speech during the 2016 National Book Awards ceremony: “be kind to everybody, make art, and fight the power.” My work with WWS has helped me do this. But in 2023 I will be stepping down as the Women Who Submit blog manager. This means we are looking for someone to help curate this space and embrace this opportunity. You will have lots of support and a quarterly stipend, so if you are tempted, considering, wondering if this might be for you, please send an email to womensubmit@gmail.com.

In pickup basketball, those waiting and watching the game from the sidelines let everyone know if they want to play the next game. It can be scary, but it’s court etiquette, and it works to call out, “I got next.” So, here I am asking: who’s got next?

Noriko Nakada is a multi-racial Asian American who creates fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art to capture the stories she has been told not to talk about. She is the author of the Through Eyes Like Mine memoir series. Excerpts, essays, and poetry have been published in Hippocampus, Catapult, Linden Ave, and elsewhere.

December 31, 2022January 11, 2023

December Publication Roundup

The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during the month of December. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.

Please join me in celebrating our members who published in December!

December 1, 2022December 2, 2022

November 2022 Publication Roundup

The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during the month of November. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.

Please join me in celebrating our members who published in November!

October 31, 2022October 30, 2022

October 2022 Publication Roundup

The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during the month of October. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.

Please join me in celebrating our members who published in October!

September 30, 2022September 29, 2022

September 2022 Publication Roundup

I spent September doing a residency at Ragdale in Illinois, where I was lucky to have a great cohort that included two wonderful WWS members, Lauren Eggert-Crowe and Siel Ju. Never have I been more grateful to enjoy such good company and to have such a big chunk of time to contemplate and to write.

Submitting, though, has escaped me, which makes me even more in awe of those of you who participated in WWS’s Submit 1 submission event on September 10th. Congratulations to all who participated and to those who have already heard from their publication venues of choice, whatever the response. Sending out our work into the world is an act of bravery deserving of recognition.

Meanwhile, the WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during the month of September. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available) or a blurb (if available) if the publication is a book, along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.

Please join me in celebrating our members who published in September!

September 20, 2022September 21, 2022

Breathe and Push: Hampshire Gates and Mentor Meanderings

by Thea Pueschel

There are gates that some of us are born outside of. We may try to scale the barbed fence, but without guidance, we only wind up nicked and wounded. When I grew up in Orcutt, California, an unincorporated city in northern Santa Barbara County in the 80s and 90s, these barbed wired fences were all around, holding livestock and rusted tractors.

Faded No Trespassing black signs hung on posts. Sometimes a gate would be left open and the temptation to pass would arise. However, uninvited, you never knew what was on that land. Might be a shotgun or a bull. That was what my mother, an Angeleno, told us, and being filled with trepidation, I listened.

I grew up the third of four daughters, in a family of blue-collar workers. Farmers on one side and house painters on the other. Hard working; dirt, or paint under the fingernails.

image of Hampshire Gate swung open to a grassy, tree-lined field — Sebastian Ballard, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

When I was 13, I went to work with my dad to paint a plant nursery. The Hampshire Gate was unlocked, and we drove up the easement. My dad pulled over to the soft sand shoulder and said the words I hoped to hear. “Would you like to drive?”

I slid out of the passenger seat and into the driver’s side of his white Chevy Luv truck. Barely able to reach the pedals, I pressed the clutch in hard and found first. He smiled. I pulled back onto the dirt road. I went into second. Pride filled my heart as it confirmed—I was indeed my father’s son.

The road was bumpy; we pulled up near the grower station. A kid and a dog played ball in the middle of the dirt road. There was a manure pile on the other.

Not knowing what to do, I forgot about the brake and swerved and hit the manure pile at full speed—15 miles an hour. The truck lodged two feet deep into the pile. My dad shook his head. “What were you thinking, Pueschel?”

“Not to hit the kid,” I said through the ache of my misguided intuition.

“You didn’t think about hitting the brake?” He slid out of the passenger side to dug us out leaving me alone in the driver’s seat for the first time. I had dreamt about sitting there alone since age eight, when he first allowed me to sit on his lap and steer. It was also the last until Driver’s Ed at fifteen.

The reality is my father could have told me to hit the brake and I would have obeyed, but he opted to let me figure it out myself. A moment of direct guidance wasn’t present. Along with work dirt, there was a constant reinforcement of rugged individualism. He was there, but simultaneously, I was alone.

Craft Gates

I thought writing was solitary. I saw the fence, but I couldn’t recognize the gate or see how to get to the other side. They did not leave it open like the nursery. My literary voice was unfamiliar compared to those I saw in the literary canon, and I had the rejections to prove it.

Growing up androgenous and with ADHD left me on the other side of gates my entire childhood and much of my adult life. Like a closed Hampshire Gate, I could see on the other side of things, but crossing without permission, I never knew what I was heading into. I would be bit by barbs when trying to break into community with being “too masculine” by my female family members and girls from my congregation or being called too stupid or immature by teachers without emotional intelligence or proper professional boundaries. It gifted me curiosity and alternative perspectives. In workshops, folks have pointed out that I have a lot of different POVs. That’s the thing about being able to see through the Hampshire Gate. All you can do is observe what’s going on inside of them, and when your brain is wired differently, it alters how things are seen and what stories want to be told.

Gate Opening

A screenwriting agent approached me when I was in film school. He had fallen in love with my film festival long-listed script and expressed interest in representing me. I did as I did not do with the manure pile. I pumped the brakes. I didn’t have guidance and didn’t know what would be on the other side of representation. The possibility of success seemed as daunting as a bull, particularly because my screenwriting instructor had stated how flawed that same script was and how I should stick to directing because it was obvious I was more passionate about that. It was the shotgun that scared me off from professionally pursuing screenwriting.

I was first published in elementary school as the winner of a young writer’s award. Later, as a young filmmaker, I published film reviews under a pseudonym on the web, which led me once being on a panel with F. X. Feeney debating from the feminist perspective to a full theater. They had let me in the gate a few times, but without direction, I didn’t know how far I could wander up sans permission.

Twenty years later, I remained solitary. I wrote a lot, finished little, and published primarily in the Wellness space until three years ago. I would occasionally venture out and submit a poem or CNF piece. My unhelpful screenwriting professor instilled doubt in me. I shut down sharing fiction and screenplays. The rejections I received from the few times a year I submitted poetry or CNF were verification: I was unwelcome in the literary and creative writing space. That changed three years ago when I found WWS, a community eager to support and lift. A community based on unity versus competition.

A workshop curated by a WWS member through a local university with another WWS member as facilitator was where I found my confidence to share my fictional creations once again. It was a prompted one-off. I read my work. At the end, when we were in conversation, the instructor said to me, “You’re a fiction writer.” I self-deprecated. She refused to let me do so.

This was a gate opened wide for me. Someone saw me on the other side and encouraged me to cross into the literary landscape. Then the pandemic hit. My business was impacted and decimated, and all I had was writing. My work went from primarily CNF to fiction: the type of story I could control.

Mentor Meanderings

I ditched the mythos of rugged individualism in creative writing as I became a fully vested member of the WWS community with engaged literary citizenship. A collective is much stronger than a solo writer. I found writing partners and generous guidance from members.

This experience led me to think that I had evolved beyond interactions with men who weren’t particularly good at guidance, who closed gates I had enough skill to walk through, but too much trepidation to move without permission. I thought I had gotten over this trend until I enrolled in a mentorship with a male editor I held in esteem.

I thought, here is a gate I can access, and it was open. I was a courageous writer and had thirty-plus pieces published in the last two years, twenty-six of them fiction, a few craft essays, some blogs for Women Who Submit, and a few CNF essays. I had been paid for twenty-five of them, for twenty-two I was paid handsomely. I had tested my mettle and proved to myself that they intended the open gate for me.

New post lockdown confidence and a lot of recent writing credits under my belt, I was sure this well respected and connected editor would be the mentor to guide me further into my success. Perhaps, one day indirectly it will have an impact, but in the now, the scabs from the barbs are healing.

The mentor had great credits, is well respected, and gave great craft talks. I went to a few of his drop-in workshops, and I had confidence in his ability to guide me. My interactions to this point were so positive, I recommended his workshops to others. Our first meeting went fine. We set up the parameters of what our one-on-one work would look like. I was hopeful.

When I received notes from him, I was extremely disappointed. He wasn’t cruel, but it was clear he did not get my work. Looking through the notes there was some useful feedback, but when we met it was clear, he either wasn’t the reader for me or he wasn’t reading the work fully (our last meeting he rescheduled, then the day of sent me a note asking if we could meet later so he could finish my packet). Some of his notes asked questions, that if he had read the text fully, he would have seen I answered those questions. I had others read the same works and verify that there were clear connections.

He seemed to be stuck in his world view, or maybe he was not into my writing. In one piece, I wrote there was a reference to feeling eyes undress the character to which he said “eyes don’t do that.” I argued, “It may be cliché, but eyes definitely undress people. Folks who live in perceived female form have had many an experience of eyes leaving them feeling attacked.” He disagreed because it wasn’t something he had experienced. In his worldview, eyes didn’t do that. I conceded with “what you are telling me is that it isn’t working, so it’s not working.”

The feedback was starkly different from that of other writers/editors I have workshopped with. As a neurodivergent writer, my work is meta. It’s part of who I am and it’s not something I can stop. My perspective watches patterns, focuses on the psychosocial aspect of human development, and often has multiple layers. Patterns emerge, not quite to the Beautiful Mind level, but they seem obvious to me.

The following meetings he kept bringing up that I was a genre writer, something I had never been called before. Genre writers do something far more difficult than I could ever do. They build complex worlds based on formulas. My brain rejects that kind of structure.

I think what he was meaning is I use accessible language, which I do, but my work is more complex than the words he read, it just didn’t work with his taste. After our third meeting and him repeating genre about 10x, I told him I had never been called a genre writer before, ever. He attempted to assuage my frustration and stated he didn’t mean it as an insult. In most literary spaces I find when people say someone is a “genre writer” it’s not generally a compliment. It is a closed gate.

I would be remiss if I said I didn’t feel destroyed after our meetings. Once, I cried in frustration for four hours. The solace was that WWS member and mentor Colette Sartor prepared me for this. She said, “You are an experimental writer. A lot of literary editors will not get it. That’s okay, you just have to submit to the places that will.”

The editor said I needed to be less metaphorical overall. In another piece, he said I was too universal. What this told me is that we were not a good match. A few weeks toward the end of our program together on Twitter, he said that if he could write like anyone, it would be Elizabeth Strout. Had I known that, I would have known we were not an ideal pairing. Elizabeth Strout is a gifted writer that writes MFA style prose, but it isn’t my style of writing or preferred reading. My writing is New California and Strout’s is New England literature. Mine is experimental; it is odd; it is as unique as my neurology.

The editor kept saying that I like to tackle different and difficult perspectives. I do not think he realized that this is the way my brain works. It’s not about liking to write a particular way, it’s my authentic voice. I choose accessible language most times because I find arbitrary barriers nonsensical, but the perspective isn’t forced, it just is. Trying to fit into neurotypical forms can make my brain feel broken and forced.

Friends, mentors, and colleagues all said the same thing: that he was a gatekeeper but not my own. My interaction with him triggered the same feelings I had going through elementary school with teachers that did not understand children who think and see the world differently. When all was done, I was able to detach from the feeling of being worthless.

Now, I take the wheel, knowing I am the driver of my writer’s voice. I do not need permission to travel this road, the words are always with me. I zip over the literary terrain in the vehicle of my imagination and I am still learning when to hit the brakes. Sometimes I find myself lodged in a mountain of manure. I dig myself out with the support of a community. I learn, I adapt, and I course correct to find another gate to access. Thankfully, I am a member of a community that opens gates and provides kindheartedness along with useful guidance and direction.

Thea Pueschel is a nonbinary emerging writer and artist, a member of Women Who Submit, a facilitator for Shut Up & Write, a California Arts Council Panelist 2022, and a Dorland Arts Colony Resident. Thea’s first solo mixed media exhibition “44: not dead, just invisible” ran at The Center of Orange from September 2021-December 2021. Thea has been published in Short Edítion, and Perhappened, among others.