Tag: Kate Maruyama

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Intersect: The Community of Submit 1

by Kate Maruyama

I’ve been a fan of Submit 1 since its first year when I hosted hour one and talked about strategies for submitting and dealing with rejections. As I spoke on Instagram Live, people chimed in with questions and announced when they had made a submission and we cheered as a group! It was early and I was just getting my coffee. I was thrilled by how I had just woken up and I was already in a virtual room full of supportive writers.  The Women Who Submit Community were at work that morning and throughout the day and I dipped in as other hosts shared their experiences, tips, and claps and cheers. The feeling that we were all working together toward a common goal made it a singular space.

Women Who Submit has been a huge part of my life. In the ten years since I joined, it has been a resource support, a place to keep me on task in submitting my work, and a place to ask any questions about writing, publishing, and even job opportunities. A lot of things that I’ve had published are because of attending submission parties and being cheered on as I pressed SEND. 

Last year Toni Ann Ann Johnson asked me to join the hour of Submit 1 she was hosting, along with our friend and colleague Nicole D. Sconiers. I’m always happy to learn more from Toni Ann, who leads really good discussions and is always a fabulous host. 

Flyer from the Submit 1, hour with Toni Ann Johnson, Kate Maruyama, and Nicole D. Sconiers.

What followed was a conversation about all the ways in which Toni Ann, Nicole, and I are intertwined with our work, mutual support, friendship, and careers. All three of us told stories about times we were so frustrated, we gave up. We were there for each other, coaxing each other back to work, to the submitting, to the myriad jobs that go into being a writer. It felt like it was the most “Women Who Submit moment ever” as we talked, comments rolled in from members who were submitting all over the country and we cheered them on. 

 Toni Ann and Nicole are both my first readers. We have been exchanging work for years. We met each other in different ways. Toni Ann and Nicole shared Alma Luz Villanueva as a mentor. Nicole and I met as students in our MFA workshop where I was so excited by her speculative fiction story “Here Come the Janes” that I basically started hounding her for more stories. Later, she hired me to edit her first collection: Escape from Beckyville, Tales of Race Hair and Rage. I kept on her to write and submit after that because at that time, her speculative fiction, which she described as “A Black Woman’s Twilight Zone” was rare and needed. This was 2009 and predated Black Mirror as well as Get Out. 

Toni Ann’s fingerprints are all over my three novels that came after Harrowgate. She is not only my first reader, she’s the reason my upcoming book Alterations happened at all. She inspired the idea by asking why I didn’t write about old movies since I loved them so much,  and she provided thorough notes on two drafts of the book. When my agent had given up on that book, Toni Ann didn’t and prodded me to believe in my characters and my story and to submit the book independently to small presses. There’s a “you can definitely do this” stalwart belief Toni Ann has in all of her suggestions. Even at my weakest, darkest moments, she encourages me to find that belief again. When the book, after ten years of support from Toni Ann, finally sold, she was the person I called first. 

You can read more about our mutual support in a conversation we had for The Coachella Review “You Can’t Do This Shit Alone.” Toni Ann and I have both found similar support in WWS where there is this idea that a rising tide raises all boats and we share resources, encourage each other, and think of ways that each writer in the group can improve, submit, and promote their own work. 

In an email exchange, Nicole said, “Toni Ann is not only supportive of my fiction writing but my screenwriting as well. She encouraged me to submit to the ScreenCraft script competition. I submitted my sci-fi thriller Spectacle to the 2022 ScreenCraft Sci-Fi & Fantasy competition and was named a finalist out of more than 3,000 submissions! She also provided coverage for my script Bless the Mic and shared the screenplay with a director who hired me for a writing project.”

Nicole has been a go-to for my genre short stories and for my literary novels. I know she won’t hold any punches and will be open and honest about anything I’m writing. She gave me notes on my new novella Safer (paired with Family Solstice in my new book Bleak Houses out now from Raw Dog Screaming Press) and is the queen of details. 

During our Submit 1 conversation Toni Ann had this to say, “Nicole helped me refine details and elements of (fact-checked) some of my fiction, which led me to clarify or emphasize the veracity of my details. She also made helpful (and humbling!) corrections to spelling/grammar/punctuation. We have also exchanged some of our screenwriting. I’ve read at least two of Nicole’s screenplays (which I loved!) and she’s read at least one of mine. Over the years, I’ve recommended Nicole as a writer and as a manuscript consultant to multiple friends and colleagues.” 

This was such a beautiful thing to recount for WWS members in our hour of Submit 1 with Toni Ann and, as we told these stories, more writers helped by this circle of friends tuned in, in the comments. We realized these stories tell the far reach of the WWS community. Some folks submitted their work while we were talking: it was peak Submit 1. 

During this magical hour on IG Live, I realized that without Toni Ann and Nicole, half of the wonderful things that have come my way wouldn’t have happened at all. 

All writers are out there alone, getting up our nerve to submit, but it is this kind of community, helping each other out with drafts, encouraging each other when we lose hope, and bolstering each other through tough times that makes WWS a profound group to belong to.

Toni Ann put it best when she wrote, “As you both know, this writing journey is not easy, there are good times, but when the hard times hit hard, they can be unspeakably dismal–at least for me–and I’ve been lifted in low times by each of you.”

Together we can do so much. Our upcoming Submit 1 slogan is “One community, one day, one submission at a time.” You can join our community virtually by tuning into Instagram Live on September 9 (@womenwhosubmit) or check in with this website to learn how to participate in person!   

Kate Maruyama is the author of Harrowgate (47North), Halloween Beyond: A Gentleman’s Suit (Crystal Lake Publishing), and Bleak Houses (RDS Press) and upcoming novels The Collective (Running Wild) and Alterations (Writ Large). Her short work appears in numerous journals and anthologies. She writes, teaches, cooks, and eats in Los Angeles.
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Breathe and Push: Being a Better Ally

signal image for allyship during race conversations.

By Kate Maruyama

Our spaces have changed due to the current situation, as have our concepts of rooms, events, and conversations. But as we step into Zoom sessions, chat rooms, or House Parties, and as we prepare to go out into the world again, here are some good things for us to remember as white people moving in spaces that aren’t all white.

I get where it comes from. I grew up the youngest in a white family with two older brothers, so there was always competition for attention at the dinner table. I learned that if I could be clever enough and say the thing loud enough and get my opinion out, I would win. Not win, but be seen. 

This need to talk continued as I grew up white in American classrooms. Teachers reward the answerers, those who raise their hands and say the thing all the way. By the time you get through high school, you know the grades are there for “class participation,” showing interest, registering your opinion. And through college. And into the job world; if you’re at a table, you’d best be heard if you want to be seen as a member of the team. By the time we’re adults, it’s ingrained in us. “Be assertive.” “Register your opinion” “What do you think? Say it while you have the chance.”

We’re so good at saying the thing. Being heard. Letting the powers that be know we are the smart one. We are all over social media registering our opinions daily. When something big happens in the news, there’s this urgency inside to be heard from. I’ve felt it, that same squirm in my belly that came when a topic would come up at the dinner table. Or in a meeting.

But what we missed was that in our various classrooms, colleges, and jobs, this is not what people of color have experienced or what they’ve been taught. They were silenced, ignored, brushed off daily and, over time, taught that there was no reward for speaking up; it would get you corrected, silenced, ‘splained to, or a combination of the three. If you are a white woman reading this, you’ve experienced some level of this brushoff from men. We all have. Imagine it being the relentless message in every space you occupy. Understand we’re experiencing a different operational reality from our friends of color. I’m working on paying attention to this.

Stop light image of Reading the Signals: allyship during race conversations by Danielle Coke.
Allyship series by Atlanta artist Danielle Coke @ohhappydani on twitter and instagram.

It happened again. I’m certain if you’re reading this, you’ve been in a space where this happens. The white guy got a hold of a mic. 

This space held a discussion on Latinos and the crisis in US publishing, put together by #DignidadLiteraria, a group that sprung up in response to a racist book that is being pushed by the US publishing machine. The event is covered in the Los Angeles Times here: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-02-07/dignidad-literaria-town-hall-macmillan-american-dirt

The overall thrust is that the publishing machine of the US is not only white dominated, but only promotes white writers, even when they’re telling stories of people of color. Flatiron Press’s kajillion dollar promotion of the problematic American Dirt pushed the conversation to a head.

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, a poet and activist, the founder of Women Who Submit, put together in very short time a crackerjack panel to talk about these issues, including Christopher Soto, Myriam Gurba, Romeo Guzman, Roxane Gay, and Wendy C Ortiz. All of these people have expertise in the publishing industry.

When Xochitl opened the mic up to questions after the panel, she gave a very clear reminder to the room that this space was being held for writers of color, children of immigrants, latinx writers.

And that white guy got up. He’s an agent and proceeded to ‘splain the publishing industry and statistics to this panel of experts. 

Here’s where you can chuckle and say to yourself, “I’m not that guy,” and pat yourself on the back. But my question here is, instead of letting a roomful of people politely wait for this man to say his piece that adds nothing to the conversation, to let the guy bogart the mic from a roomful of people for whom that microphone was intended, what can white people do?

I was going to holler, “not your microphone, sir” but I sat there thinking: this isn’t my event, I came here to be quiet, listen, and amplify. But how many times have the BIPOC in the room had to carry a white guy like this? 

I made up my mind to talk to the guy after the event ended. But when I got up, this agent was handing out his card to writers of color. Maybe this was a gatekeeper who saw the problem and could get writers’ books out there. I realize now I should have waited until he was not handing out a card and still had those words. Not that this guy, who had been clearly told who that microphone was for was necessarily going to learn, but I will work to do better next time.

Handling these guys takes a lot of energy, but it’s work BIPOC are tired of doing. We need to step in where we can, stop that guy from instinctively bulldozing and not listening. I ‘m working on this.

And, I’m hoping, as you’re reading this, you understand that the tickle in your belly, the squirming in your seat, your inner need to absolutely say the thing is best subdued in these spaces. When you walk into a reading or a conversation where people of color are well represented, which people of color have created, I’d urge you to appeal to the other things I hope you were taught growing up white: how to be a good guest, how to not speak until spoken to, how to be respectful of the experts onstage.

Allyship series by Atlanta artist Danielle Coke @ohhappydani on twitter and instagram.

We are products of the systems we grew up in and if you’re part of the dominant culture in this country, even if you are waking, even if you read all the things out there and feel pretty “woke” (please don’t call yourself that, you aren’t) there’s still a lot of work to do.

Stick around only white people? Put yourself only in comfortable situations? No. This does nothing but put you out of touch with the world, the country, the city you’re living in. It also makes you an active participant in a system your forebears created, and that system is not equal. 

It is your responsibility as a member of the dominant society in this country to be aware of the system you’re in, fight for justice where you can, and listen to non-white people tell us how it is for them. Because only they know.

And where you can, where you have influence, create spaces for people of color. Even if it’s only at work or in your extended family. Even if it’s only online.

And just don’t be the asshole where that space has been created.

I’m still learning, but here are some tips on how to be a better ally, for that is what you’re working on. 

  1. Pay attention to the space you’re in. Any space at all where there is a person of color, recognize and allow that person to speak. Shush your white buddy who doesn’t get it. This lack of listening can happen at dinner tables, cocktail parties, receptions and in office meetings, and in Zoom sessions. Don’t be party to it.
  1. Pay attention to the conversation you’re in. Is your opinion really going to enrich the conversation, or are you simply feeling that tickle in the belly, squirm in the seat need to be heard? Was your opinion actually asked for? If not, stay quiet. Your opinions are valuable, but they do not need to be everywhere all the time, they have their space. Save it for later.
  1. Is your sudden need to express an opinion because everyone is weighing in? Is there a dogpile going on? Can you stop said dogpile?
  1. Has the space been created for people of color only? Don’t be afraid to reach out to a friend of color to ask that question before attending. There are spaces you don’t belong. 
  1. Has the space been created for people of color to have a voice? If you are welcome there, your role is to sit, listen, and amplify on social media. Tweet that stuff out; good poetry, things said, amazing moments, tweet it with credit to the person who said it. You’re helping your white audience (if you are white you likely have a few white folks in your feed) see the conversations that are taking place. They can learn a lot from people in spaces they might not get to.
  1. Amplify books, articles, poems, short stories, essays, and art by people of color. The systems in place in so many of those worlds only push the white version. Help your fellow artists, writers, poets, journalists, friends out. Retweet, share, and get excited about anything you genuinely liked–be as loud as you can!
  1. If there’s an opportunity to step in to talk to a white person (live or on social media) when your friend of color is doing some heavy lifting. Ask that friend of color if it would be helpful for you to do so. “Can I handle this asshole for you?” You can do the explaining, references, give that person articles. Better yet, you can take the conversation to a sidebar outside this person of color’s feed. Because it’s exhausting for them. Also, THAT white guy does better when they’re in private conversation. Sometimes when they feel they’re being called out publicly, they go toxic. The object is to shut them up off your friend’s feed and out of their day.
  1. Listen and learn. You are not woke. You are learning things, but I promise, you are not woke. My family has 300 years of benefitting off a system built on slavery and land theft, grown on laws and systems put in place to benefit their own. Inequality that takes 300 years to build runs in our fiber in ways we don’t understand. Keep listening, keep learning and get involved in the community where you live.
  1. If you consider yourself a feminist, please understand that women of color are functioning under a different operational reality than you. If you’re a white woman, yes, you have experienced oppression, but again, that absolutely having to say the thing can make you unwittingly drown out voices of color around you. Be conscious of the spaces in which you are traveling and make sure you ‘re adding to the conversation, not talking over anyone.

There is work to be done, and it is not up to people of color to be the only agents of change. As Roxane Gay said in the #DiginidadLiteraria event, “It is not encumbent on writers of color to fix a problem they did not create.” 

Kate Maruyama’s novel, HARROWGATE was published by 47North. Her short work has appeared in numerous print and online journals and in several anthologies, including Women Who Submit’s own ACCOLADES. She is a member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Committee of the Horror Writers Association and teaches in the BA program at Antioch University Los Angeles and for inspiration2publication among other places. She writes, teaches, cooks, and eats in Los Angeles, where she lives with her family.

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A WWS PUBLICATION ROUND UP FOR MARCH

A laptop computer with an article titled "Submissions Made Simple" on the screen and a stack of literary journals sits on top of the laptop base, titles facing out

Congratulations to all the Women Who Submit who have had work published in March!

From “The Iridescence of Our Sins” by Ashley Perez at Lost Balloon:

The children appear from the edges. Their faces set. Their bodies are covered in iridescent powders that shimmer in hues that could only be seen in dreams. We have been gathered in the square to wait. Our kin have been gathered to watch. The children walk around us in a pack, sniffing, running towards us and back again to their circle. Worn, brown leather pouches hang around their necks, swaying with their movement.

From Lisbeth Coiman‘s “Abundance Guilt” at Nailed:

Along the wide corridors of the wholesale store, I look for the basic ingredient of my favorite dish, Pabellón Criollo. Flank steak is a piece of lean meat that once cooked can be shredded like strands of yarn. The refrigerators burst with a large variety of large meat cuts. My shopping cart bumps into others. The shoppers mutter apologies; try samples of hot tamales, Italian sausage, and Indian curry. Hips of fresh fruits and vegetables seem to smile from across the vast space. It’s almost repugnant to see so much food. Continue reading “A WWS PUBLICATION ROUND UP FOR MARCH”

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A WWS PUBLICATION ROUND UP FOR NOVEMBER

A laptop computer with an article titled "Submissions Made Simple" on the screen and a stack of literary journals sits on top of the laptop base, titles facing out

2016 has been a great year to find Women Who Submit members in publications all over the world and November was no different. Congratulations to all who were published this month!

From “As a Teen, I Saw Myself in Rory. Now I Strive to Be Like Lorelai,” by Alana Saltz at the Washington Post:

Like Rory, I was an introverted teenager who aspired to share my experiences through writing. Now I strive to be like Lorelai and like my own mother — self-sufficient, independent and resilient.

Continue reading “A WWS PUBLICATION ROUND UP FOR NOVEMBER”

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On Saying Yes: Fight the Fear

by Kate Maruyama

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Eight years ago, I had two small kids and had sunk whole-heartedly into the motherhood thing. I was working reading scripts for money, which I did at home after the kids had gone to sleep. I was writing screenplays because that’s what I always did, but otherwise I didn’t have to see people much or be out in the world. I loved my kids, and that part of my life was all consuming, exhausting, hilarious and exhilarating, but I had unwittingly cut off an entire part of myself. My brain was occupied with planning meals, organizing around toddler sleep patterns, childhood illnesses and, honestly, thoughts of when which kid had pooped last. It was easier to call myself a stay at home mom than a failed screenwriter. Somewhere along the way, I lost track of my thinking self.

But when my youngest was about to go off to kindergarten, and my screenwriting career hadn’t so much happened, I got overwhelmingly and completely depressed. This was not helped by the fact that my five year old daughter asked, “Why do Daddies work and Mommies stay home?” My own daughter, who was meant to be a third generation feminist, was making sense of the world in a way I hadn’t envisioned at all. My idea of a career had all but evaporated and the script reading work was on the wane, reducing my monetary contribution to the family considerably.

What could I possibly do next? What at all did I have to offer by way of career or even basic income? Despite my extensive experience in the film industry and in screenwriting, I learned that I couldn’t teach screenwriting without a Masters. Going to grad school in something I’d spent fifteen years working at and feeling like a failure at felt defeatist. A friend told me about Antioch’s MFA in Creative Writing program and my first knee jerk reaction was, “I can’t do grad school! I wasn’t even good at college! How could I do grad school?” Everything I thought of was met with a fearful, internal, “no.” Finally, I went down to campus for an informational meeting, and learned about Antioch’s social justice mission and its focus on creating a writing life. It felt like coming home. So after having written one pretty terrible novel on my own, I applied. I needed schooling. And I needed to start saying yes, even though I was afraid.

Only when I came home high from my first residency, a ten day whirl of writing workshops, lectures, new friendships, from using my brain again, from being completely consumed in thoughts, words and concepts, did I realize how afraid and cut off I had become over the past several years. It wasn’t something that happened all at once, when I had my kids. I certainly can’t blame them. Instead, it crept up on me. I fell out of touch with my pre-kid friends. I backed away from opportunities for reunions with people I used to work with. I became better acquainted with cable television, which grocery stores to hit and doing all of my work online so as to avoid personal contact. Early bedtimes. I was writing less. All of the goals I had set for myself in my twenties had come and gone. As a result I had simply shut down. For some reason it felt easier and more comfortable to resign myself as a failure than to risk actual failure.

But after that first residency, with my brain reawakened, my need to write rekindled in fiction, I could see that this trap into which I’d fallen had happened too easily because of fear. I felt like I’d lost a decade of forward movement to that fear, and I wasn’t going to do that ever again. Here I was at forty, finally at an age where fear was no longer an option, starting a new career all over again.

So often I had put things off with, “I can’t. I don’t think I can,” or, “I couldn’t possibly be qualified to…”

I have learned that one way to trick the brain past these fears is to sign up to do something well in advance of having to do it.

Instead of waiting for a place of comfort, where I knew I was prepared and ready, I started promising to do things before I could fully wrap my mind around actually doing them. This worked because, the way I was raised in New England, backing out of something you’ve already signed up for isn’t really an option. Signing up for something out of my reach was a bit like a dare to myself. Learning to say “yes,” before I was certain I was ready.

So, knowing I was terrified of public speaking, at the next residency in my MFA program I signed up for a “brown bag reading.” I would get up and read my writing in front of other students. I had never done this before. The week before the reading, I practiced and practiced and timed it and when the day came, my voice did a weird warbly thing, and I lost my place twice and broke into a flopsweat, but I got through it. When I finished, I resolved to sign up for another one six months later.

I was working on a novel, but had come up with some short stories along the way. The idea of having them read and judged by strange editors was terrifying. But I realized that all of the published writers in my program had actually submitted their work to journals in order to get it published. You may laugh, but that’s a leap of logic a lot of fearful writers don’t always understand. If publication is validation, and if you feel like you don’t belong because you aren’t published, you actually have to submit your work places to have it read and rejected in order for it to be published. You have to put your work out there.

No one was going to write to me and ask me for a story and my finished stories, already read by mentors and peers in my program, were not going to get into journals by osmosis. I had to put my work in front of actual editors. So I set myself up with Duotrope. The lists of journals upon journals were overwhelming until I figured out the filters, but I finally had it wired and submitted my story to one place. I believe I took a nap afterward.

It didn’t take me long to realize I was sitting around waiting for an answer on this story. One thing it’s taken me many years to learn as a writer is: Waiting is not an activity. This magazine cautioned that responses could take up to six months. When the next Saturday rolled around, I submitted my work three more places. Soon I got into the ritual of submitting. I submitted three short stories a total of 70 places before I got my first publication.

A friend asked me to contribute to an article about my work as a woman screenwriter. I felt I had no place to speak on the matter as, in my mind, I had failed in that endeavor, but I said yes. I sat down and wrote her something. It turned out I had a lot to say.

Another friend asked me to speak at her high school about the glass ceiling for women in the working world. It was a subject we had talked about in passing. I felt I had no place to speak out on such a subject, but said, yes. Over the course of the next few months, I worked up a lecture and slideshow that followed my mom’s work as a reporter in the fifties and tracked all the way up through my work in Hollywood. The talk was pretty good and I learned a great deal in putting it together. The students were fantastic and responsive, and I realized that saying yes before I was ready was a fantastic challenge and pushed me out of my comfort zone.

Saying yes WHILE afraid is now my modus operandi.

Will you write a genre story to submit to this anthology on a specific subject? Help! I can’t come up with a story on command, are you kidding?? Yes. Even though it wasn’t included in the anthology it was requested for, had I not said yes, the story would not have been written and placed into a different anthology of which I’m quite proud. Will you be on a panel at a writers conference with people who know so much more than you about a subject? Yes. Turned out I had useful information on submitting work as practical and useful for the writers at the conference as the words of the more experienced New Yorker published writers I was sitting with and felt less worthy than. Can you submit a Christmas-related horror story for our anthology? Are you out of your mind? How can I come up with a themed story in a month? Yes. Another story that wouldn’t have happened in a collection that seems to be doing well for itself.

I was asked to come up with the book coaching program for inspiration2publication.com through my alma mater. Terrified and feeling underqualified, I ignored my inner “No” and said yes, and it turned out I was exactly the right person for the job. My years of experience giving screenwriters notes in the film industry complete with the work I’d done with students and fellow writers made me ideal. While I squinted my eyes shut and repeated, I belong at this table, I belong at this table, I belong at this table, I not only put the fear behind me but grew the job into something I love to do and believe in.

Pushing past that resistance is essential.

OLLI talks, Cal State Fullerton, runs inspirational talks for retirees. They asked if I would do a 90 minute talk about writing in their 150 person auditorium. I asked if I could have the audience do writing exercises. I am fully comfortable teaching a writing class for 90 mins. They said no, it would be lecture format. Eeek! But Yes. I’m putting together information and a slideshow I’m guessing will teach me as much as my audience. I’m terrified, but I’ll let you know how it goes.

So in this New Year, as we go forward ask yourself: What are you afraid of? What have you turned down doing so often before? It could be simple as going out with fellow writers. Maybe speaking publicly is your jam but getting your work out there is your challenge. Maybe you need to ask to be in an anthology. Maybe you’ve submitted a ton of work but are terrified of hosting something. Host a reading! Put together a bunch of people for an event! Apply for a far away writers’ retreat. Do the thing that scares you. Better yet, write about the thing that scares you to write about. Because the truth is, you’re only on this planet for one ride, and hanging in your comfort zone binge watching Netflix is definitely a nice way to pass the time, but it’s much nicer to do after you’ve done the one thing you thought you couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. This is the year of pushing forward and doing the scary thing. This is the year of you as a writer. Carpe Annum.

8c2efcb6-bf5d-43cd-9b5a-6e7f3973c8b6Kate Maruyama‘s novel Harrowgate was published by 47North. Her short work has appeared in Arcadia, Stoneboat and Controlled Burn and is now featured in two new anthologies, Phantasma: Stories and Winter Horror Tales as well as on The Rumpus, Salon and The Citron Review among other journals. She teaches at Antioch University Los Angeles in the BA and MFA Programs and for inspiration2publication.com as well as for Writing Workshops Los Angeles. She writes, teaches, cooks and eats in Los Angeles where she lives with her family.