Sunday recs

Published on by Sara Norja Category: linkage, poetry, short stories

I probably should’ve spent this evening recovering from a busy three-day medieval studies conference and a day of active exploring. Instead, I submitted poetry to quite a few places. Not very restful, but useful – I’ve been lax with submitting poetry, or anything really, the past month.

*

My recs for tonight:

Myrrha by Mari Ness (in Through the Gate): This poem made me feel tight-throated and aching. It’s based on a fairytale that I’ve written a novelette about (currently on submission), and so it somehow hit me extra hard. The rest of the issue is wonderful too.

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu (in Fantasy & Science Fiction): This is from a few years ago but I just read it a few days ago. So good, in an aching way. I love fiction about family and the challenges of immigration, and this story really delivers.

Arm’s Length by Rosemary Badcoe (in the March issue of Snakeskin that I had a poem in too): Beautiful vision of the end of the world, with an ending that touched me with its poignance.

Sunday recs: Fairytales

Published on by Sara Norja Category: linkage, short stories

Three fairytale-tinged recs for you tonight.

First, two tales from Daily Science Fiction, new takes on traditional tales, from points of view forgotten in the originals:

Beans and Lies by Mari Ness: an incisive super-short piece with a proper punch at the end.

Toadwords by Nathaniel Lee: a tale that really made me think about the consequences of words turning into slimy creatures or jewels.

Finally, a story that draws from many fairytales:

Hunting Monsters by S.L. Huang (in The Book Smugglers Publishing): a beautiful, epic tale with relationships between women as its focus.

Tweet tweet: @suchwanderings

Published on by Sara Norja Category: announcement, personal babble

Aaand a wee announcement: I am finally on Twitter now as suchwanderings.

I’ve procrastinated over getting a Twitter account for well over a year because I’ve been afraid it’ll swallow up all my time… but the writing conversations over there are so interesting, and it seems like a great way to keep up with all that. I’m going to have to be strict about how much time I spend there. Anyway, 2am last night I was just like “OK LET’S DO THIS” because clearly past midnight is the best time to start figuring out a new social media platform! I am currently very confused by the format and etiquette and everything, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually.

Which is to say, follow me if you wish but expect a lot of beginner-level “I am so confuse” action!

Spec poetry article at Bookslut

Published on by Sara Norja Category: flailing, linkage, poetry

Bookslut has an article on speculative poetry by Sessily Watt, featuring a review of Stone Telling 11. (The existence of this piece was kindly pointed out to me by Carrie Naughton. Thanks, Carrie!)

I was pretty much over the moon when I saw that the article includes a discussion of my poem “Kuura (extract from a Finnish-English dictionary)”. This is the first time someone has analysed my stuff in such depth. I feel so humbled and excited by this!

From the article:

The poem gains a different reading from being placed within a magazine of speculative poetry, in which the unreal can be real. Just as the title invokes cultural crossings and dual-interpretations, the movement between Finnish and English, the speculative allows the descriptions to be both metaphor and real at once.

Literary analysis. ABOUT MY POEM. I squeed so hard when I saw this, it was a bit embarrassing but luckily it was at 2am and I was home alone. 😀

The article is a great perspective into speculative poetry in general, too: Sessily Watt, disillusioned by fiction, stumbled into the world of spec poetry and discovered she liked it. There’s also a good discussion of Ruth Jenkins’ awesome hyperlink poem Scales, in the same issue of ST.

“The Ruin” in Luna Station Quarterly

Published on by Sara Norja Category: publication, short stories

The picture that inspired "The Ruin", by LeiraEnkai
The picture that inspired “The Ruin”, by LeiraEnkai
First actual publication of 2015 – my short story “The Ruin” is now up in Issue 21 of Luna Station Quarterly.

Read it here!

I’m especially pleased that this story has been published, because it’s set in a forest world I’ve been developing for a while. As I think I mentioned here before, my poem “Boat-husk” in Through the Gate is also set in that world. As is my (terrible zero draft of a) 2014 Nanowrimo novel.

“The Ruin” was one of the pieces inspired by the abandoned places pictures that I wrote a post about. In particular, this picture (i.e. the picture above). Sometimes writing exercises become something more!

Writing, submitting and perseverance

Published on by Sara Norja Category: discussion, linkage, personal babble, submission

Tonight I’m feeling inspired by Rose Lemberg’s great essay (originally published as tweets) on perseverance and the editorial process.

Rose talks about the importance of not self-rejecting your work, and of daring to submit, and re-submit to a publication that’s rejected your work before. The whole essay is very much worth a read for any (aspiring or published) writer! Especially if you (like me) suffer from some form of perfectionism and self-doubt.

It was such a huge leap for me to start submitting my poems in 2012. I’ve been writing (both prose and poetry) since forever, and my poetic voice has been getting stronger since 2009, but it took me so long to dare to submit my work. I was really afraid of rejection, of not being “good enough”. And those first rejections really hurt. I hadn’t developed a tougher skin yet; I felt like the magazines I submitted to were rejecting my whole self, all of my writing forever, &c. &c.

As time’s gone by, it’s got easier. I still feel a sting when I get a rejection, especially if it’s been a long time since an acceptance. But I understand better now that rejections a) are just one person’s (editor’s) opinion, b) can happen for any number of reasons, c) do not mean I’m a terrible writer. I’ve learnt to feel happy about personalised rejections, and the ones that actually give a snippet of feedback on my work make me feel good. I try to believe the editors when they say “please submit to us again”.

It’s been harder with stories. Quantity-wise, I produce far less of them than poems, which flow out at a much quicker pace. Story rejections still sting more, and make me doubt my skills (“oh noes I am the WORST AT PLOTTING FOREVER”). But how will those skills develop if I don’t keep writing and submitting? They won’t. So I have to keep trying.

Because after all, my perseverance so far has got me a long way from where I was three years ago. I’ve been published in a lot of amazing magazines – and I still feel giddy when I think that my story is going to be in An Alphabet of Embers. I just have to keep on daring, even when I feel afraid.

Drive-by Sunday recs

Published on by Sara Norja Category: linkage, poetry

It’s technically not Sunday any more here, but I haven’t gone to bed yet, so this totally counts.

Three poems I’ve loved lately:

Entwined ‘Neath Stars and Empty Suns by Merc Rustad (in Liminality): A romantic, visionary space opera. Great stuff. I want more space opera poetry!

Red Daughter by Alena Sullivan (in Goblin Fruit): Lovely word-magic, excellent rhyming, delicious!

The Law of Germinating Seeds by Rose Lemberg (also in Goblin Fruit): Such beautiful treesong, it gave me the shivers.

Sunday recs: owls, fragments, pockets

Published on by Sara Norja Category: linkage, poetry, short stories

Just wrote a ~3,000-word story in two hours, yay! With some editing, I think this will be fine for submitting to Lightspeed’s Queers Destroy Science Fiction! special issue. It’s been so long since I came up with a story idea and actually wrote it in this short a time – I got the idea last night just before bed, and started writing today after breakfast. New story yay!

* * *

And now for some stories I’ve enjoyed from others this past week:

The Truth About Owls by Amal El-Mohtar (in Strange Horizons, originally published in the Kaleidoscope anthology): This story is utterly wonderful. It contains many of my favourite things, such as multilingualism (Welsh, Arabic, yay!), Welsh mythology, and a solid emotional punch. Also, owls!

Pockets, also by Amal El-Mohtar (in Uncanny Magazine): A charming story with subtle strangeness.

archival testimony fragments / minersong by Rose Lemberg (in Uncanny Magazine): This is a poem, but it has a subtly developing plot that is just awesome. I highly recommend listening to C.S.E. Cooney’s reading of this poem in the Uncanny Magazine podcast – it gives the poem a whole new level of brilliance. I got shivers from the reading.