Project Mayhem — Meryl A. H. Franzos

2023 started out with the gutting of our only full bathroom. Every morning for two months I schlepped to my second gym membership (the gym with a shower.) Being fortunate enough to have lived through a few remodels, I knew renovating would chuck us back down to the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid of needs where the primary concerns are safety, food, water, and shelter. A.k.a survival mode. Ergo, the novel I’d been editing and re-editing for years was unceremoniously shoved in a drawer until life returned to normal.

Guess what. Life hasn’t returned to normal. For so many reasons, the least of which—though perhaps the most annoying—is that the bathroom remains a work in progress. The most of which, we bought a run-down cottage on a treacherous cliff overlooking Lake Erie. We closed on it a week before Christmas.

Somewhere between then and now, I decided to try writing short stories again. What the hell? I had plenty of good fodder cut from the aforementioned novel. Perhaps it could be patch-worked into something else? I cranked out a story in a week. It had a beginning, middle, and a shockingly satisfying end that surprised even me. My husband laughed and clapped when I read it to him. Shit. From that moment I was hooked on these encapsulated bubbles of revelation and entertainment that don’t drag on and on. I thought, surely these are good enough to get published lickety split.

I’m not sure what lickety split translates to in publishing, but it certainly did not align with my preconceived time table; I have submitted four stories to fifty publications and received thirty-five rejections. One magazine took two days to reject a story, while another took 220 days. But most rejections arrive between eighty and 150 days—often on a Friday at 5pm to kick off the weekend in good cheer, or the last email check of the evening at 10pm, to ensure an excellent night of sleep with no self doubt creepy crawlies whatsoever. They are all formulaic copy, so you have no idea why you were rejected. It could be they solicited work from famous authors and just want to collect your submission fee. It could be they prefer experimental form over driving story. It could be you used comic sans instead of times new roman. Or it could be your dialogue is stilted, your grammar is lacking, or possibly, you just suck. Stewing self doubt aside, there is no way to know for sure because it’s a form, and that’s why it’s so maddening. Out of thirty-four form rejections, I have received just one personal rejection: the Hallmark card of literary rejections. The situation is bleak indeed when your spirits are buoyed by this.

So, what do I do in between the slow drip of rejection? Sometimes I write. But mostly, I refresh my email so much my phone is dead by noon. I hawkishly watch my submittable account for the moment the switch on a file flips from “received” to “in-progress.” Recently I joined submission grinder—an anonymous group sourced submission tracker system—to watch my competition’s rejections refresh like the stock market ticker board. Important possibly, if you submitted to a journal that rejects as they read. Does it mean my story’s still in the running when several people who submitted after me get canned? Could it mean a breakthrough? Or will this obsession with group-sourced data only hoist my hopes higher, so they reach terminal velocity right before they smash? I am a space monkey spinning out of orbit.

“Stop trying to control everything and just let go,” says my inner Tyler Durden. Flippant counsel doesn’t usually work on me when I’m keeping vigil. But I do loosen my white-knuckled grip around my phone, and stare out the window instead. Maybe let out a deep sigh. It’s always changing, Lake Erie. Sometimes it’s violent with waves slamming against the shale and limestone cliffs. Sometimes the water is as still as a mirror, and so big, you can’t even see the opposite shore. It makes one and one’s troubles feel quite small. A codifying perspective in the grand scheme.

Back in my solitary writing bubble days, I controlled the narrative (but hungered for more.) So I introduced turmoil into the safety and order of my writing Eden. Once you listen to the snakes and eat from the tree of knowledge, you are forever cast out of the garden. Naked, cold, and shivering. Burnt down to the ground; rebuilt. And burnt down again—full sated on on what you didn’t know before. But isn’t that how it’s always been, since the dawn of creation? The only difference being, Adam and Eve wanted to return, and I don’t. I can’t help but feel amidst the chaos, that something could happen at any moment. And isn’t that the point? Not to return to normal, but transcend it? Anyway, to those who fight.