A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-One-Hundred-And-Sixty-Two

I find it quite frustrating to be told that I need to be careful about making certain I follow all the guidelines for submissions with care.  I understand that publishers are asking to facilitate their process, and I do not want to be difficult, yet, as a person who is neuro-diverse, I have a great deal of difficulty with these instructions.  At the same time, I know that complaining will not get me anywhere.  First of all, it is difficult to explain the problems I encounter.  The issues would sound trivial to most people.  I often have to stare at a visual form for several minutes before I can begin to interpret it, overwhelmed before I even start, and I am never confident that I am filling it out properly.  The process is overwhelming and stressful, and I have a strong aversion to it at this point.  I want to submit work, but the process of doing so is inherently alienating and intimidating, and I am afraid that even expressing that will only result in being told, once more, "this is how it is, deal with it."  It is treated as just a petty complaint, as my being difficult.  I have tried, at times, to contact various places for clarifications and the response(if I receive one) is often to point at the same information which was causing me trouble to begin with.  This is why I need help, why I was working with Freesia on my submissions before.  But I don't know what to do now.  Just today, I saw a bunch of writers laughing at the very concept of a person needing help with submissions over social media and I wanted to respond, to explain the reality that there can be a genuine need for this kind of assistance.  Instead, I remained silent, because I am afraid and am not certain how to ask for help in a way that will not just mean I am written off as too difficult.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Writer's Notebook, Day Two-Hundred-And-Fifty

Each of the three pieces I wrote today was a bit of a struggle to get going, if I am honest.  That happens, as I have mentioned, and my answer is generally to just wait it out, and the results vary.  A lot of the time, if I am really stuck, I might try to force something out, often it winds up being a bit meta, with me writing about being stuck without much in terms of inspiration, and it feels a bit like I am working scales in a way.  All the aesthetic decisions are there, they just don't always have a lot of purpose behind them, and that is fine in that context.  Essentially, I am just forcing myself to do the work, and getting it done, and I am showing myself that I can and will do it even if inspiration never strikes.  This can often take pressure off, and that lack of pressure opens up creative thinking and inspiration. Now, that is a fine thing for me to do, and I am likely to use that approach again many times in the future, but today I felt that I want...
Read more

Le Guin, Steering The Craft, Chapter Five: Adjectives and Adverbs (Exercise Five, Chastity)

A note of apology for my lateness with this.  I had expected to have time earlier in the day, but it was not to be, alas.  Anyhow, I am still a bit nervous about this exercise, though it is clearly of significant import to Le Guin, as she points out that it is the only exercise that she has given to all of her workshops.  That, of course, does not alter my feelings about it, excepting that I am aware of it as something valuable and worth doing, so the fact that it is a bit daunting might well be seen, through that light, as a promise of reward, perhaps.  The more difficult the task, the more one has to gain, at least by some logic... Exercise Five: Chastity Mr. Torino was in charge.  He had his way.  It was the way.  Desktops are clean.  Nothing but work.  No pictures: not your kids; not your girl or wife; not (as Allen recounted) your car.   None of that.  No plants.  No cartoons.  That is for home, this is work....
Read more

A Writer's Notebook, Two-Thousand-And-Fifty-Nine

I have been thinking about how I can discuss certain aspects of my poetry and the choices I make as a writer.  In particular, I tend to write without as much reliance on sensory details and descriptions, instead choosing more abstract depictions.  This is something that I know many writers would call an odd choice, as specificity seems inherently to demand the application of detail, but I tend to be a bit hesitant about relying on depictions that utilize the senses, as I find that approach somewhat problematic.  For one thing, sensory description is always going to be less than universal, and not only because of the reality that there are individuals who lack one or more sense.  In many ways, for me, the deeper problem is one related to language itself.  Our use of language creates our experiences in a very real way, though I can't necessarily offer a full explanation of what I mean by that right here, but using a word for an object bestows qualities on it....
Read more