I've Been Writing for Lit Mags for Nearly A Year: Here's What I've Learned

The online literary scene is a storm of chaos that would make Dionysus weep with glee.

Carnage churns the landscape, equal parts ink-soaked soil and vicious jungles. The torn bodies of old works, rejected works, and lost publications litter the lands, and your hopes and dreams bid you to step right over them. Sink them further into the muck of "yester-submissions" as you forge on in armor that may be the new shining plates of optimism, or plates scorched from burnout, painted with scenes of battles and cut out passages from a tale ongoing.

I fucking love it.

Where It Started . . .

Oh it was a hot night in August 2022 when I first stumbled upon the scene. Actually, I should say that I stepped on some Taco Bell hot sauce packets, and when that mildly spicy wave splattered against the wall, it wrote the words, "Live Mas!"

Thus, I met Taco Bell Quarterly for the first time. And I was captivated.

Y'all should absolutely follow them on the timeline, because their Baja Blast colored doom tweets are just the bees knees. They've blown up in a huge way since I first followed them, now rabidly tormenting the Paris Review, collecting souls, reviews, interviews, and Con scenes, whoo hoo! They ask for work that involves a reference to Taco Bell. By their words, it could be a treatise on the evolutionary superiority of orca whales, and so long as you put in a ghastly interjection of a chicken chalupa, you can send it in! So I sent in this really sort of angsty piece about my first time eating Taco Bell . . . and it was rejected! But that was okay because it was exhilarating to try!

In between the sending and rejecting, I was recommended even more literary journals thanks to following TBQ and them following back. I sent in to several journals, including Defunct Magazine- who became my first acceptance, another angsty piece about missing myself! Yeah!! My mind was ablaze with all the things I could possibly turn into creative non-fiction pieces, or poems . . . So many possibilities were opening up to me, it was like I was viewing my life, hell my very being, through a kaleidoscope lens and seeing all the magnificent possibilities. How far could I go?

So, short little piece of advice for anyone who hasn't yet unlocked the secret world of Literary. There are SO MANY zines out there, you don't even know. So many! There's new zines being born every day because if there's one thing humanity is good at, it's making beautiful art out of some really fucked up feelings and situations . . . and also if we're all going out in flames and glory let's create some new art to really feed those flames. Go on Twitter and look them up- there's even a list for lit mags you can follow. They have magazines that cater exclusively to one genre or another, like Uncanny Magazine for science-fiction, Nocturne Horror Literary for, you guessed it, horror, Pink Disco for erotic writings . . . you can also check here for an early list I did last year for 6 zines I was really loving then. Might need a refresh on that now I'm thinking on it!

How It's Going . . .

Well, so on and so forth . . . All told I've submitted to, at the time of writing this, 30 publications. I can't tell you if that's bad or not in terms of consistency and drive, because I did take a month off and, also, I'm lazy! This level of consistency (online lit mag writing and steady posts on Vocal AND a Substack?!) is hard!

On a positive not, I've gotten so good at writing poems. At least I think I have, I've gotten like five of them published. And they have to be good if multiple different teams were like, "Ooh! Put it in there!" and published them. Which is crazy, because I published my first peom here on Vocal and it was not great! Not too good at the whole poetry thing! And then my next poem was also . . . no good!

I have also developed somewhat of an addiction to expressing heightened tone/emotion/sarcasm with exclamation points! Not sorry! I don't think I can directly blame the literary world, but it is no coincidence that my propensity towards exclamation points rose the further I dug in to the prosaic trenches. So I'm very okay with indirectly blaming it.

I'm still not too great at fiction, even after my whole Halloween flash fic series last year . . . but I am trying to get better at it. I think I'm feeling the warning signs forewarning burnout. Also I need glasses, I'm spending upwards of seven hours a day on this laptop staring at this bright ass screen because my job is (blissfully, thankfully) remote.

In terms of writing, I'm really finding that I'm a writer who really uses the personal voice and perhaps struggles to get out of that entirely. I don't know what happened, when I was fifteen and writing fanfics I was a lot more descriptive and my prose was almost rambling. Now I'm just kind of- I mean I can still write up prose when called for, but maybe it's that I don't often see a need to call for purple prose? Which is a weakness honestly and I've got to work on being able to prose it (like "jazz it" I'm trying to make it happen) at the drop of a hat.

I'm also feeling confident enough to try and start scrapping for these freelance jobs I see pop up like a jackelope on the feed. I'll be honest my first attempt was an outstanding embarrassment! Yet I persist! Just an FYI. if you're trying to be an editor know that you're looking at rates of like . . . a penny to two pennies a word. Don't get cute and try to push it, unless you of course have years of experience in which case you are probably ignoring this sentence the minute you finish it. Good on you. Yeah, but there's a . . . there is opportunity out there. You just have to want it, and want it bad enough to persevere through many . . . many . . . many trials and submission calls.

Getting rejected so much has honestly been such a blessing, because the community really holds each other. Rejection no longer means this terrifying, callous, cruel creature that swipes at my most tender innards and stomps them into tomato pesto. It's just . . . a thing that happens! And it can suck, sure, but there's always more to do and lessons to learn from this. A lot of zines take the time to offer a sentence or two of critique, or to let you know that despite the rejection the work is great it's just . . . not the time. Not yet. So rejections have been slowly taking this frame in my mind of, you know, something to chew on. Not a cruelty, but a lesson. A pause. I had a piece rejected almost ten times before I finally got it a forever home, and on top of that I got some really fantastic one-on-one time with an editor who was both passionate and remarkable at her job. Shout out to you Camille!

Oh, another piece of advice! No matter what social media you're using, if you want to grow as a writer, you need to follow other writers. Writers who are on the same level as you, writers with more publishing credits to their name; follow editors and editors-on-chiefs, non-stop slush readers, bloggers, everyone you can! Because learning the craft does not happen in a chamber, you have to venture out of the comfortable cage of yourself and grow. Find people who are learning new tricks, and have figured out tricks for your current problems.

Where It Goes . . . ?

Well . . .

Maybe down the drain with Twitter, cackling all the way.

Maybe it goes on beyond social media and you start seeing my name on indie published books, essay collections, a poetry collection?

Or I could vanish Skinamarink style. I could die. Hey. Who's to say?

But for now, you can find me on my Twitter (in bio) and be on the lookout for the scattering of published pieces I've managed to accrue. You could read some of the other stories I have on here- got some neat movie lists, a lot of Halloween playlists, and even more Halloween/horror related writings. You could get a free subscription to my Substack (link here) where I talk about specific hours to cry and thinking of my alternate self while scrolling through Pinterest.

And one final piece of advice . . . don't stop writing. This is not some remix of that "write every day" thing, but like . . . don't ever stop writing. Because it's what you love to do, yeah? It's what calms the raging buzz, the static snow in your head? It's what invigorates you, moves you, settles you, frees you? Then don't stop. And don't stop reading either! Remember what I said about learning not happening in a chamber? As a writer I don't just find lit mags and submit, I read their old archives and see what the vibe is. Will my style of writing fit here? What kinds of things do they publish? Who are these writers and what are they saying?

And, listen, if you're sitting there and thinking that it's not that deep or whatever . . . do me a favor and go follow Taco Bell Quarterly on their Twitter (for extra razzle dazzle, follow their Substack too). Go on! Just real quick- if it's not that deep then a couple of clicks of your mouse won't make it so. Just . . .follow them, and read a few nihilist fiesta tweets, and in a couple weeks come back and comment how liberating the ephemeral nothing is. As always, stay safe, be cool, and happy hauntings!