Well, that was a nice way to start a Monday morning! Congrats; it's a fun little read. Do you mind if I share the link to the short story with some folks?
It is published! Mythaxis is a literary journal that takes short story submissions and publishes some of them. Getting short stories is how most (at this point, virtually all) fiction writers start their careers.
At this point, I would not say that I don't have a plan for visibility; I would say that I have an anti-plan. I've been writing fiction my whole life and about politics for over a decade and met so little attention that I gave up and quit. My novel wasn't rejected by publishers and agents: I don't think anyone even noticed it. My nonfiction pitches never got a response and my substack (Cancelling Reality) didn't get a following after 6 months so I stopped writing. I had actually decided that I was done writing entirely, and had gone several months not writing a word, when this story got accepted. Even now, it's difficult to justify sitting down and writing after so much work and this blip of a success. My anti-plan is to ignore the visibility and just write. I'm hoping to start executing on this plan soon, but I haven't yet.
Well, that was a nice way to start a Monday morning! Congrats; it's a fun little read. Do you mind if I share the link to the short story with some folks?
Please do!
It is published! Mythaxis is a literary journal that takes short story submissions and publishes some of them. Getting short stories is how most (at this point, virtually all) fiction writers start their careers.
At this point, I would not say that I don't have a plan for visibility; I would say that I have an anti-plan. I've been writing fiction my whole life and about politics for over a decade and met so little attention that I gave up and quit. My novel wasn't rejected by publishers and agents: I don't think anyone even noticed it. My nonfiction pitches never got a response and my substack (Cancelling Reality) didn't get a following after 6 months so I stopped writing. I had actually decided that I was done writing entirely, and had gone several months not writing a word, when this story got accepted. Even now, it's difficult to justify sitting down and writing after so much work and this blip of a success. My anti-plan is to ignore the visibility and just write. I'm hoping to start executing on this plan soon, but I haven't yet.