lisa rabey writes stuff issue #10 swears
Dear Internet,
I had not planned on sending out an issue today as I was on vacation for the last week and I didn’t get an opportunity to draft or write, even this issue, as planned. I was too imbibed with vodka pineapples for most of the trip. I read nearly a book a day while lathered up in 50 SPF and laying on a chaise lounge by the pool. Writing was no where near on my brain.
BUT! I got the craziest rejection the other day that I needed to report.
The schtick of the lit mag is that it had be true and exactly 100 words long. The prose piece I wrote was based off a poem I wrote in college and based on a real incident. The wording was close to a 100 words so I reworked the piece to fit the criteria and sent it off in early March. In mid-April, I got the rejection with a with a caveat from on the readers: it was “beautifully written.” If it was beautifully written, why wasn’t it accepted? The only thing I can come with is the piece included swears.
I went through the lit mag’s submission qualifications and swears was not listed as something they would reject. Phobias (homo, zeno, racism, etc) were and obviously slurs but nothing about swears.
I may be grasping for straws here but that’s the only thing I could think of.
Or maybe not enough of the readers cared for it.
Who’s to say.
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Regardless of the reason it wasn’t accepted, it got me thinking about the use of swears in prose and poetry. When is it too much and when is it not enough? There is a very fine line in this agreement that I obsessively keep an eye on. In my day to day life, I swear a lot and love to say “fuck.” But in my writing, not to offend I suppose or seem too crass?, I walk back the swears unless it feels right. In this particular piece, the dialogue included swears so I used them appropriately.
Amy Poeppel over at LitHub writes about that fine line:
But was I wrong? Could I have cut back? Should I have? Would my book have been better if I had deleted every other “asshole”? Should I try from now on to strike some kind of compromise between the way people I know talk and the way the people my reader knows talk?
The use of offensive language definitely needs more discussion and definitely something I’ll be fucking mulling over.
A couple more rejections came in on pieces that after a read through again, need to be reworked. One of my editors got back to me on a piece that I need to review. I’m currently outlining a few pieces to submit to a few lit mags (including a few I’ve been rejected from) because I like the cut of their jibe.
The last month has been busy and with vacation, as I’ve previously reported, not a lot of writing has happened. Now I’m home and back to a routine. This Tuesday I start attending writer’s club again. I’m excited to start creating again.
When I look at the stats of submissions and rejections, I thought I would be more upset. But I’m honestly not. I don’t see it as personal slight against my work but rather as a way to improve my writing.
I guess that’s something.
Media
BookTok is dead. Long live BookTok. (Misshelved #12) [long read]
Submission update
32 submissions which includes 20 rejections, 2 acceptances, and 1 withdrawal.
Publication
chapbook: commercial breaks
Snippets
we are / i am is influenced by the idea of the perfect woman we keep hearing in stories. There is always this expectation of “her” but she doesn’t have a name; we’re just told of her attributes. Who is this woman?
we are / i am was published in Internet Void in 2018.
we are / i am the she they write songs for, craft poetry, sculpt, paint, and design in their likeness of us/them. our/my body, breasts, hands, and feet are sometimes naked, sometimes with draped fabric, or other times just the barest whisper of flesh. we are/i am a brunette, blonde, redhead; every shade imaginable. our/my nose is aquiline, stout, or prettily turned up. our/my eyes are violet, emerald, coal, sapphire, or gun metal grey. our/my body changes shape from rubenesque to skeletal thin, curves exaggerated or pin straight. the only common factor is our/my smile which is always suggested and never realized.
Have a good week.
lisa x