📖 lisa writes stuff issue 🖋️ #45 It's the end of the world as we know it (And I feel fine)

Also: Love on the Lakefront is now on Kindle, new pieces, upcoming submissions

Sep 18, 2024

Dear Internet,

Fucking finally! The authors on the Love on the Lakefront anthology who were sitting around with their thumbs up their butt to sign the contracts to get on Kindle finally signed, sealed, and delivered. If you wanted to read Love on the Lakefront on Kindle, now you can! 👉🏻 https://amzn.to/3XRfp9X.

Last few weeks I’ve been researching places to submit. I haven’t done this in over a year.

I’ve really enjoyed writing to theme and with a deadline (see “Love in the Time of Cherry Season” in the Love on the Lakefront where I wrote 8K words in one day). It was time to get back in the submission game.

I subscribe to three submission databases to find homes for my work.

All three have their plus and minuses and I haven’t settled on just one, but I probably should settle on one to at least track submissions since my tracking is so haphazard right now. I was using a complicated spreadsheet I created but Google Sheets keeps giving me an error message. This makes zero sense since I’ve been using this spreadsheet since late 2010s so why now? Maybe it’s time for a new approach. Here’s the thing: I’ve already vetted all the links and since the file hasn’t been touched in a year, no idea where this is coming from.

(I keep clicking on Review but nothing happens.)

Searching for markets is a long process and there are a lot of questions you ask yourself such as:

Do I submit to fledgling markets or stick with established?
How do I define established anyway?
Am I willing to pay to play?
Do they pay me?
How long is the turnaround time from submission to response?
Is my work appropriate for this market?
Am I willing to write to theme?
Do I or don’t I want to submit to markets that do not accept simultaneous submissions?

And the list goes on and on.

My answers as of today are:

Both
Good question.
Depends on the market and how much.
Payment (even token / print copy) would be nice but I’m doing it for “exposure”
Hard to say
Yes
Not really, no.

A market I follow only opens up sporadically and tells you via email and social media when the market is open for submissions and once they reach the cap, they close. I wrote a dark piece that I was going to submit. At the time of opening, I was clicking on the submit link like mad and kept getting “This submission is closed” page. I do not have a Twitter/X account but one of my clients does so I checked the market’s Twitter/X account. They opened submissions one minute early and closed four minutes later as they filled their quota. I’m trying to imagine 150 people (their cap) hustling at the same time at 12 pm EST to submit but hey, I could be wrong.

Since I wrote to spec for this market, I now have this dark piece that I hope to (hopefully) find a home for. Wish me luck!

A FB writing group I am in offers a lot of opportunities to gather with your peers from co-working to weekly topic chats to sprints. After all these months where I just hung out in the topic chats, I took advantage of the sprints and went to two last week. And! I actually wrote!

First up is a sweet romance (no smut) on a theme of “love in disguise.” I wasn’t happy with that piece, so I wrote a second version. I’m still not a fan so I’m working on version three (which I got the spark of an idea for as I write this missive). This piece isn’t due until mid-October so I have some time.

Second up is the dark piece I wrote for the market I was just bitching about earlier in this missive. It was going to originally be for a market that uses music as a theme so I deconstructed “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” using the lyrics to lead into my lines. It’s a story of a woman in an abusive relationship who dreams of smothering her partner with a $200 pillow. It’s a prose poem and clocks in at 498 words. I kept the chorus

It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
And I feel fine

as the bridge in the piece. (It also has some smut as in my version; she’s giving him a hand job in a movie theater in one of the verses.)

I have a different version of that piece, using the same song, but in a longer format (nearly 1000 words). The aforementioned market with the submission cap had a word count of 500. Each version has a different title so I don’t get confused. The longer piece also has more of a story to it. Like I said, it’s dark. No fucking idea where it came from. I’ve tucked both pieces away for now.

For the music themed market, I decided to get a bit lighter by working in lyrics from Violent Femmes’ first album, Violent Femmes, which came out in 1983. This album is on Spotify. If you’re not familiar with the band, they are a folk punk outfit out of Milwaukee whose been playing since the early 1980s. At the time of Violent Femmes release, their music was nothing like being released at the time which totally shocked people. VF has maintained a legendary status in the alternative / indie music world. Quite a few of their songs have landed in commercials, movies, and covers so chances are you’ve heard something by them. I didn’t learn about the band until 1987 or so when a boy I had a crush on told me about them. In 1987 I thought I wasn’t cool enough since I got to know about them a few years after the album’s release. Also, boys are stupid.

(They are playing here in KY in October. Not only did I miss they were coming but that tickets have already sold out. I wouldn’t be here regardless, but alas.)

I’m not sure how this piece is going to go. I chose my favorite lyrics from each song on the album and the piece is going to build around that.

I’ve got a few upcoming themes I’m going to work on in the next month or so. The dates end from September to January 31, 2025. (2025! Holy shit!)

A writers’ group I’m in is doing a call for submissions for their upcoming anthology of which I’ve signed up for. While the theme of the anthology hasn’t been decided yet, the piece must be a historical romance as defined to have taken place by mid-1950s. I already know I’m going to tap into the Edwardian era which starts with King Edward coming to the throne after Queen Victoria dies and ending with WW1 (1901 – 1919). I am obsessed with this period. You’ve got telephone, cameras, cars, TVs, airplanes, radio, and movies happening in this short period. Women’s suffrage! Clothes being thrown off! Rejection of Victorian morals! Fascinating history. The mystery series I’ve had kicking around in my head for 9093280 years is based in this era. I’m beyond pumped to write a short story in this period.

This week are two sprints and a writers’ co-working meeting. I can make one sprint and the co-working. The idea of the co-working is to do stuff more admin-y to your writing career from research to scheduling social media. It’ll be nice to have some dedicated time to just doing writing admin stuff.

The piece I wrote on bipolar rage is now up at the International Bipolar Foundation’s blog.

I have a graphic novel review I’ve done for No Flying, No Tights coming out later this week.

A Most Unreliable Narrator

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