Literary Journal Submission Spreadsheet

I have been prepping myself for a fall semester full of submitting because I’m starting to understand that writing is 50% not actually writing. That is to say that submitting and the rest of the administration that goes into having a business in the arts is just as important as the writing itself.

So I am submitting. I am rejected. I am hopeful.

If you are floundering in the same shallow pool of self doubt, I am happy to offer up my google spreadsheet as a resource. Based on Clifford Garstang’s ranking of literary magazines, I created a spreadsheet to organize when each literary magazine is accepting submissions, the requested word count, and what I think of the work being published — if it’s like mine, or, as the case usually is, categorically not.

While I am mainly concerned with the Fiction submissions, I have included a tab with Clifford’s Nonfiction and Poetry rankings so it may be of service to my brothers from another form. Click through the image below for the google sheets.

This is not a completed form, so If you have some information to add to this list, please share it with me. If there is a column that might benefit all of us please let me know!

I hope this helps you on your path to publication, rocky though it may be. May the odds be ever in your favor!


Today we wondered if you had a soul.

Today we wondered if you had a soul.

Not if you’re mapped out, we know enough to understand how much of you is predetermined. Your eyes, if they’ll be brown or green, your height, how likely you are to have dementia or doubled joints, or hair like your fathers that grows long out of your nose. Will you have to trim it like he does in the wet fog of the bathroom mirror, leaning to find the perfect reflection in the whir of the blades?

And how long will that take you to discover, baby? Will you be grown and married before your wife gracefully slips the trimmer under the Christmas tree? Will she advise you to open it the night before Christmas eve? Will she smile when you do and gently say I thought you could use something like this. 

You’ll kiss her of course, even if it’s not the best present you’ve ever received, but you’ll kiss her and say thank you because we’ve taught you that affection and respect are tantamount in any relationship that’s going to last.

But where is that part of you now, baby? The part that wants to kiss her, the part that decides to use the clippers in the bathroom that night. The part that stares at yourself in the mirror as she waits for you in the shower carrying that tiny sea monkey that will become your own child. Where is the part of you that part that wonders - What is a soul? And when will it arrive?

Where is the part of you that will exist inexplicably inside of a brain, that will write like your mom or know airplanes like your dad, or sing made up songs in the shower that no one else will hear? Where is that essence beyond biology, that sits in yourself when you’re trying to go to sleep, that dreams unknowable dreams that wake you up, the smell of them, the taste of them, still wafting around your senses? 

Will consciousness snap into place like touch or smell or sight? Or does each time you wake reset the fragile memory of time and space, as if you are each time born - conceived of consciousness over and over and over again.

Where is the part of you that draws silly faces in the fog of the bathroom mirror or laughs with her as her nipples smart in the shower, or holds her hair while she vomits in the sink. The part of you that worries bone throttling worries about cleft lips, and kidnappings, and children who scream and scream and scream.

Where is the part of you who buries yourself in her belly, hot water streaming down your closed eyes, matting your hair into a thin sheet. Where is the part that speaks muffled words against her wet skin, “Hey wonderful, this is me, your father speaking.”

The part of you who presses his cheek against her soft thin frame and under the din of the shower tries to hear your baby move.

“It’s too early, my love.” She strokes your temple with a finger as you look into the big brown tired eyes of this adoring woman that you feel so lucky to be in love with. Where is the part of you that feels lucky? 

Is it inside of me now? Washed warm in the wet down dark? Spinning circles in my belly? 

Do you have cheeks yet? 

Have you discovered spinning? 

Micrometers Thick

You are micrometers thick, falling but not propelled by gravity. Growing in the way that dividing is growing. Like me plus you divided by two equals one.

One family, three souls, two bodies. 

You are micrometers thick, and yet you are all at once connected to us and intact with a world beyond our own. We’ve waited through weeks of curiosity, months of standing idly by, praying each cramp is a sign.

We are waiting. Forever waiting for everyone to arrive.

You are micrometers thick and yet I owe you something. Commitment, fortitude, gratitude. Everything. I owe you a million reasons why we decided to make you but we only have one, my little poppy seed. 

You were missing. 

You are micrometers thick, and yet you have already filled the gaps in our lives, caulked the cracks, and puttied the holes. We overflow now with hope. You are seconds away from nothing.

You are already everything.

You are micrometers thick, and yet everything makes room for you, makes me nauseous, makes me pee all the time. But we’re making room. Me and the ovaries and the intestines and the bladder and the womb. Perhaps that’s how our lives will make space for you. 

Ever opening, forming itself around you.

As for us, we are waiting.

We are googling.

We are becoming.

We are cheap holograms of parents, waiting to be made real.

If I am lucky enough to have a daughter

If I am lucky enough to have a daughter I will teach her what my mother did not. I will tell her that pretty, smart, and kind are not mutually exclusive. I will tell her that being a woman has its flaws.

If I have a daughter, I will teach her to be strong. I will tell her that kindness is an invitation, that if you are kind to men they will bring you balloons to class, or ask you on dates, or make you feel uncomfortable when they corner you at parties. Be kind anyway.

I will tell her that perfection is not always perfect and that a relationship has its ups and downs but that it should mostly make you feel good. If it doesn’t, you need to reassess why you’re in love. If he tells you you’re too fat, or he’d rather date one of your friends, or he disparages you when his mother visits, or he doesn’t care whether you move away, or if you're happy or if you're sad, then this man has taught you something - he is not worth the time you save on your commute by sleeping over at his house, he is not worth the brief collage of compliments that kept you enamored, he is not worth the dinners he cooks, or the presents he gives. He is not worth you.

When you’re in college and your soccer coach walks you down to your car after a game and tries to kiss you on the lips, turn your head and let it land on your cheek. Be kind, you are both adults after all, and then get in your car and leave. Don’t quit playing soccer. Don’t never go back. He only mistook your kindness and respect for love. 

This will happen a lot when you are kind. A man will write you a love letter, maybe two men you thought were friends. And if they break up with a woman for you, that’s their problem, not yours. Friends will try to be more than friends, and you will lose them. Be kind anyway. 

And when someone says you’re too fat, or too skinny, or your hair is the wrong length or color, or even when your TA says things like “If you weren’t my student…” Try not to give them the power to topple you. Because though they may make existing uncomfortable, though they may make you feel self conscious whenever you see them, and even when you don’t, their superficial jibes cannot insult your intelligence, or your kindness, or your freedom.

That’s why we have to be strong, my love. We can’t fall into their self-loathing trap.

When your professor thinks you can’t hear him and refers to you as the “exceptionally beautiful one,” in a class you’re excelling in. Don’t start cutting class because of him, my sweet. Don’t abandon the entire major. Don’t write it off because it seemed like a compliment, don’t forgive him because it felt harmless enough, and don’t let it slide. Compliments from a teacher sound like this: “Great effort,” “How smart you are!” “You have a lot of talent/potential/chutzpah.” There will be millions of compliments in your life, but they won’t all feel like that. Like someone stripped you naked in a crowded room.

This is when you should stop being kind for kindness sake. This is when you should begin to fight.

When you spend a rare evening in a club, and you faint outside after the first few gulps of a beer that didn’t “taste-quite-right” and the club manager tells you you’re fine — It must have been the music that got to you, it must have been something you ate. Don’t refuse to be seen by a paramedic. Don’t brush it off and go back to the boy who sent you outside by yourself. Do you know how hard it is to tell if a person’s been drugged? The blood tests, the drink samples a lab has to take? The club manager just looked at your tongue, and pronounced you un-roofied. When later you vomit completely sober in the club’s bathroom, don’t blame it on the Ikea meatballs you ate for dinner, or the electronica pounding in the back of your brain. Don’t sign away your right to medical attention, or you will question that night for years after. How hands are supposed to look when they pass you a beer, how friends are supposed to act when you faint (and you never faint) or vomit in the bathroom for fifteen minutes. You’ll think about the long drive home by yourself fuzzy and shaking, you’ll always wonder what could have happened if... if...

I remember once, speaking to someone I considered a mentor about the most lewd thing anyone has ever said to me (let alone at work). He was a friend (do you see the pattern, my sweet?) who made an inappropriate pun about my “box” and what he’d like to put in it.

How should I deal with this, I asked her, how do I respond to these sexist and abusive words. She sort of grinned and asked if I wanted her to speak with him. No, I said.

I wanted an answer, I wanted strength. 

If I were her, my feminist hat would have been on fire. I wouldn’t say, “let’s not make a big deal of this,” I would yell, “that’s unacceptable!” I would reel in righteous and wear a big F on my chest for FEMINISM, and FEMALES, and FUCK YOU.

But I wasn’t a child, and she wasn’t really the hero I was looking for, so we did nothing. She wanted to be liked by men, she thought the big F on her chest would make them lose respect. Maybe it would.

That’s the delicate balance right there, isn’t it, child, we are at war with man but we want men, and we want to be wanted. But when you don’t fight the unacceptable, when you ignore that crunching sound in your chest when their words crumple you, you are condoning it. So you have to fight.

You have to fight for the inside you, the smart, kind, generous you that’s beat to hell every time you’re seen as just a body and breasts. We must fight for other women too, my love, because we know all too well it’s hard enough to fight for ourselves. 

I will tell her all of this so she knows she is not alone, so it won’t turn her stomach when it happens to her. I will tell her this so she won’t recoil, or slink away ashamed. I will tell her so that she might be stronger than us, braver than us, fight back harder than us, so that she might shout "this is not okay!" without feeling embarrassed that it happened to her. Like she invited it, like she's just doing it for the attention.

And if I am lucky enough to have a son, I will tell him this too. Because if we all tell our sons and daughters about the atrocities of living in a world where sex is a commodity, then maybe one day, if they are lucky enough to have daughters they won’t have to worry about being sexual prey. 

Until then, we have to fight, and we have to tell our daughters these stories so they can learn to fight too.

A series about water: #2 of 3

It wasn't always like this

Chalk rings marking years when it was good and we were bad

White like the streaks of cloud across an August sky

Tick mark scars count every abuse on growing red walls 

A scorched blue puddle at their feet.

It wasn’t always like this.

 

We were young once and powerful too

I swam through you as you ran through me, 

Green scoured your shore,

Luck lined mine

And damn anyone who tried to tame us.

 

Now your skin is parched gold

Lined and flaking off like scales

You bake in unrelenting sun

While concrete sentries hold you captive

Streaks of opalescent oil fester like a thin veneer

You were fast once,

but now you beat slow,

It wasn’t always like this.

 

C. L. Brenton

 

A series about water: #1 of 3

If I were the sea and you were the land, I think we might meet here. Here the fish are all jumpy, and the sun would set beyond your thin frame instead of mine.

And if I were the sea and you were the land we would press into each other, secede and recede and then take it all back. There would be never ending compromise, giving and taking, pushing and pressing, and we would always be touching like lovers, or boxers, entangled in that broken way that people become too entangled. 

Bits of you would tear off into me, sink into me, and bits of me would flood into you. Flow between the islands of your toes, curve into the sheltered bay of your stomach, cover you with a thin film of salt.

Until you couldn’t tell which was actually which. You couldn’t tell mountains from islands or fish soaring through me from pelicans gliding through your sky or valleys from caverns that go deep deep deep into me. 

If I were the sea and you were the land we would always be touching like lovers do and when it rained, I would be the deepest darkest of blues, and you would be wet out of empathy. 

Your quiet would meet my bustling loud. Your stasis moved by my constant change. And if the wind blew over us, you would just shiver but I would roar.

If I were the sea and you were the land, I think we might meet here, where I’m always calm, and you’re always warm, and the fish like to jump as the sun breaks below your thin frame.

And though we are a thousand other creatures on a thousand other days, here we are only two bodies completely entangled.

To my love on our wedding day

I woke up early, too early and I couldn’t get back to sleep because I was so excited to marry him. Sleepless and puffy eyed I crawled out of our bed, careful not to wake him, and boiled water for tea in the kitchen. It was barely dusk, the sun hadn’t turned anything that soft shade of yellow and orange. We were still in the gray hours and when I stepped outside, hot cup of tea and notebook in hand, it was brisk, but not windy. I sat on a swinging bench, my feet curled under my knees and began to write, this is what came out.

One of my socks is inside out and I’m sitting on this bench crying, unprovoked, because I love you so much. And in this moment, despite how tired I am, despite how few hours I’ve had to metabolize last nights beer, I am so happy. An osprey soars overhead and I smile at him, geese honk and I smile at them. The trees are green, the sky and lake are reflecting endless iterations of the same color blue. There is literally no place I would rather be in this moment, wearing my pajamas while you snooze upstairs, watching the world wake up on our wedding day.

I wish I had written more, in fact, in my notebook the last sentence was left unfinished. This is because Justin had woken up, seen me out the window, and ran down to join me on the bench. We took this picture right as the sun was starting to hit the trees.

Though this wasn’t one of my more brilliant pieces, it captures a moment that I’ll always return to when thinking about our wedding. For me, writing moments down creates a stronger more visceral memory than pictures. That’s probably why I’m doing this work. I’m excited to begin again, after a brief vacation, to the job that I love. Thank you, as always for reading.

Motel Room on Route 66

He twitches beside me on the burgundy motel bedspread. We are on the move pressing through time like lovers. Only we are cold and it is dark and it doesn’t feel much warmer with him curled up beside me — his paws running his mind away from something, his muffled barks splashing through his dreams. 

It feels like years ago when I was caught between housewife and house arrest. When my cold body was intertwined with yours, when the ring on my left hand made rainbows on the wall, constantly quantifying your love.

Sometimes at night when we lay in bed studying the glow- in-the-dark stars on the ceiling left by the last people who shared a life in this 1960’s quick build stucco box, I wondered if we were thinking the same thing. Were we heroes for staying? Martyrs? Barreling through fights about curtains that aren’t really about curtains, fights about how to fight, fights about nothing and everything all in the same divisive words. Wasn’t that how every marriage was? One american family, unhappy but stuck together in spite of everything? 

But now we’re not stuck. Now who’s the hero? Which one of us is the martyr? 

Freedom is mauve motel rooms backlit by saccharine street lamps. Freedom is abortions and wide black asphalt, and a double yellow line streaking the space between right and wrong.

Bo’s whiskers flinch as he lies next to me dreaming. Held up in his own mind, trapped inside that body that moves and huffs and regurgitates. He reminds me of someone. The girl we never met. The little tuft of hair, the ball of cells, maybe just a tail and fingernails. But I love her anyways. Even though she has your almond eyes and my unbuttoned nose, even though she’s the epitome of everything thats wrong with us, I stare at the bright dots of tv power buttons and red LED clocks. I pretend they’re glow-in-the-dark stars and I think of her. 

We have been everywhere and still haven’t found it, that’s the problem. We have hiked through tall fat redwoods that teeter stoically above us, we have stood on cliff faces that sway above valleys and we’ve felt nothing. We have slept in cities and townships, and places with no post office. But we still haven’t found it. That life or happiness, or whatever it is we’re looking for. I don’t even know if it’s out here. 

So we let ourselves into motel room after motel room. We look for the ones that say vacancy on the side, we look for the bright lights that scream low low prices. I sneak Bo in, down the same dim halls. I open the same creaky doors into the same musty smell of cigarettes and sex and humanity, and I sit on the bed, I open the window and light one. Not because I’m hooked again, believe me, but because I just want to be a part of this — Those forbidden trysts, those midnight escapes, those endangered loves that once clinked glasses across this queen bed divide. And I think about a life I once had, and a future still so vivid it’s impossible to believe those one-days were wasted for all of this. This nomadic impotence, this rigid sameness that you’re still paying for.

We were like something out of a TV show you and I. We called our love passionate, but ours was a learned romance. We knew how to jab and dodge like Mohammads and Rockies, though we didn’t leave bruises, most of the time. But like our parents we drank ourselves stupid, like our parents we didn’t understand who our real enemy was.

The real shitty part is, I’ve ran thousands of miles away from you, and I still don’t know where we’re going. How do I up and leave this life. How do I run away from running away?

I put out my cigarette and close the window to the dark November night. It’s cold enough here everything freezes. In the morning I’ll have to scrape ice off the windshield of the truck, I’ll have to pray even harder that she starts up. I’ll have to sit there in three layers of jackets waiting for the heat to come on. 

The window thunks closed and Bo stirs, big brown eyes blink sleepy at me.

“What?” I say, but he thumps his tail once and closes his eyes again. I hardly recognize the sound of my voice. It’s old and stale like my mother’s was. Years of cigarette smoke coats consonants with grit. 

I curl up beside him and close my eyes. His breathing reminds me of yours at night, open mouthed and heavy. His heart beat sets the time, a slow dance rhythm, the echo of a base drum. 

Tomorrow we’ll keep running away. We’ll press through time, two souls caught together like lovers. Though we’re not lovers, and it’s still cold even when I curl up next to him and try to fall asleep.

Getting Back to Being Bored

Parenting experts say that letting your child be bored challenges their young brains to be creative. It is in difficult silence that they discover exactly who they are, what they want, and what they love. Kids need to explore, discover, and use their brains to experience the adventure inside themselves. 

In my blazing hot summer of planning, creating, and getting back to writing I’ve discovered something marvelous — Grownups need boredom too.

Actually, grownups need a lot of things that we prescribe our children. Over the course of our longer and longer lives we change and grow, discover and rediscover ourselves almost as much as we did as kids. Even though we bask in the glory of having reached thirty, forty, sixty, eighty, and reflect on how much we’ve changed, in the same breath we disparage the prospect of ever changing again. 

I was a child back then, we say over and over of every possible age, But now I am grown. Now, I have arrived. 

With all this growth, perhaps we need to take our own parenting advice. We should encourage ourselves to play. Be curious. Explore. But most of all — Be Bored.

Sometimes, for grownups, we call this mediation. Free your mind, experts advocate, focus on your breath. But meditation can feel abstract and out of reach for those who have never tried it. In Judaism they call their day of boredom Shabbat, in Christianity, the Sabbath. For some people it’s called backpacking, for others it’s a morning sipping tea alone on the porch.

There is a constant influx of information in our lives. With e-mails on our phone, radio in our cars, podcasts or jams while we’re working out, books or movies in our down time, we rarely spend a moment taking in absolutely nothing. And how could we? We’re busy! Children and partners and pets demand us, chores distract us, the chicken needs precise ingredients and monitored cooking. But doing nothing is exactly the sort of thing we’ve been missing.

Boredom scares us. It’s that kingdom trapped in our perpetual inner selves, the parts we hate, the stress, the fears you would never verbalize or even dare to think. What if the stress seeps in? What if dissatisfaction plagues our thoughts? We imagine the paralyzing disaster of what we would dare to think if we only had a moment. 

Creativity lives in the folds of boredom. In long summer drives through the nothing of the country, in a steamy shower staring at the dripping white tiles, in patient hours waiting for something to begin. It is freedom at its best and its worst, it is torture, and luxury, and peace and ingenuity.

I am finding as wedding planning is dying down and I’m settling back into the day to day writing life, I have to remind myself to be bored again. If I remove stimulation and practice being with just myself, inspiration always comes.

Occasionally we instigate a tech-free day at our house. No tv or computers, no phones or internet, no online recipes or googling the difference between it’s and its. Tech free day is a day where we only have paper and each other, a day where everything turns off, so our brains can turn back on. It’s not often we can partake in such a luxury, but when we do, creative juices flow, long talks are inspired, unique and inventive dishes are made. 

Boredom is refreshing. It is youth, and elongated time, and experience. It is the seed of passion, and the place where we grow. It is a practice and a necessity. And it’s time we all had a little taste.

Force yourself to be bored. I implore you. You’ll never know what might be buried inside until you dare, for a moment, to look.

 

C. L. Brenton

How to Force Innovation (Hint, don't force it!)

This is a piece I wrote a while ago for Newsaratti (which by the way shut down, yeah, sucks, I know!) This is still incredibly true and useful for all professions. I'm posting it here mostly to remind myself how to restart when I get stuck, but also because it might help someone else out there too!

Innovation and creativity are the two most valuable things in business and in life. We are constantly solving problems, constantly trying to make our brains pound out new solutions for our changing lives. 

So what happens when you get stuck? When a problem is staring you in the face and you can’t get over the hump. How do you force your brain to be creative? How do you get unstuck, and find a perfect solution?

Look at it upside down.

Or inside out, or backwards. Artists and photographers have known this trick for centuries. When you’ve been staring at one thing for two long it gets muddled in your brain. You can’t even tell if it works anymore, let alone if it’s good. When an artist turns his painting upside down, he can see the relationship between shadows and light, he can see the abstract forms and colors, rather than just a bunch of water lilies on a pond. Find a way to turn your project upside down. Whether you follow your steps from Z to A,  look at it from the consumers perspective, or read each sentence of your proposal from end to beginning, you must change your viewpoint entirely. There, you might find the answer your looking for.

Talk it through with someone outside your group

Laymen are great at helping figure out solutions to problems, and not because they have great ideas. When you explain your problem to someone else two things happen: one, you have to explain your project from start to finish in a way anyone can understand, and two, they ask questions. These two processes combined are incredibly helpful in jump starting creativity. Often times just by explaining the problem to someone outside of your work group, you discover where you went wrong. Maybe you veered off track somewhere, or need to push further in one area, or had an original idea that you never tested and you’re only now remembering it. The layman’s fresh take on your problem could dislodge the mental block you’ve had all along

Input equals output

    Great artists look at a lot of art, great writers read, great inventors study other inventions. The more you look at what other people in your industry are doing the more your brain might say that’s cool, but what if…? No idea is entirely unique. Each invention, each theory, and each innovation is built upon years of good ideas before it. Why disregard everything your competitors are doing when you could just build on it. From store front design, to touch screen technology, to great art, people have built on the innovations of those before. That’s what they’re there for.

Do it at the same time everyday

In his book “On Writing” Steven King talks about training your muse to show up at the same time everyday. He’s not talking about a little sprite that shows up and fills your head with magic,(though he might as well be). He’s saying that your brain is a muscle, and when you train it to be creative, it will be. When you’re creative at the same time of day, everyday, your brain knows when to work, it kicks into action and pumps out ideas. Whether you’re a nighttime innovator, or a morning creator, find a routine and stick to it. The results are powerful.

Do something else

Read a book, listen to a podcast, go to an art museum, color in a coloring book. Do anything that lets your brain run in the background. Ever heard of the shower principle? Your best ideas are prone to come when you’re not thinking about them i.e. In the shower. You have a powerful processor in that skull of yours, give it a while to run in the background while you look at something beautiful, or listen to something interesting. Sometimes those stimuli will spark something you hadn’t thought about before and the answer will come.

In the end innovation isn’t something that can be forced, only nurtured. Pounding your head against the same desk isn’t going to do anything for you. Step back, change course, and get your brain thinking about something new.

 

C. L. Brenton

A Perfect Morning

Another week of hard work and butterflies gone, and I am still immersed in an epic hack up of my novel. It is painful and overwhelming and inspiring and exhausting, but it is worth it, and in the end it will be wonderful.

Enjoy

We live in Stoker’s castle. We are dim and it is colder than we expected. Like a tomb or that place where they heap dead bodies and innocuously call a freezer.

I don’t want to spend another minute in there but he likes the sound of it. He thinks the dripping is evocative and strange, the architecture ornate and gothic, the floor tiles laid perfectly for such an early 13th century extravagance. 

I stare through the barred window and try to convince myself this isn’t a dungeon and this isn’t our tomb. 

I thirst for Sunday mornings, I crave the bouyance of a Wednesday afternoon. I want silence and exuberance, solitude and company, a flood of ideas and a quiet mind. I am a thousand scientific notions - Entropy, chaos, decay, dichotomy.

Sometimes before he wakes up, I sit outside and soak in the morning. The dog flops in the grass, his nose twitching, delighted at the intricate smells of a quiet day. The birds are all a titter, chittering graceful unglorified tunes without reason. Singing made up songs just to sing. Just for the joyful noise of it. 

He wakes and speaks as if nothing matters but the stench of his own words. 

Then it’s too hot, the dog licks his asshole uncomfortably, the skin on my forearms seethes as if they’re on fire. The birds squawk uncontrollably and I imagine our yard as a hellish paradise with no escape. A secret garden drowning in flame.

I think about that as I shiver, and watch him stare at the buttresses flying overhead. He and I are cowards stuck in the middle of the beginning of the end. The scars become us, don’t they? Like tiny little bandaids polka-dotting our cancered skin. 

This way.

He pulls me down another hallway away from the group. Ancient suits of armor are held up by god-knows-what and it’s all I can do not to poke them and see if they’ll just fall down. I follow him to a tapestry beyond a series of stanchions barely barricading the path.

Where?

I whisper, but I don’t really care. I’m just glad to get away from the stink of farts and belly burps that is a group tour in Europe. I walk past the same stone bricks we’ve stared at all morning and I wonder if scar tissue could ever get cancer. If in the end, maybe all we are is a mottled ball of them.

When he turns to me, I see it in his eyes. Then I taste it on his lips. And somehow, the hellfire and the frigid halls become one entire life. Somehow, as my heart beat slows, the stone brick hallway folds into our kiss. All of it lingers, and then slips away like a morning.

 

C. L. Brenton

How to write a story (Five simple, no brainer tips)

As I go to author talks, seminars and tutor writing at my local high school, I am amassing a wealth of very simple, boiled down tips for story writing that I wish someone had taught me when I first started. Whether you're considering writing a memoir at the end of your life, or you're starting your storied journey at the beginning, I hope these tips help you as they have informed my own process.

Exploring Emotional Honesty

Think about the most emotional experiences in your life: children are born, people die, you get mugged, robbed, raped, your house burns down. Now I don't blame you if you don't want to write about those experiences, but you would be missing out if you didn't use them.

People love reality shows for a reason. They love loooking into other people's lives and imagining how they live. Have you ever been sucked into someone's facebook feed you barely know, or become fascinated with the comings and goings of your mysterious neighbor? Humans are intensely curious about other humans, and your life experience is unique from any one else's. That is what you're selling. These are the meaty emotions you have to farm. The more honest you can be about your own emotional life, the more engaging your story will be. Period.

Just Write it

Write your story as fast as you can. No one said you have to write it in order (though I wrote a novel out of order once and it was a huge pain to piece together later.)  Write about your emotional moments, write about a specific moment and twist it slightly to make it more interesting. Maybe in your emotional birth story your baby comes out as an alien instead. How would that change that emotional story? Whether you're writing westerns or scifi, romance or upmarket fic, honesty sells. Remember, honesty does not necessarily mean accuracy. You can be honest without being truthful.

Be the Reader

As you write, pretend you're reading the story instead of writing it. What do you the reader expect to happen? What do you want to happen? Let that inform you as you go. Chances are, you've been subconciously dropping hints along the way, and you don't want to disappoint the reader once you have them flipping pages to see what happens next. Remember the cardinal rule of story telling: Don't show the gun in the first act if you don't plan to use it in the third.

When (not if) you get stuck, ask yourself two questions: What does my character want? And how is this going to end? Both questions can help drive the story forward, and help you make better decisions.

Plot is Just a Game

There's this game I used to play on long road trips called Fortunately/Unfortunately. One player starts a story with a plot item - once upon a time there was a polar bear. The next person starts the next sentence with the word unfortunately. (Unfortunately he was very fat.) The next person starts with the word fortunately. (Fortunately all the ladies loved a fat polar bear.) And on and on until you reach a conclusion. Usually you'll want to determine the number of sentences you'll write before you come to a conclusion so your story doesn't trail on forever.

If you play this game with yourself and your own storyline, you'll have a pretty good plot outline to start with. Your character will struggle through adversity, get little wins, and come out a hero.

Talent = Practice/Time

Your first story won't be amazing, nor will your second, and nor will your third. If you're at all concious, you'll realize this. This will disappoint you. Good. Be disappointed. It will push you forward.

Keep writing, and keep editing your work (more on editing soon). One day (with practice) you'll be a better writer, and that version of you can go through all your unpublished work and edit (or rewrite) the concepts you love into something new. 

Writing is learning and growth, and above all it's a journey. Having a finished book is not as satisfying as the work that goes into writing every single day. There is always another book to write, and the next one, we always promise ourselves, will be better.

 

P.S. It usually is.

When Instructed

When I was at Jury Duty last week I ate lunch in the beautiful gardens behind the Walt Disney Concert Hall. A young couple was having their wedding photographs taken there, and I sketched their portrait in words. Enjoy!

Mirthless and faceless they only touch when instructed. Her nails are still wet, his tuxedo is too new it itches. Her long white dress must be carried along side her as if she were surrounded by and floating in a white puffy cloud.

Dad videotapes the whole affair on an old camcorder. He wants to remember every piece of today, from the way the blue fountain shoots out sunlight instead of water, how his wife holds the bouquet of pink haphazardly as if she were an incompetent hand maiden, a bored complacent intern.

They think they have resigned to nothing but they have resigned to everything. The photographer babbles on in Chinese. He places her creamy hands around his bronzed neck, and they don’t smile. He doesn’t touch her unless instructed.

The photographer poses her fingers one by one. This is true love, he thinks, fingers like this, neck like this, now tilt your head and smile. Smile at him. He presses a chipped nail, he moves dad filming a flower by the root of a tree out of the shot.

Click click click.

Instinct takes over when a silky white petal falls in her hair and he delicately removes it. The light shifts, a breeze presses the long spines of branches out of the way, and ruffles the poised leaves. 

The photographer corrals the bride and groom, this way, this way. 

Mom places the bouquet back in her daughter’s hands and scoops up the folds of her dress exposing her cherry blossom legs that blend right in with her small shoes.

They are mirthless and robotic. They don’t smile unless instructed, move unless instructed, laugh, bend, fight, lust unless instructed. They don’t hold hands, yet they move carefully.

We have to return that suit in good shape 

You have to have that dress for the rest of your life.

Dad films the way the light reflects off an impossibly tall glass building, he films the leather ruffle on her unscuffed shoes, he films mom bundling up the folds of her dress, the fountain again, the way it shoots out sunlight instead of water. They are eerily silent, eerily somber for such a beautiful day, a beautiful time, and a beautiful place.

The photographer runs up ahead and captures the nothing of this moment. They will treasure it forever, it will hang in the tapestry of their lives for eternity. Sometimes she will wish to go back there, sometimes he will wish it never happened at all.

Her pearls catch on something, a zipper maybe, a button, they pause. Mom lets the white fluff of her dress pour back to the ground and she delicately unhooks them and presses the pearls back to her neck.

Click click click.

Dainty elegant fingers scoop up the folds of her dress, and they walk along again as if she were floating in and surrounded by a cloud.

The awe of a white gown and a black tux follows them through the expanse of quaffed gardens.

Behind them, laughter fills the void in their wake. Families wander through with their own cameras, their own love, their own mirth, and they touch each other whether they’re instructed to or not.

 

C. L. Brenton

I do. I do.

I am beginning to understand my path as a writer, and what I want my work to stand for. I am perpetually searching for humanity in all things, farming emotional nuggets from moments and memories distant and near. 

I wish I could say where each piece draws its inspiration, but the answer is a lot of places. My work is not autobiographical but "patho-biographical." It pinpoints, perhaps, an emotional pulse in a lifetime of relationships, reading, and understanding.

I am grateful to have an outlet for weekly expression that I can share, and you can read. The rest of my life is spent toiling away on novels, such an internal endeavor, it's hard to mark my progress in any meaningful way. The work itself is satisfying, but there is no immediate response.

I hope you enjoy my meanderings, I certainly enjoy pulling words out of my journal each week to share them with you.

I do. I do.

 

I do not care about pressed napkins, dusted pianos or three course meals. But you do, so I do. You do not care about harmonies, staccato rhythm, or poetry. But I do. I do.

You cannot say a million things and I cannot say a million more. We tiptoe across each other like lovers in the nighttime. Like poets uttering only innuendo, only metaphor. But we are not lovers and we are not poets.

I was born of you and you were born of me. An umbilical cord stretches across states and time zones connecting two bodies, each puppets puppeteered by the other.

I do not care about quilted toilet paper, matching upholstery or crystal stemware, but you do, so I do. You don’t care about lines on a canvas, the difference between dawn and dusk, or cheeseburgers that taste even better when you eat them in the car. But I do. I do.

You are a frustrating reminder that you can’t love exactly everything about any one person. You have to pick what you love. Discard the rest. Even though your daggers are sharper than the rest. Even though they stay with me like a cloud of gnats, biting over and over until I get used to their perpetual sting.

You are the crate and barrel to my thrift store cacophony, you are the dust free, grout-less tile, matching pillow case nightmare to my rug-free, scratched paint, sweaty dream.

What do you want but for the rest of us to be like you? What do you want but for the mess to stay outside, and the dreams to stay gray and in bed where they belong? 

We are led leveled and hard boned and different. We are different but on a spectrum from A to Zed, from high to lowest of low we are the same. We are from the same street corner. Literally. We read the same books, we dated the same man, we loved the same movies, we cried the same tears.

We grew up together, even if I’m not entirely sure I know what that means. Now, there are not enough seats on your prim couch for one more me, and there is not enough wild in my world for one more you.

I sink back into pillows and you perch on a thin wire frame. And because you care about pressed napkins and euro shams and curtains that close, I do. I do.

My love is like a tangerine

This past week has been a whirlwind of old friends and writing. Lots of writing. I'm happy to present a recent piece written in the midst of it all. Enjoy!

It has come to my attention, that the sixth letter of the alphabet is missing on mobile devices as well as some browsers. I can't seem to fix the problem. Just know, for now, that I know how to spell. Sorry!

______________________

My love is like a tangerine. That pucker faced sour and sweet, ripped from the tree, the darkest orange you’ll ever know. 

We are tied like the braid in a horses tail, platted like his mane. Our sandals kick up manure and the heat is waves of glass radiating from the ground. I sip my beer and look at you. A perpetual flora to my grizzled fauna. A sunbeam in brunette.

The dust clogs up my lungs and the smell my nose, and when you grab my hand the taste of it fills my mouth. You pull me along windy trails, I pull you toward the ocean. We are the amber bubbles in my beer, constantly following one another up.

I look up and I think, you must be the sky that’s blue, and I’m the cloud that’s gray. Some people think the cloud makes the sky more beautiful, but not everyone does. 

You sip from my aching beer, and I sip from you. I am the sweet sting of tangerine on your lips and you are the yeast on my tongue. I tell you about the sky and the clouds. I tell you that not everything makes the sky more beautiful. Planes don’t, I say. Cars. Satellites. But clouds. They do.

We are the bow that hangs over the altar. You are the flowers, and I am the leaves. Some people think the green makes the flowers more beautiful, but not everyone does.

You are the twisted knobs of a tree and I am the breeze. You are the creamy expanse of field, and I am the gnarled fence, snaking its way through. You are the rain dripping down the window, and I am the shower steam condensing on the walls. I am the sweet sting of beer on your lips, and you, my love, you are the fizz of tangerine on my tongue.

Bison

I just returned from an epic road trip across the Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. I spent a lot of time in the Minnesota snow (or melting snow) and now I'm back, in beautiful, sunny california, going through everything I wrote out there on the road.

This is one piece I sort of love. Inspired by Southern Utah.

Bison

We're chasing winter and in a day we're caught between summer and snow. It's just a brown assemblage of dots on a skyline. Mundanity bleeding into more mundanity. Rock, river, flora, and fauna all blended on the same palate until each is a murky brown.

Not that it’s not beautiful, it’s beautiful. It’s the sort of beautiful that doesn’t stop because it’s cold, the sort of beautiful that doesn’t fade with age. It’s beauty in change, in sunsets, and old growth, and rainstorms and clouds that sweep across the night sky as if they’re cleaning it. Just doing some routine maintenance ma’am, just dusting the atmosphere.

Change is growth and death and life. I changed you for years but there was no beauty in it. Not like the birth of a million tiny grasses after the first snow melt, not like the way a trickle becomes a river and wedges itself into the heart of a canyon. Pressing deeper and deeper until there is no way in or out. Change is just like love that way, it’s neither optional, nor mandatory.

Sheets of ice skate down a gray river, and I’m more home than I ever was with you. Four wheels pester the road, grasping at nothing on slick smooth glass. We wobble and skid, but the road is straight and empty and we are fine. 

Hawks sidle up to fence posts. Crows gawk and flap down the long stretch of asphalt that divides two farms who’s beginnings and ends are not clearly defined on a map. A cow stops in the middle of the road, two hooves planted on either side of the yellow line, and I wonder if he too is not clearly defined. Standing between two things, two fences, two lives. Stuck in Americana like the rest of us fighting few. He’s all black and I wonder if that means something, until I see the graceful curve of his horns and realize he’s a bison and all my metaphors take off into the nothing of air, into the miles of space between us and another human, into the expanse of highway that hasn’t seen another car in days.

C. L. Brenton