Years ago, when I was in Earth Fare shopping, my husband and I met someone with whom he had grown up. We got to talking and discovered we were each writing memoirs. The difference? She had a publisher. And a contract. And a deadline. I was still, at that time, just writing my memoir hoping someone, someday, would want it. Which I admitted to her (all the while wishing I could say to her: “You have a publisher? Oh, me too, me too.”)
As the story goes, she said to me, “All you have to do is get published in The New York Times.” Which is what she had done. As if that were the easiest thing in the world. On her first try, she had gotten a piece into The NYT Modern Love column and boom bim bam, she had a publisher for a memoir she had not even written.
Needless to say, I tried to get into Modern Love a time or two or three billion, and I was unsuccessful. That was years ago. Eventually I finished my memoir (The Going and Goodbye) and got a publisher; I finished a short story collection (A Small Thing to Want) and got a publisher; and I finished a poetry collection (Trouble Can Be So Beautiful at the Beginning) and got a publisher.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to get into Modern Love or The New York Times.
Until a few weeks ago.
That’s when I attended a virtual literary festival and heard the editor of The NYT Tiny Love Stories speak—about what she looked for, what she didn’t like, what she wanted out of a submission. Each story is a maximum of 100 words—thus why it is called tiny (not because it’s made of stories about pitiful love—like what you feel for the person you care for just enough to meet for a drink but only if your favorite Netflix series doesn’t have a new episode out).
I thought, well, why not try to write a Tiny Love Story? Sure, it would be like throwing a paper airplane into a gusty wind, but I could at least have fun folding the airplane and sending it off, right? I’m a writer. I have thrown a zillion paper airplanes into the gusty winds of the publication world. (I have submitted to The New Yorker more than a handful of times—that should tell you how unafraid I am of gusty winds and how I have thick goggles to protect me when the airplane zips back all pointylike and darts right into the center of my face).
So I sat down, and I took a 300-word poem about Barney, our Jack Russell Terrier whom I had adored, and I chiseled it (not the dog) down to 100 words of prose.
Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy and it took quite a bit of time. I had to figure out what was most important (everything!) and how to pluck out the best parts of a sentence. I had to leave behind things I loved. But it was fun. So I folded my little airplane Tiny Love Story and sent it off to The NYT. I expected nothing. Well, that’s not true: I hoped to at least hear back a “We got your submission” and then later a “Thank you but…” (that’s how rejections always start out), but I realized big publications often don’t have time to send out those kinds of correspondence.
And then I did what any writer does who’s been around the block a few times: I started on the next one. Not because I am a masochist (although you could argue that all writers…) but because it was fun.
And then something really strange happened. You know how you hear about these stories of someone out in the middle of a desert, all alone, and suddenly spotting a UFO? Well, the editor emailed me back (she is not the UFO in this story), asked some follow-up questions, and then a few days later, accepted my piece. The acceptance is the UFO because IT’S FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES.
Of course I immediately thought back to that time in Earth Fare and that person who told me that all I had to do was get published in The New York Times.
Last week, I finally did.
You can read my Tiny Love Story here.
Photo by Harry Shelton from Unsplash.com.
Upcoming Seminars
Make Your Titles Do More of the Heavy Lifting
May 26, 2021, 6:30-8 p.m. EST
Titles should serve your poetry (and prose) rather than simply helping to navigate the contents page. Using poetry titles as examples so we can cover more ground during this short seminar, together we'll look at titles that work hard and offer zing and pizzazz so that your own titles will entice readers and better serve your writing. (What is covered in this seminar applies to flash fiction and flash nonfiction titles, too.) This program is part of Press 53’s High Road Festival of Poetry and Short Fiction. Cost: $30. Register here.
The Art of Memoir & Personal Essay: A Generative Writing Workshop
June 9-July 7, 2021 (Wednesdays), 2:30-5 p.m. (EST)
Join me in this five-week, online (Zoom) workshop during which you will generate new writing, read writing that inspires, and learn some tools and techniques on the craft of personal essay/memoir writing. There are no critiques in this workshop. The goal is for you to leave with first drafts and a writer’s toolbox ready to help you finish and write the rest of your own life stories. Space is limited. Learn more here. Cost: $349. Register here.