. Spinning .

Brought to my attention via Nanette at e-zine, Narrative Magazine, a terrific online literary journal, has decided to start charging a $20.00 reading or submission fee for unsolicited work. Follow the links to a discussion at the Poets & Writers Speakeasy forum (you'll have to sign up, though it's free) where the pros and cons are being aired. It's an important issue since this may of course start a trend in publishing. We finally broke the ridiculous "no simultaneous submissions" restriction–though some still believe in it and try to hold the writers to it, unaware that most either don't send in stuff to them anymore or lie through their teeth about yep, honest, you're the only place I've sent this to because you're the greatest.

Bottom line? Do the poor unpublished masses want to "bail out" the lit mags? I'm not sure how I feel, having been editor and publisher and paying out of my own pocket for two magazines before; I understand the need for funding, though not a huge amount should be needed since contests should more than take care of themselves and there still are subscribers and for online stuff, the website is not all that expensive to maintain.

And what's with the "unsolicited" being charged; another jab at the poor and middle class level writers whilst the wealthy (you know, those same names you see over and over and over in the lit mags–though I can't blame the editors for wanting to keep the quality high) are not only not charged, but requested to submit for free.

I don't know, but with the thousands of submissions that each journal claims to receive every year, $20 per shot should produce more than a quality magazine–online or book form–and then some. Am I willing, with two, maybe three stories a year to spend $20 to each of the top twenty to fifty (out of nearly 3,000!) per story to just let them read it without a tad of comment other than "Pass?"  I doubt it. It's near enough to vanity publishing that I'd rather my friends and family throw the files down the hole with the dirt of my grave.

Man, I must have read this damn story a hundred times in the past five days. Still, still, before I send it out I find places to fix, make better.

The latest, a separation of paragraph spacing; a sentence moved from the end of one to the beginning of the next instead.

But it makes a world of difference.

As always, I read and write with the basic idea of borders, nodes, times and spatial levels in mind since messing around with a bit of hypertext and interactive fiction some years back. One thing that hit me along with all the other editing done in reading and reading and reading my own work was the notion of the separation of time and place via nodes or lexias that is the hypertext way. Perhaps because the past in this piece is enclosed within the face of a four-slice toaster, a visual space that separates the events; past and present, and the two women who are so much alike.

I don't really do a good job of hypertext writing, using it not to its complexity of levels of story, so not really getting everything out of it for the reader's benefit, I suppose. But even on the simplest mapping of two or three or four main story paths, I cannot fail to see the past as an ongoing story that is not only closely related to the present (the present becoming the past in the flash of a nanosecond) but is responsible for it as it plays out toward the future.

The other main appeal (for me) of hypertext is the simultaneous happening of time within different space. Easier put: I'm sitting here in CT typing on my laptop, but what's Willie doing and where?

This particular story is not prime for hypertext, but perhaps all stories contain the possibilities.

Thoroughly pleased with myself on a new story–just the mere fact alone that I've started writing and finishing a story was pleasing enough–I wanted it to be read. Somewhere in the back of my semi-educated on literature mind I felt it was good, but something was lacking.

I recently read a short piece from an excellent writer–an acquaintance (no, not your's, Carolyn) whose style and imagery is exquisite and powerful and the work awed me. Then I read it again for inspiration to get me away from the Faulkner influence of "much ado about nothing" that was currently going on in my reading and I realized something: for all the whiz-bang writing there really was no story there. The character was dramatic and yet weak in that it all boiled down to a tantrum of angst.

I realized that this has always been my own problem with my writing and while keeping word addition to a minimum, managed to give the characters some character; the conflict a bit of resolution with a few simple interactions between them. The character sitting on the last stool at the counter faces something he's always avoided, but with one tiny act, having him look for the waitress before he takes off, there is an element of change to the character, a depth, a hope for him if not a life-changing decision made.

There are still some lines to take out now that I've added; maybe a reading of Neruda to help me tap into the beauty of brevity, but I think today's work has improved greatly on what I thought was finished product. Silly me; it never is.

I must have made a million changes and yet this is still draft number one. I love editing. Almost as much as I love writing.

From the scent of my husband's morning toast comes a man with a history he tried to forget. But that one routine in a diner, where he's unprepared with his guard, the past comes back in the face of the chrome toaster, the pain as real as the past.

So it took reading Pablo Neruda to write a review of his "Ode to Laziness" and a bit of a ditty of my own, then the smell of toast to move on to writing a short short story, and ended with a little fiddling in Photoshop to make a new year's greeting. But there were other things at work here today that conspired to make it a rather productive day in creative output.

A warm laprobe, a couple good meals, and last but not least, liquor-filled dark chocolate.