LITERARY ORPHANS

Leo, on point, somewhere in the middle of the country, years and miles of memory ago…

I was looking back over a few recent posts on this tiny little endeavor of mine, and one thing I couldn’t help but notice was the popularity of stories that, for one reason or another, never found homes in the traditional publishing world. Literary orphans, as it were. And to be abundantly clear, “popularity” as it applies to a Substack account as tiny and unknown as mine, is a massively subjective term…

I am no longer involved, in any meaningful way, in the hook-and-bullet publishing world, a space in which I spent the majority of my writing career and a space which still takes up the majority of both my thoughts and actions, if not my job or title. I don’t even really call myself a freelance writer these days, not with a straight face, anyway.

Oh, I still write the occasional piece for publication when the mood strikes me and/or an editor says yes, but I can count on one hand, (with several digits left over) the number of hook-and-bullet publications still willing to publish the kind of stories I’m still willing to write.

So increasingly I turn to this Substack, which was started as a sort of online scratchpad and repository for random stories, as my primary outlet for writing.

At some point, if I continue to experience a very small, slow, increase in both free and paid subscribers, I will have to decide how to proceed with this literary orphanage of mine, whether to continue my aimless and spotty meanderings or buckle down and actually try to turn it into something real and possessing value to readers.

But that’s another subject. For now, back to literary orphans…

I was re-reading a piece I published here back in March. I called it “Old Man, Yelling at Clouds” because thematically, that’s exactly what it was. You can read it here if you are so inclined…

I sent that piece off to five different publications, including places where I had previously been published and had established relationships with editors.

It got rejected by every single one of them.

Now, usually when a piece gets rejected by multiple editors, that’s a sign there’s something fundamentally wrong with a piece. Editors reject stories for any number of good reasons: poorly-written, poorly structured, derivative, lack of story arc, too much cliché, too wordy, not wordy enough, subject not germane to readership, bad editorial timing, the list goes on.

I know, because for almost six years or so I was the editor of a small, obscure, low-circulation magazine in the hunting space, and I could tell within about ten seconds and four paragraphs of beginning a story whether it had a chance or it was getting rejected.

Two stories, however, that always got a closer look from me were deeply personal yet universally identifiable stories the that showed the writer’s blood, and stories that threw safety and convention right out the window. But increasingly, it seems those are the stories slowly disappearing from the page.

Now I’m not claiming that “Old Man, Yelling At Clouds” was any kind of masterpiece. I literally wrote it on my phone while sitting on the tailgate of my truck one day during bird season a couple years back. It’s short for a feature, not terribly well written, and structurally it’s… not much. No action, no story arc, no throughline, no character development, no character, period. Hardly more than a screed. And a screed is thin gruel, indeed, for a feature well story (one editor said “this is more of a blog post,” which was a bit ironic in today’s world of 1,200-word feature stories…).

But I felt it had something important to say, and said it in a way that was both meaningful and entertaining to the reader, if a bit different. As it turns out, quite a few of you thought so as well, because it has become one of my more popular posts.

Which begs the question: Were all those editors wrong to reject it? Not at all. Sometimes for whatever reason, a story just doesn’t fit. And these editors made the call that my story simply wouldn’t work for their publications. While I disagreed, I respected their point and could certainly see their perspective.

It is, however, an example of why rejection is not judgement. A few of you liked it, even if they didn’t, and for a writer, a few is enough for the appreciation the words seek.

Everyone has differing tastes, differing esthetics, and differing expectations of what they want out of a piece of writing. And I’ve always demanded a lot from what I read as well as from what I write.

When I read something, I want to be challenged, confronted, made to think. I want to be affected in some way beyond the warm, gooey, feel-good tapioca that chokes most writing to death.

And the same standard holds true for my writing. I just never saw much point in spewing out safe, saccharine pablum. I like words and writing that leave scars. Good scars, bad scars, doesn’t matter. But it’s gotta cut you in some way

Once, years ago in my former life as an editor, I heard a friend of mine (as well as an immensely talented and much more accomplished writer than myself) describe my writing on a podcast as (and I’m paraphrasing from memory here) “not meant to soothe or comfort the reader,” or something to that effect.

I’d say that’s a fair assessment, and points to how I view writing and words. I’m not making chicken soup. I make thoughts and ideas. So my goal is to make the words that convey those thoughts and ideas damn good ones; words that crack and whip and draw the sting of recognition from both writer and reader. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail. But I always try.

And that is why, despite having no real strategy or editorial direction or vision—and damn sure no marketing or self-promotion or personal branding skills—I still try to post here on Substack and attract a few more readers to give these homeless, hopeless, unadoptable orphans a way to reach at least a few appreciative eyeballs.

That means something in a world where opportunity continues to shrink in the outdoor space for a particular type of writing that no longer fits the analytics of what gets published.

Maybe I sound too much like that old man yelling at clouds, but I do despair the depressing sameness that permeates so much of what I read in the outdoor space these days, the institutionalized unwillingness to take chances in favor of a safe, artfully-curated miasma of blandness. It’s like eating a quarter-pounder from McDonalds. It doesn’t matter what McDonalds you get it from, you know exactly how it’s going to taste.

But then again, each of us sees the world through a window of our own making, and some folks really like McDonalds. That is not for me to judge.

I’m just happy a few of you chose, with your likes and comments, to affirm my own faith in one small literary orphan that no one else wanted.