Yesterday’s post was going to be about tiny, cute creatures and their cerebral interactions with one another manifested by powerful Rage Spirits (which next week’s will be), but this guest blog in Jane Friedman’s newsletter was so powerful it knocked my brain loose for a day and I fell behind.

Sorry.

How do you avoid rejection? Take the writer out of writing.

So many times stories give me the impression of a writer writing about something. It’s in the story’s tone and flow. It’s in the plot that’s been done a few thousand times before, or is based on something that’s in the news. It’s in characters filtered through the writer’s personal experience, which limits their diversity and individuality.

In short, the writer is present in every sentence, hunched over the reader’s shoulder, which is why so much in these stories sounds like explanation, like the writer worrying that readers won’t “get it” unless they lay out paragraphs of background info. As Elmore Leonard famously said, it sounds like writing.

Joe Ponepinto; SOURCE

I mean, wow.

Wow.

Joe Ponepinto is a co-publisher and editor at Orca Literary, a literary journal that is, “is about fiction. Short stories and flash. We are a literary journal and we believe in the literary style of writing.” This quote is probably going to stay with me for the rest of my life, for good and bad. Now every time when I sit down, all I’ll think about is, “Am I in this story or is this story happening naturally?”

Great.

Thanks for reading,

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