Ways to Get Better at Your Craft Without Making DeVoss Richer

Fig. 1: The Common's Weekly Writes, Volume 2; Fig. 2: Barrelhouse’s Short Fiction Boot Camp; Fig. 3: Scheduling workshops within your writer community

I have a Masters in History and I’ll be honest, I am totally reliant on future legislation to alleviate the weight of this on my back. Needless to say, an MFA, no matter how much I would love to get one, just isn’t in the cards.

I am stuck trying to figure out how to get better at what I most want to do. Because, guys, I need to get better. So. Let’s talk options.*

Literary Mags

I have found that as I explore more literary magazines, many of them have instructional opportunities. Tin House, soon to be an exclusively online literary magazine as they focus more on education (ding, ding, ding) and their book publishing efforts, offers workshops throughout the year as well as retreats. One Story also hosts a week-long intensive onsite each summer, web-based workshops throughout the year, and a yearly fellowship which gets you access to all of their educational resources plus direct assistance with your works in progress.

Carve as a magazine, is a writers magazine. There are so many resources for writers in a single issue. Each published author is also interviewed extensively about the craft and their decisions in their art. One of my favorite pieces in each issue is the section where they look at an author whose work they rejected and talk to them about what they did to later get the same piece published elsewhere. As a subscriber, I also heard back much faster from them than others, and the editorial note they added was both encouraging and clarified something that wasn’t landing as I’d hoped it was for folks who didn’t hear me tell them what I was trying to do in the first place. Damn helpful.

Barrelhouse hosts instructional programming every year (plus a couple of conferences—more on that below). I have just started their Short Fiction Boot Camp, with each editor taking on a different subject matter. This first week we’re talking about beginnings, appropriately enough, and already some of the reading and the discussions has suggested pointers that have given me ideas and confidence in restructuring existing stories. They also host writer camps.

The Common began hosting a ten-week story generating project last year that is entirely asynchronous, but includes: prompts, assigned reading from the magazine, and interviews with an editor which usually includes additional reading selections from the lit mag, and a grounding in their emphasis on setting. There is no feedback as with the Barrelhouse Boot Camp, but it is constructive reading, and upon completion, you can submit for free for up to 3 months afterwards. (One note: I found the prompts to be more anecdotally driven, then I would like, resulting in more autobiographical work, but I also want to spend more time to develop my work within their structure. I also feel like there is a non-fiction bias because of this.)

Other literary magazines, like A Public Space, also host fellowships for education and more personalized attention, plus Master Classes with authors.

Short Courses

GrubStreet hosts both onsite programming in Boston (including a robust youth writing program) as well as online short courses. The platform, Wet Ink, they use is a nice flexible platform and the faculty often utilize video lectures in addition to discussion boards. Plus, each story you post in the portal for assignments has an in-line feature, as well as a comment section (you can adjust settings to allow you to read in-line comments or hide them, too). I have taken a class with them and anticipate doing so again.

The others, below, include the options that I looked into for this year, but have not tried at this point.

Writer’s Digest University offers web-based short courses, craft articles, the Writer’s Digest craft magazine, and even one-off webinars, covering all areas of writing, from copywriting to novel-crafting.

The Writer’s Center provides a similar service as Boston’s Grub Street, but is located in Bethesda, MD just outside of DC.  

Catapult also hosts a large number of short courses in addition to its online publication of fiction, nonfiction, and craft essays.

In addition to these larger short course options, I have tapped into the local literary community in the Baltimore/D.C. area. Local organizations like CityLit (Baltimore) and The DC Center’s (an LGBTQ+ community arts organization) OutWrite host evening or one-off workshops, and literary festivals for readers and writers, including educational craft or business opportunities.

Writing Conferences

There are about a million of these, but the SLICE Literary Conference is the one I found that I made happen first and I am extremely loyal because I have started to recognize regular participants and because I appreciate how well-rounded it is. There are two things I have gained: Firstly, I have built up my writerly community by making connections with participants and these relationships have become important in improving my craft because we share things: our work, places to publish, new places/authors to read, craft-related resources, etc. But, secondly, I have gotten really important insights into the publishing world—things that both fill me with hope and also with a certain amount of trepidation; I have gotten solid advice on how to be a writer in the literary community and how to be generous in that role (even if I am still “emerging”); I have been exposed to more writers and their work; I have been able to engage with the questions that matter most to me as a writer; I have been given solid advice on craft and how to keep improving it.

Here in Baltimore we have the CityLit Project. While they are not currently hosting regular workshops, they host a number of annual events or participate in the larger literary community. For example, they have a stage at the Baltimore Book Festival for panels, they host a free annual festival, and they sponsor other literary events, like readings, in the city. Last year I attended a master writing class for something absurd, like $10, with Yrsa Daily Ward and it was fantastic—this year it’s $10 for sure.

Baltimore Writers Conference is hosted at local Towson University. They have a number of panels like CityLit’s, featuring authors, editors, and arts funding/community organizations. I have enjoyed the opportunity to connect with local publishers, authors, and leaders of local arts organizations in a more intimate environment than a larger lit con like Slice’s—which is still pretty intimate as these things go.

Barrelhouse Magazine hosts two regional writers conferences, one in NoVA and one in Pittsburgh. In addition to hosting authors, they also host a large number of lit mags for speed pitches. It has been on my radar and I haven’t had the chance to attend, yet, but I have heard some solid reviews about the culture at these and hope to attend one of them this year (the NoVA one conflicts with the CityLit conference, so… decisions).

Your Writing Community

Through these other avenues, I have met other authors and writers who I have pulled into my literary community both locally and beyond my immediate region. These fine people have different strengths and weaknesses that we can exploit for each other’s gain. I am most active with those who have joined my Facebook group just because it is an easy virtual place to check in and connect.

Here are some of the things we have done together:

• Shared best practices

• Shared in learning ops

• Workshopping

• Writing meetups

• DIY writer retreats at out-of-the-way Air B&Bs (more distraction-free rather than isolated)

What are Your Craft-Building Strategies?

Any courses or orgs you’d recommend? Any conferences that you are loyal to? What have I missed or what do you have locally that you’d like to shout out?

*In this post, I am doing limited coverage of places that I have found specifically for instructions, not craft books or MFA programs.

The New Fantasy, Beyond Genres

The New Fantasy

The New Voices of Fantasy, review

Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman title their collection New Voices of Fantasy. What does that mean today? The literature being published under the heading “literary” is allowed to be magical realism—though not without criticism from some quarters (that tweet I saw once: “Magical realism is neither ‘magical’ nor ‘real’…” followed by something more disparaging”)—but if it’s fantasy it’s something else. There is clearly a shifting and merging of genres, but rather than identifying different ways to communicate ideas and convey reality, value judgements remain, especially among the gatekeepers.

If I pull Karen Russell’s short story collections off my shelf and look at the publication credits, I see Tin House, Conjunctions, The New Yorker, Oxford American, Granta. If I scan Kelly Link’s website, I see Tin House, Conjunctions, Strange Horizons, McSweeney’s, A Public Space, Event horizon, Stranger Things Happen, Realms of Fantasy, Lightspeed, Uncanny, Realms of Fantasy. Aside from demonstrating that Link has been at this longer than Russell, this list sparks many questions. Why only the two overlapping literary mags? Why is every other publishing magazine on Link’s bibliography a “genre” magazine (except for A Public Space), whereas Russell’s are even more “literary” literary magazines? Does anyone really believe Sleep Donation is more literary fic than genre? How much reflects what the authors themselves were reading and therefore dictating where they sent their work? How much of this difference lies in Link trailblazing for authors like Russell? How much of these lists reflects a shift over time, in which literary fic has come to more fully embrace elements of speculative fic?

All of this brings me to Weisman and Beagle’s respective introductions. Weisman’s comes first. He writes that all of the works in the collection are published after 2010 and reveals that Beagle’s last anthology, The Secret History of Fantasy, published in 2010, “explored the merging of genre fantasy and so called mainstream markets into a new form of literary fantasy. This anthology constitutes something of a sequel, leaping ahead to examine the work of a brand-new generation of writers working along similar lines.” It is, and I am paraphrasing loosely here, unabashed signal boosting of a new cadre of writers, most of them racking up awards as the collection was being compiled.

As new as the writers might be, I wonder if they could have called this collection “The Voices of the New Fantasy,” afterall, there are no knights with swords, no wizards, and more ducks than dragons. But Beagle quotes Ursula LeGuin’s advice when he was asked to speak at an annual meeting of the SFWA, “remember that all of us feel, to one degree or another, that mainstream fiction has been stealing our ideas—and even our classic clichés—for generations, and selling them back to us as ‘Magical Realism.’ Tell them that, loudly and repeatedly, and the ones who can still stand up will be buying you drinks all night.” Beagle goes onto to say that the “remarkable young writers” whose work he gathered aren’t likely to face “either the intellectual snobbery or the commercial exclusion” his generation endured, noting that some have even been accepted to the Iowa State Workshop, but even so financial success may still prove illusive.

This was published in 2017 and it is interesting to consider what Cecilia Tan wrote in “Let Me Tell You” for Uncanny in the same year,

The power to “show, not tell” stemmed from the writing for an audience that shared so many assumptions with them that the audience would feel that those settings and stories were “universal.”… Look at the literary fiction techniques that are supposedly the hallmarks of good writing: nearly all of them rely not on what was said, but on what is left unsaid. Always come at things sideways; don’t be too direct, too pat, or too slick. Lead the reader in a direction but allow them to come to the conclusion. Ask the question but don’t state the answer too baldly. Leave things open to interpretation… Make allusions and references to the works of the literary canon, the Bible, and familiar events of history to add a layer of evocation—but don’t make it too obvious or you’re copycatting. These are the do’s and don’ts of MFA programs everywhere. They rely on a shared pool of knowledge and cultural assumptions so that the words left unsaid are powerfully communicated. I am not saying this is not a worthwhile experience as reader or writer, but I am saying anointing it the pinnacle of “craft” leaves out any voice, genre, or experience that falls outside the status quo. The inverse is also true, then: writing about any experience that is “foreign” to that body of shared knowledge is too often deemed less worthy because to make it understandable to the mainstream takes a lot of explanation. Which we’ve been taught is bad writing!

In other words, literary fiction has a tendency to demand a certain homogeny dictated by the preferred techniques that genre fiction does not insist on in the writer’s craft DNA.

More recently, Victor LaValle and Marlon James, both established authors of literary fiction, have drawn attention for leaving lit fic in favor of fantasy. LaValle’s last novel, The Changeling, and James’s freshly released Black Leopard, Red Wolf are both fantasy, the former an urban fantasy fairy tale and the latter an “African Game of Thrones.” Vulture interviewed the pair in New York (over dumplings, you should know). The interviewer asked, “what’s going on in speculative fiction today. How is it changing?” On the one hand, James points out what Beagle has: “There are so many writers now who’ve been blurring the line between so-called literary and so-called genre that they become almost meaningless. It used to be people thought you were slumming if you wrote genre.” But, they acknowledge in tandem that in many quarters there’s something about fantasy that still isn’t good enough. LaValle echoes Tan above, saying,

Literary realism demands that everybody agree on what real life is — and it is really a very specific subset of American or European life — but if all the writers and the critics and the jurors for the prizes agree that this is our life, it becomes realism. I love reading the fantasy of middle-class life in Connecticut, because I’ve never lived that before. Do you all really cheat this much? That to me is like, Wow!

James goes on to point out that while he grew up in independent Jamaica, he was still taking British exams, but he refused to make the distinction between the literature of his schooling and the pop culture he also loved, “I am getting the same feeling from Love and Rockets that I’m getting from One Hundred Years of Solitude but I’m supposed to look at one as, that’s comics and that’s a serious novel? From a very early age, I thought, That’s bullshit. The whole idea of a great American novel is bullshit.”

There is a sense that, as a genre, fantasy (and science fiction) can carry a burden past the gatekeepers to the audience, which literary fic cannot. To quote Tan and Uncanny article again:

But SF/F can do better. We can break the status quo and leave it broken into a completely new shape. This doesn’t reduce the potential power of an SF/F story: it increases it. Instead of a set of shared assumptions about “universal” setting, the SF/F writer has more control over every aspect of the reader experience. All fiction is metaphor, but in a story where the society, customs, and language are crafted rather than inherited, the reader experience of that metaphor can be all-encompassing. The reader learns powerful cultural norms and acquires the new language the same way they acquired their first one: through experience.”

Which brings us back to the current collection. While some of the stories are lighter and some are more entertaining than brimming with meaning, it remains that fantasy, parable, and fairy tales carry a lot of weight, which is not to say they’re necessarily moralistic. As Tomi Adeyemi says in an interview featured in Slice Magazine (Fall’18/ Winter’19, Issue 23) about her blockbuster debut fantasy novel Children of Blood and Bone, “It’s real life. This book is about being black. There’s fantasy. There’s adventure. But it’s all real.”

The collection radiates with various truths and entertainments conveyed in open defiance of the laws of science, and often quivering with mysticism:

Alyssa Wong’s story, “Hungry Mothers of Starving Daughters,” tells the story of women who have learned to thrive off the negativity fed them by men, only to learn that the toxicity of the power gained threatens their cherished relationships. The setting could be Gotham as easily as New York—I kind of like thinking of it in the world of Gotham, to be honest. I love it. It was originally published in Nightmare Magazine, #37, Queers Destroy Horror!, 2015. She is the youngest author in the collection and has the honor of initiating you into the collection as the first story.

Sofia Samatar’s story, “Selkie Stories Are for Losers,” is set in rural small town American. The narrator hates selkie stories, because they’re always about finding your mother’s skin and never seeing her again. When she meets the only other girl at the restaurant where she works to help offset the hole her mother left in the budget, she promises never to tell Mona any selkie stories, but she knows them all. The two teens have to console each other, and they plan to run away to Colorado—as far from the sea as the she can get them.

Ursula Vernon’s story, “Jackalope Wives,” plays in a space deeply rooted in the American ethos of western expansion, but instead of six-shooters or Willa Cather’s sturdy immigrants taming the land, she invents a folklore and weaves it gently alongside existing threads of folklore. Ultimately, the theft from the Jackalope wife is resolved in keeping with the traditions of folklore, even if it is not in keeping with the historical theft of America. (You can also listen to Levar Burton read it in his podcast series.)

E. Lily Yu’s story, “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees,” this story was delightful and surprising and, in places, unforgiving. Set in a Chinese landscape wherein paper wasps map their territory on the paper of their hive and use this knowledge when they are forced to relocate to subjugate the bees in the land. In the colonial traditions of imperialist powers everywhere, the local population has some of its denizens kidnapped and raised in the new ways. From this, anarchy and resistance is born.

Kelly Sandoval’s story, “The One They Took Before,” is arguably the closest story to more traditional fantasy out of the entire collection (other, perhaps, than Chris Tarry’s story, “Here Be Dragons,” in which there are none, just a couple of conmen out for thrills and wealth at the expense of their family--actually, given his other career as a bassist, maybe they’re a rock band). Sandoval’s taken, alluded to in the title, are those talented humans collected by the Fae, used up and returned to the modern world, and left churning in it the way the abused so often do.

Eugene Fischer’s story, “My Time Among the Bridge Blowers,” reprises the writing style of the non-fiction imperialist travelogues, writing of their “quaint” exposure to various native populations depleted by colonial invasion, but in a fantastical setting. It is a world that could easily fill a novel.

In all of this, I am leaving out Carmen Maria Machado’s “The Husband Stitch,” playing on campfire tales and tellings of casual horror between men and women; Brooke Bolander’s lovelorn tornado seeking to impress and love a human woman who’s struggles to be normal and fit in only leave her disappointed; Max Galdstone’s modern Dracula story, an oddly charming Dracula story—as opposed to a charming Dracula, thank God; and Amal El-Mohtar’s mysterious, mystical story of love as it is when written out for us; plus so many more.

In the end, I appreciate this new fantasy a great deal—I even write it sometimes. It is made up of different cultural norms that are still real even if I am a stranger to them. It is queer. It’s peopled with women. It is told by individuals with names I have known how to pronounce since preschool and ones I suspect get flagged unjustly by TSA for extra harassment when flying. It is interesting and different and exciting, whether it is being published in “literary” lit mags or “genre” lit mags. I’m here for it.

Volunteering at the Carmen Maria Machado Reading with Old Town Books

Nicole Chung interviewed Carmen Maria Machado at the Old Town Books event, hosted at the Athenaeum of the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association.

This February I saw that Carmen Maria Machado was being interviewed by Nicole Chung in Northern Va. I contacted the hosting organization and they put me in touch with the event organizer and after a few emails, I was locked in as a volunteer.

And it was a brilliant move—thanks to my wife for suggesting it!

The conversation and discussion about how one approaches writing a memoir and why Carmen wanted to structure it in a speculative way was fascinating. It was exciting to hear that in some ways it parallels the approach I have taken to some of my speculative historical short fiction. I embarrassingly enough had not thought of how many approaches to memoir could overlap with thinking about historical content in general.

As much as I wanted to see these two authors discuss memoirs, I also wanted to make sure I was as helpful as possible. I showed up pretty early because I was afraid of traffic around the DC beltway being unpredictable. And as a result, I had the opportunity to check out the location. The Athenaeum is a gorgeous piece of historical architecture, and the Fax Ayres exhibit was a delightful backdrop for a discussion on speculative writing.

Carmen and Nicole were wonderful. Both were both gracious with their time and provided a stimulating conversation about craft and an interesting discussion about writing memoir itself.

I helped the Old Town Books staff set up and take down with direction from the staff of the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association, who maintains the Athenaeum. I think volunteering was worth it to meet the staff of both organizations alone. One of my goals for this year, was to expand my connections and attend events not just in the local literary community, but the local arts community in general.

Old Town Books is still a new book store, but they have embraced the opportunity to supply the Old Town and NOVA area with literary and arts events. In addition to bringing in authors and hosting workshops, they also host music events highlighting some of the shop’s favorite musicians, by inviting them in for intimate concerts.

Again, I’m so glad I did this for so many reasons. It was rewarding in a multitude of ways.

And I also got my story collection signed.

The Difference in Our Different Voices, Little Patuxent Review, Issue #25

Little Patuxent Review Issues 21, 22, 25

While my goal here is to review Issue 25 (Winter 2019), my journey with the Little Patuxent Review begins with Issue 22 (Summer 2017), which featured a section of essays and interviews reflecting on the city of Columbia, MD, where the lit mag is published (thus meeting one of my Annual Reading Challenges). Created in 1967, Columbia was dreamed up by a white man to be a utopian city for all races, religions, and classes—where the CEO could live next door to the janitor. It’s difficult for me to doubt that founder Jim Rouse genuinely envisioned an economically productive community that achieved a level of equality that was in many places in 1967 America actually rejected as evil.

In issue 22, locals engage with the successes and failure of that dream. Columbia is not a successful utopia for all races, religions, and classes. But, you may find it comes closer than most places in the United States, especially in the older neighborhoods which were built before the ‘90s and the decade’s unfortunate nationwide brand of suburban growth models.

This city is the home of the Little Patuxent Review, and LPR hosts its twice-annual launch parties in Oliver’s Carriage House, the home of the non-denominational, ecumenical Kittamaqundi Church—a church that relocated from Washington DC to Columbia and formalized itself 50 years ago to be part of the new city Rouse was building. Part of Rouse’s vision included communal neighborhoods built around community centers and interfaith churches to serve everyone in the community.

It was here that I was introduced to Issue 25. Grateful to be a way from the ubiquitous strip malls and office parks that now seem to buffer Columbia from major through-ways, I arrived (late) to the readings. Baltimore author Anthony Moll (Out of Step) edited Issue 25 intended to highlight the work of Maryland and D.C. queer authors, “showcasing the diversity of styles and voices found throughout the region.” (Despite the community’s desire to embrace all, it is nonetheless amusing to note that they must seldom have so many young queers in their space. I showed up, beard untrimmed, fashionable neck-wear in place, and at the conclusion of the reading, no fewer than three old-timers told me how much they enjoyed my reading. I didn’t read anything.)

Moll points out in his introduction, that there is a justified suspicion of themed issues for marginalized voices. After all, our voices hardly need to be shoved into their own shadow box, temporarily displayed on a pedestal and ignored the rest of the time. (Writing this during African American History Month, it’s worth stating the obvious: that African American History is 365 days a year. We just try to dedicate a month a year to correcting the historical record. Publication, and education itself, have long been withheld to keep certain voices in this country from being heard.) Moll’s counterpoint to this concern is equally full of merit, “At a time in which we see hard-fought gains for marginalized people slipping in the wrong direction, finding solidarity in both our shared experiences and ‘the differences among our differences’ feels tremendously urgent.”

An LPR issue features fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and a full color photo essay either profiling the work of a local artist—it’s a beautiful print publication. Both themed issues, Issue 22 with its spotlight on Jim Rouse’s Columbia, and Issue 25 with its emphasis on area queer authors, have an additional section at the back highlighting the theme. In the case of Issue 25, Moll’s contributions to the overall issue result in a surprisingly well-connected whole package. While it is hard to say how racially diverse the contributions from the regional LGBTQ+ writers were based on my attendance at the launch party, the microcosm view successfully highlights different voices and individual creative concerns.

The reading at the launch gave the poets, in particular, an opportunity to share a larger selection of their individual work than the single poems included in the issue. Adam Gianforcaro’s interest in the body, including the work he read in which he catalogs his body’s engineering, influenced the tension between the figures in his published poem “I Want To Hold My Boyfriend’s Hand,” wherein the speaker and his boyfriend are constantly navigating the space they place between each other’s bodies. Marlena Chertock’s ecopoetry was complimented by her other interest in medical written art, addressing different challenges in different ecosystems, even the social ones. Cindy Watkins regaled us with her poetic account of dating in the age of Tinder, then read an additional poem charming us with her ode to goats, a surprising take-down of our obsession with borders. Tyler Vile brought modern feminist Jewish thought to Jewish history and scriptures in a dazzling midrashic poetic form, though her contribution to Issue 25 reflects on 20th century Jewish history reminiscent of our modern issues with 45.

Add to these voices the non-fiction contributions from Tyler Mendelsohn, whose “Ghost Lore” catalogs the many vocabulary words in which ghost is included and in which ghosts seem to reach us, whether by “fucked-up algorithms” in our social media or other ways, and how that helps us define our survival; to Karen Bell, whose description of being queer in Edinburgh captures the ever-present contrast between our safe places and prides to the threat of violence among our fellow humans; to Jane Hegstrom, whose memories of middle America in her childhood showcase the thrilling danger of her tom-boy youth; to Laurel Dixon, whose “Hymn Children” recounts the incredible release from the confines in the closet through soaring song on a karaoke stage; we see the different voices highlighting a string of experienced same-sex relationships, both romantic and platonic.

There are only four works of fiction in Issue 25, the genre in which I write most often. But the emphasis on the poetic and the non-fiction, including interviews of author Laurie Frankel, whose most recent novel is about family life with a transgender child which is shown to be, unremarkably, mostly about having a family, and of Jessica Myles Henkin and Laura Wexler, the women behind Baltimore’s Stoop Stories, who talk about the necessity of story-telling and connecting with each other through our stories, manage to drive home Moll’s editorial introduction and the need for all of us to hear about “the difference among our differences” (Moll quotes E. Patrick Johnson in Text and Performance Quarterly). Marginalized voices often tell stories reminiscent of other marginalized voices because certain patterns of behavior are often repeated against the marginalized, but one marginalized voice, one token of a community, is hardly representative of the whole, because there are many ways to be individuals in every community. And Issue 25 of the Little Patuxent Review is just one enjoyable contribution to the representation of my region’s LGBTQ+ writers and creatives.

Other artists of note:

The artist profile in this issue was on artist Alexis Aramina Renee.

Also in attendance at the launch/reading was poet Alan King, recent award-winner of the Michael J. Clark Award for his poem “Journey”.

Getting Published in 2019 - A list

1. Read all of the local litmags—support them and local authors and literary organizations.

2. Attend all the local events I can—definitely the writerly ones, but not limited to those. Lit mags want art, other artists tell stories, and all of that exposure will only help my art. Besides art is not a zero-sum game. What’s good for the arts is good for me—support my arts community and give it a reason to support me when my work gets out there.

3. Read lots of literary mags and story/essay collections. Pay attention to where authors I like, and maybe write a little like, get published. Read those mags; support and signal boost them; support and signal boost the authors I like.

4. Look for opportunities to improve my writing, whether in classrooms, with groups, or from reading stories and craft books.

5. Find good potential homes for my stories, establish rules for where I want my stories to appear and under what circumstances.

6. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write. Write.

7. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit. Edit.

8. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit. Submit.

9. Make room on the book shop’s shelf for my name.