First Time Published

April 2012

Published For the First Time

WHATEVER YOUR REACTION, IT'S THE RIGHT ONE

by Jay Speyerer

Have you ever looked at a painting with another person and you each get something different from it? The same holds true for family photographs. Each person might experience two completely different memories depending on which details they notice. Take this picture for instance.

This was taken in the mid-nineties with my daughter, Emma. When she saw the picture recently, she commented jokingly on the flowered shorts and wristbands as though her wardrobe amounted to some kind of parental infraction. While the photo awakened some nice memories of Emma's childhood in me, I confess to being just as interested in what I was wearing, i.e. the jean jacket.

I bought that jacket with the money I was paid for the first short story I ever sold. I lamented its loss after it wore out and started falling apart. But I still have the memory of that first publication.

This was the spring of 1990, the days when writers mailed in hard copies of their stories because email, while extant, was far from being mainstream. So you mailed your stories in big manila envelopes with another self-addressed, stamped manila envelope (the S.A.S.E. of fond memory) folded inside so the editor (or first reader) could send the opus back to you if it stunk up the joint.

An educational newsletter had already published an article of mine about keeping classroom lectures fresh, but this was the first fiction piece I had ever sent out. It was called "Weigh Station," and it was a dark fantasy about a long-haul trucker who was haunted for eternity by a fatal accident he had caused years before.

I checked the mailbox a few weeks later to find my return envelope from the magazine, a small press zine called The Horror Show. (Not to be confused with the current Horrorshow Magazine, which seems to be cool pub about movie monsters.) My crest immediately fell because I assumed it contained the manuscript and the standard copy of a copy of a Xerox of a mimeograph of a rejection slip. I learned later they all said pretty much the same thing: "Thank you for the enclosed material. We regret that it does not meet the needs of the magazine at this time." (The precise phrasing is acid-etched into my psyche because I received enough of those bounce notes in subsequent years to paper my office. We all do.)

When I dejectedly opened the envelope, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it contained a galley proof of the story as it would appear in the magazine, a thank-you note, and a check for $25.00!

The note was the perfect mix of the bittersweet and the ironic. It said something like "Dear Jay, Thanks for a great story. It will appear in the final issue of The Horror Show." That was sad on a few levels, not the least of which is the difficulty of becoming a regular contributor to a magazine that's going out of business. But this was the magazine that had accepted the first short story I had ever sent out. My first story was going into their last issue.

The picture of me in the jacket also took me back to my surprising reaction to seeing my name as a byline. The story was accompanied by an uncredited but not-bad black-and-white illustration of a screaming face and a truck with menacingly glowing headlights. And they got all the words right; no typos. They even spelled my name correctly, which is no mean feat. So everything was jake.

And yet seeing my name under the title did not evoke the thrill that almost every other writer of my acquaintance had said came as standard issue upon being published for the first time.

It could be that the earlier educational article had wrecked it for me, but geez, this was my first fiction. There should have been something.

When the same lack of reaction accompanied publication of my later stories, I figured out that my thrill came from having written a solid story and seeing a stack of finished pages in front of me, not just from being validated by one editor. I hasten to add that the first time I got into a national magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and was validated by Janet Hutchings -- that was a thrill! But again, seeing my name in print wasn't.

Whatever reaction you have to seeing one of your stories in print for the first time, it's the right one. Everyone's different. But the first rule for writers seeking publication is to be satisfied with the accomplishment of writing a piece you know is good. Then take satisfaction in knowing that a respected professional agrees with you.

Buying a jean jacket is optional.

~end~

I work with people who need to get out of the way of their own language so they can say what they really mean. If you would like to read more articles like this one, go to the Legacy Road store and look for the collected articles in my books Cat Got Your Thumb? and Cat Got Your Treadmill? (Move quickly while they're on sale)