Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.
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Mindy: We are here today with Jamie Lyn Smith, who is the author of Township, which is a collection of short stories - many of which are set in Appalachia, Ohio. So, actually one of the first things I'd really like to talk about, when people talk about Appalachia, I don't think everyone quite understands how large of a swath that actually covers. A lot of people don't really recognize that parts of Ohio are considered Appalachia.
Jamie: Very much so. And you know the town that I'm from, Mount Vernon, you can see where the Blue Ridge starts. It's kind of cool where the glacier slid to a stop. If you look one way, you see the plains to the west, and if you look east, you can see that lovely hazy blue line that comes from certain flora and fauna that define the Appalachian region. And of course, Appalachia stretches from Alabama to Maine. Communities like the one that I live in and that I wrote about are also comprised of a lot of migrant Appalachians. I'm kind of considered second or third generation because my father migrated, and then my grandparents migrated from my mother's side of the family. So it exists in many places. In addition to being like a physical place, there's also many diverse cultures within Appalachia that exists outside of the actual hills.
Mindy: Where I live it's very flat. I live in farming country, and it's very, very flat out here. I was thinking this morning, actually - I was at the dentist. I'm from a very, very small town. I know you're from Mount Vernon - so much smaller even than that. It's tiny. We have one stop light. I was at the dentist this morning, and I was in the chair, and there were two people in each of the other rooms, and I knew who they were. They hadn't seen them walk in, we didn't see each other in the waiting room, nothing like that. But I was laying on my chair and just hearing them speak or saying whose graduation parties they were going to this weekend, I was like, "Yup, and that's so and so, and that's so and so, and that's so and so." Some things that I run across in my writing that people don't necessarily think are plausible, but are very, very true - I'll be around people that are like, "Well, I grew up in a small town, and it's not true that everybody knows everybody." And I'm like, "Well, then your town wasn't actually small enough."
Jamie: I love that you come up with a measure. I never really thought about defining it like that. I'm actually from Centerburg. I was born in Mount Vernon 'cause there is no hospital in Centerburg. We've got maybe one or two more traffic lights than you.
Mindy: I do have measurements that I use. When people tell me they live in the country, I always ask if there's paint on their road. If you have lanes in your road, you don't live in the country. So that's something that I run into when I'm writing about small towns and small town cultures - people that have never lived that way, not quite understanding the way things work, how small things really are, but also an assumption that everyone is like a redneck or a hillbilly or a racist or sexist or, you know, any collection of bad tropes that we get about country life. So what are some things that you've run into or that you experienced or that you're kind of writing against - that you're writing to push back about.
Jamie: Oh, I love this question. I'm actually working on a panel proposal for the AWP Conference with a couple of other Appalachian writers about this very thing. In it, we talk a lot about querying and dissenting our narratives in ways that we write about people that you wouldn't expect. There are so many surprises in a small area, and I think the other thing that is unique to Ohio, and I don't know if you recognize this as well, but like you can't drive there more than 25 miles in any direction and not hit a college. We have colleges everywhere - and so, you know, little ones, big ones, technical trade schools. And this is a state where you may have kind of a racist redneck-y person, but they're living right next to this professor who's working on the cutting edge of the response to Covid-19.
And I think that those kinds of experiences are rare for people in dense cities often where there's a lot of stratification of wealth and income based on where you live. Those kinds of things I think are really interesting. And also to the idea that people who farm or who are working in trades, whether it's agriculture, whether it's factory work, that they're not smart. That's one of the things that I really push back against. And for me, one of the ways to do that in my writing is through humor. People that are dealing with terrible choices and terrible situations are keenly aware of that, and they're also keenly aware and often employ gallows humor to cope. So when I'm writing about terrible things like the kid who survived his brothers accidental death by auto-erotic asphyxiation, I know that there has to be room in the story, because there has to be room in life, for all of us to breathe. So finding the humor in the surviving brothers' religiosity and his struggle to be both smart and cool and popular and sexy and also Christian - 'cause it's really important to him. Those are the kinds of things that I see every day in small town culture. There's a whole skill set to living out here. If you move from a city, you gotta figure out - how do I hook up a generator? 'Cause you're gonna need it.
Mindy: You would just not have power sometimes. When I was growing up, if a storm came through and you lose your power, you are not high on the list of this road that has two houses on it, three houses on it. They're not in a hurry to get to you. One of the things that I run across is men and boys being described or displayed as not intelligent, but also mean or cruel. One of the things that I really enjoy - somebody shared a TikTok with me the other day, and it was of a guy, and I don't know where he was from - it was somewhere in the south, just by his accent - he'd stopped to get a kitten. There was a kitten on the side of the road, and he had stopped. He had this old work truck, and he'd gotten out of his car and he was videoing. And he got on his work boots and he goes up there and he picks up the kitten. And he was like, "Hey there, you need some help, buddy?" and he picks him up and then all of a sudden there's this - he literally gets swarmed by - somebody had dumped 20 kittens. He's like, "We got a kitten situation," you know, and it's like, he takes all 20 kittens and gets everybody the vet care that they need. That's the men and the boys that I grew up around. And I have never seen that man or boy in popular fiction or TV or movies. Any time you got a guy that's got a backwoods or a country accent, he's an idiot and he's cruel.
Jamie: One of the things that my book deals with indirectly, if you will, I guess, is that kind of toxic masculinity. I think so much about how we coach much of the tenderness out of men and boys. I worked, interestingly, in a domestic violence shelter for several years. What are we doing? And I think that as we look at things that are happening with violence across the nation - what is going on with men? And I think about that so much when I'm writing and I see men in terrible, terrible situations, boxed in by expectations of a culture that rewards violence, that rewards avarice, that rewards the pursuit of power at any cost. From the point of view of an advocate, and as a survivor, I have some limited amount of mercy, in my ability to write with great tenderness about the people that are showing that kind of avarice. It brings me to the last story in the collection, Love is Patient, Love is Kind, and in it, I think this is the hardest character I've ever written because he, Gene, has committed terrible crimes against children, done his time, and wants to come back and be accepted in society as a good guy. What does it take? If there's no redemption for people who, they can't change, they can't ever be anything else? Grappling with that and thinking about the ways that country life, in particular, effects men in rural areas - you're definitely not allowed to be gay. The danger of that. And I write, too, because I would like to see the world that I live in be a better place, find in it ways for us to exist side by side whether we love the same people or not. So that's where a lot of my character studies come from. I force myself into the shoes of the character that I really don't like.
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Mindy: And I wanna talk about writing short stories because Township is a collection of short stories. I'm a novelist, and I have novels published 'cause I personally find short stories to be harder than writing a novel.
Jamie: Everyone says that. And right now, I'm working on a novel. I didn't set out to be a short story writer. I really didn't read that many of them. And I became a huge fan of them when I got into my MFA Program at Ohio State, and that was reading short stories and writing short stories for workshops, became my life for three years. I went to graduate school thinking I would write a novel. I had an idea. I had done a ton of research. I just hadn't had the time to dedicate to it that I wanted, and so that's why I was pursuing the degree. And then, in pretty short order, I realized that I didn't know how to write a story. I put the novel aside and just started working on craft and on my structure. When you have a novel, you can be really forgiving. If you've got a sentence that isn't a Pulitzer Prize winner, it's fine if it propels the story forward. In a short story, you have just a few pages. So you have to be so efficient. And I found that it was a great exercise for me. Many of these stories were part of my thesis - my MFA thesis. I really had to spend a lot of time in a bunch of small worlds and learn how to be much more efficient in my writing and in character building and world-building. I have so enjoyed writing short stories and having my art go in a direction I never imagined. I'm really surprised this is my first book. I really thought it would be a novel. And so I think sometimes as an artist, you have to ask, "Am I so beholden to the idea of what I want to do that I'm not letting other good things happen?"
Mindy: I think what happens to me is that I'll have an idea and sometimes I don't know if that idea is a novel or if it's a short story. Often times, because this is what I do for a living, I do have to try to only conceive of ideas or only give ideas my time when I know that it's a novel. But I do love short stories and I love writing them. One of the reasons why I don't dabble in it more is, like I said, I do find it to be particularly challenging. Also, for anybody out there, any listeners that do really relish and love that short story format and form, how do you go about writing short stories, if that's what you love or where your talent is, and try to make, not necessarily a living, but make some money in that arena?
Jamie: The capital side of it is really tricky. I mean, the secret to writing, just get your ass in the seat and write. You're gonna write what your heart wants you to write. It's kind of like your sexuality. You're going to love what you love for no reason other than it is what attracts you. If short stories are your thing, there are a fair number of writers who have made quite a tidy living at it. When I'm sending my stories out, I have kind of a tiered submission system. And I can usually tell when I finish something if I'm gonna be able to sell it or not. But I start with the places that I know pay well for short fiction. If it gets rejected by those places, I'll do a rewrite, move it down the list. I do that, in part, because sometimes you get feedback that's like, "Oh, this is great, it's just not right for us right now." And the hard thing with short stories is that if I've written a terrific short story about a working class guy who was out and rescues 20 kittens and what happens but they just published a story about someone rescuing kittens in the last issue, then they're not gonna take your piece. 'Cause they don't wanna become the magazine that only publishes kitten rescue stories. And there are so many variables in the selection process that I'm a big fan of sending it out, sending it out, sending it out. That's the part where I think you only have success with it, if you kind of cast your bread on the water.
By sending work out regularly, I've heard that the average is something like one placement for every 30 submissions. There's a combination of rigor, persistence, love - that goes into this work. And I think too, I mean, I'm really lucky to have an agent who believes in what I'm doing and helps me try to sell it and get my work out there. So if your agent says to you, "I'm not interested in short stories," then you need to find an agent who is. Maybe that person can still represent you on your novel. You don't need to leave them at the altar, but you gotta find someone who can work with you on what excites you and what makes you passionate. I know sometimes it can feel when you're seeking a rep, like you don't have a lot of choices, you need to dance with who ever asks you. But you always have choices. Giving your work the time that it deserves is the best thing that you can do for it.
Mindy: Maybe about five years ago, I was really trying to get something going. I was writing for literary magazines, and I was using Submittable. And I was doing all that. And the amount of research that was required for me to figure out where my work was gonna fit and doing the reading that I had to be doing to understand how each magazine works and everything like that, it was a lot of work. And I don't know that people understand that the amount of work that you put into understanding the publishing industry from the side of someone as a novelist, you almost have to put in the same amount of work to understand the literary magazine and the short story market because it's its own beast.
Jamie: Oh, it definitely is. I think one of the best things that ever happened for my work was I taught a literary publishing class a couple of years ago, and I hadn't taught that particular subject before. I felt like I knew a lot, and it was great to be able to share what I did know, but it was - what was more important was what you talked about getting that coherent sense. I will send this to lit mag, for example, but I'm not gonna send it to story 'cause I know this editor. It's not really gonna be their jam. It is a ton of work, and it's the same like work you do in prospect research when you're getting ready to send out a novel. Or when you're looking for an agent.
Mindy: I subscribe to Poets & Writers, so everyone's looking in the back at the contests and the things that are coming up in submission guidelines and submission windows opening. So what would you suggest to someone that wants to maybe dip their toes into that part of the publishing arena? What's a good first base to start looking and beginning to understand that market.
Jamie: I think Poets & Writers is a great place to start. I think that joining AWP and reading The Writer's Chronicle, the AWP magazine, is another great place to start. One of the things I did my first year in graduate school, because I really knew nothing about literary fiction, I really didn't even know what I didn't know, and I felt so dumb and uninformed in class that somebody mentioned Poets & Writers to me. So I went to their website, and they have a wonderful resource, which is a list of literary magazines. I made a spreadsheet for myself. I got the deadlines in there, what they were interested in, who the current editor was, page length, word count requirements, cover letter, no cover letter - I mean, I had a very detailed spreadsheet. I've shared it with other writers when I'm teaching workshops, because I really think that being open and open sourcing stuff like this - if I can save someone all of that work and all they need to do is go through and update it? Then yeah, I'm gonna share a resource that I have. But putting that together and maintaining it really keeps me on my toes.
I don't do contests very often, like every now and then I do, but I'm not a big fan. I think that you're better off just submitting most of the time, particularly in paying markets. Contests can be good, but they can also be, in the worst cases, they can be just income generating tools for literary magazines. And I know, all lit mags need incomes. I work at one and I run another one, so it's, I get what the economic landscape is like for small publishers. But I also think, especially as I see the fees, the submission fees climb and climb and climb, I can no longer conscionably direct people to most contests. Now, if contests are your jam, go check out CLMP, the Center for Literary Magazines and Small Presses. They are fantastic, and they have a list of contests that are vetted, that are not scams, and it's a searchable, sortable list. You don't have to be a member to access it. That's another great resource. And also NewPages, which is a small non-profit based in Michigan. NewPages had listings every month, and very often those are great resources for emerging writers. If you just are starting out, and particularly for young writers, NewPages is a fantastic resource.
Mindy: Absolutely, I did the same thing. I had a spreadsheet made up with the dates, the submission dates that they were open, what they were looking for, if it was themes, things like that. I know something that people talk about in the short story world and the small press world, submission fees or reading fees. So when you submit a work or if you're entering a contest, you will be most oftentimes paying a submission fee. And it's something that comes up a lot about whether or not that is acceptable, whether you should be engaging with someone that does charge a reading fee. As someone that was coming out of the world of novelists and of hunting for an agent, if someone is asking for money up front, it's a scam. That was just always - that was a red flag.
Jamie: Right.
Mindy: Yeah, but in a short story world, it is a little bit different. So if you could just talk about that for a second. Simply because a lot of the times there are little magazines or whatever, it's like the only way they get income is through something like that. So if you could talk about how someone can differentiate between what would be a legitimate ask or how to, I guess, sort the apples when it comes to that.
Jamie: Totally, and that's where clmp dot org comes in. They are fantastic. You can also check duotrope, another resource to confirm whether or not a contest is legitimate or if the magazine is legitimate. In literary world, I would say probably 80 to 90% of magazines require a small submission fee, and that fee ranges from $3 to $5. If they're asking you for more than that, I would caution you to not pay it and keep moving unless a subscription is included. That's part of me being a good literary citizen. And I also have kind of a magazine subscription problem, and I love getting them and supporting them. And it's also important for me as someone who edits a small magazine to know what is going on, and someone who reads for a larger magazine to know what is going on. So to me it's all in a day's work. If you're a writer just starting out, that would be the range that I think you should feel comfortable with. I would also, and I always encourage my students to submit in groups of 10. So make your list, your 10 dream journals, submit to them. See what happens. Don't submit to 30 places and spend $3 a pop, and you wind up getting your heart broken because your story is not ready yet, right? Submit to 10. See what happens. If you get some good feedback saying, "Hey, we like this, it's not right for us now," or "please send us more work in the future," they mean that. Follow up later. But if you get a bunch of just form rejections, then it's time to look at your story.
Again, contest that don't charge fees, they are out there, and lots of literary magazines have an option where they have an open submission period where there is no fee. So put that in your little spreadsheet and keep track of it. I also use calendar reminders to tell myself like, "Hey, don't miss the deadline for Ploughshares." There are certain magazines that only open for submissions for one month once a year, so you don't wanna miss that window. So I use technology shouting at me a lot to keep myself on track. Another red flag for me is when - Google is here for a reason, right? You can look up a contest and see if they are legit. If they're not posting who the winners are, or they're extending their deadline over and over again, I would avoid that contest. Those are always red flags for me.
Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find your collection of short stories - Township.
Jamie: Thank you so much. You can find me at Jamie Lyn Smith Square Space. I have a website there and I have a contact form if you wanna send me a comment or if you would like that spreadsheet I mentioned. I will send it to you. Like I said, I'm always happy to share resources. And I'm on social, I'm on Twitter and Instagram usually, and Facebook sometimes. And that's at Jamie Lyn Writes J-A-M-I-E-L-Y-N W-R-I-T-E-S. You can get Township anywhere that books are sold. So I encourage you to go to your local indie bookstore or to bookshop dot org. But if you get it from a larger retailer, I'm just gonna be so thrilled that you did that, that it's cool.
Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.