being bare-bones blunt about pleiades: what it is, why I published it, & why you or anyone else would want to read it
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010If you want me to be honest, chances are you’ll never have to ask– sooner or later I launch into a long confessional ramble, opening up about something that before was not exactly hidden but perhaps was not obvious, not even to me.
These are my answers to questions about the chunk of writing that emerged from my loneliest, saddest, most heartbroken time… and why I chose to publish it. These are questions that I wanted to ask, and answer, myself– whether or not they have been swimming in your head, too, even if you don’t have the book or don’t give a flying fish about it, I feel compelled to express my answers anyway. This is clarification, for both of our sakes.
What is it [Pleiades], anyway? It’s not just one entity, a work in itself, but a whole menagerie of works. In fact, I only rather haphazardly named it Pleiades after a host– actually, really only two– of other names, mostly terrible (freeze fragility, for one– alright, that’s not terrible, just a tad corny). Pleiades was the name of the journal from my past life (what I call the entire period of my existence before a certain point in 2009) in which I wrote incessantly, as if talking to myself. It seemed fitting: past writing from a past life.
If you missed it, many all of my first attempts to “get published” absolutely failed. I submitted some of the stories to contests, magazines. I lost every contest, was rejected by every magazine– including the New Yorker (out of two total, I must confess). One of my stories was published in a student-run literary magazine… much to my chagrin, with formatting errors in every line and deliberately not under my pen name (though that was my only request!). I vowed never again to put my writing in the hands of someone– or something– else probably unreliable.
I first submitted it in book form to a literary magazine’s poetry book contest. I lost. I missed the deadline for the “women’s” book contest. I submitted it to another poetry contest. I realized afterward it probably didn’t even qualify as poetry, and I was relieved when I found out I didn’t win (the poets who did win, though, were professors of literature at national universities– go figure) because I realized eventually that I didn’t want anyone to publish my baby but me, me, me.
Why would I want to publish anything that had basically “failed” every chance tried? Better yet, why would you or anyone else want to read it?
Because each “failure” became more like a personal success. First, I succeeded in actually taking the risk of showing others my work– something that in the past I loathed to do, out of fear (and insistence) that nobody would understand my writing. Also, I realized that none of the places I submitted to were in the market for what I did. My writing was either “too weird” or “not weird enough”.
And most importantly, I secretly knew there was no point in seeking external validation for my work. (Plus, when did external validation ever really get anyone anywhere on a personal level?) I knew it wouldn’t become a international bestseller, and I didn’t really want it to be. I wanted it to affect people on a personal level, if they let it. Or they could simply choose to ignore it, pan it for the adolescent drivel that it surely would be revealed to be in some people’s eyes. But most importantly, I wanted to release it on my own terms, without genre or labels, without a synopsis that didn’t really mean anything, without an author’s bio because what would it even say? And I wanted to save some paper from the unnecessary waste of mass production, too. (I especially didn’t want the labels. If I don’t choose to label myself as anything, why should I let my writing be subjected to a worse fate?)
Would I have benefited from an editor to tweak my every letter? Probably. I know I’ve misused the semicolon one too many times throughout the text. At the same time, I like it much better that way– the purposeful imperfection of each word, stubborn not to change. In fact, I don’t remember a single story in the collection that I edited once for content after I had written it. I even left one of the few named character’s surname intact, though it seems self-absorbed now in the light of my identity. I didn’t even realize it until after it had been printed– hah, hah.
Why would you or anyone else want to read it? Because if it’s not premium literature, then it is at the very least entertaining, or perhaps a little bittersweet, maybe even moving. You’ll have to decide for yourself.
No, Pleiades doesn’t really have anything to do with happiness and loving yourself, the primary passion of my present life and the main subject of cynosure. In fact, it’s writing from the darkest, most sorrow-fueled era of my past, when the last thing I knew was how to love and respect myself, and when I was caught in the tangle of constant angst. But in that same vein, I felt like I had to release it out into the wild for people to read. It was my own way of letting it go.
I didn’t publish it to make money, propel myself to fame, or even because I think it’s the best darn work I’ve written (it definitely is not, at least anymore). I published it to share, and to let a big part of my past, of my life, free.
And if you choose to support that, all I can say is: thank you.
What’s next?
I was reading Pleiades yesterday myself, and though I still adore each story in its own way (and for the crystallized memories and nostalgia, though a little painful, that they evoke), it was clear that I needed to move on in terms of my writing (and already have).
To me, being a writer has always been more important than being a “published author”– at least, published in the sense of “on someone else’s terms, edited for the masses for easier digestion”. I’m always going to be a writer– it’s embedded deeper than the features of my skin.
So of course, I’m still writing. 
But until my next creation is revealed, click here to get Pleiades while it’s still in print. I’m only going to release a limited number of copies into the world, so hurry up. 
Testimonials (aka rave reviews– or rants) forthcoming. Got one? Send it my way.
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