Drown Melancholy

 

Drown Melancholy
By STANLEY WHEELER
An old sea shanty, a reminder of a curse, drives a pirate captain to the brink of madness… Can the crew make their final score, or will the curse destroy them all?!
It's in Cirsova issue 24 which you can pre-order now. 

 I taught Sunday School again today. It happens twice a month and I try not to miss it. It's a good gig that provides a lot of satisfaction both in trying to learn enough to be prepared to lead a discussion and then actually discussing the material with the class. Today's material was totally awesome, but rather than try to expound on the awesomeness, elaborate on the mind-expanding connections, and share all the cool stuff I experienced in studying myself and getting insights from others with more expertise than myself, I divided the material into chunks and asked volunteers to talk about something from each chunk that appealed to them. It turned out pretty well. One constant seems to be that great things happen when I'm not talking. 

On the writing front, I'm editing a book for submission. I wrote it a year ago, I think, but it does fit a call for submissions I discovered a while back. I was going to submit it, but I changed my mind, and then, after some months of not thinking about it, I reconsidered. What's to lose by trying? Winston Churchill is credit with saying, "Success consists in going from failure to failure without the loss of enthusiasm." - Or something like that. Almost no one belittles my enthusiasm more than I do, so no one's stopping me but me. I would hate to be barred from success by declaring myself too much of a failure to try. Babe Ruth is credited with saying that whenever he struck out it wasn't a failure, it was an effort toward success. I could turn that to, "What baseball player would simply declare himself out without even taking a turn at bat?" There's the rub. Am I a baseball player? Am I a writer? 

What makes a baseball player? What makes a writer? Playing baseball and writing, respectively, I guess. What makes a successful player or writer? Well, if the player strikes out every time, he's not a successful batter; he could still be great in the field. As for the writer, what is the measure of success, or the lack thereof? Getting published? Making money? Every writer must make his own call on that. However, I do know that every completed story and novel is a victory. If that result of sweat and inspiration finds acceptance by a publisher and readers, maybe it's a home run rather than merely a base hit. When you think about it, a .300 or higher is an excellent batting average. That's only a success rate of about one hit for every three times at bat--if I understand correctly. I don't know what chance there is of getting this novel accepted by this particular publisher, but completing it and submitting it is some measure of success in itself. I can always self-publish it or submit it somewhere else if this up is a strikeout.

On the other hand, wrestling may be a better analogy than baseball. Wrestling almost always provides better lessons than those sports that are bound to a ball. Writers grapple with their subject, struggling to bring finite order and creation to the infinite chaos of the blank page/screen, using tropes and techniques to subdue the opponent: the half-nelson sentence, the double-paragraph take-down, the chapter reversal, and cliff-hanger arm-bar, just to name a few. Sometimes the writer overcomes the chaos on points; sometimes it's a technical fall, or an outright pin; and sometimes the infinite chaos cannot be contained. How does that relate to actually getting a piece published? 

Perhaps we should combine the analogies. Trying to get a story or novel accepted is like walking up to home plate and attempting to get a hit by using your wrestling opponent as a bat. Completing the story is a two-point take-down. Submitting the story is three near-fall points. Getting published is a home run.