My guest this week is Sheryl Cohen Solomon, a writer of very funny and touching personal essays. She published her first essay in North Shore Magazine. The second one is coming more slowly, but she’s not giving up! – Meg
“Tooth Fairy Tale” was the first and only piece I’ve ever published. I sent it to a local magazine, they published it immediately, and I thought, “Well there.I don’t know what all the fuss is about!” Being published seemed as easy as losing a tooth. A story just fell out, I put it under my pillow, and the next morning it was replaced with cash.
That first piece got me started writing about the small, precious moments of my family life, and I continued to send essays out for publication. They were clever pieces—pieces that made smart people, even some who were not blood relatives, laugh out loud. But none of my essays, after that very first one more than three years ago, found their way onto a printed page.
I’ve come up with three possible hypotheses as to why this has happened to me. The first is that I haven’t found the right niche for my work. I write about the mundane domestic life: Tooth Fairies, teenaged drivers, and tennis elbow. Women’s magazines like Family Circle and Elle and More seem more interested in essays about climbing Mount Everest than about why I lie about my weight. Frankly, I’m not interested in being all that I can be. If I were starting a magazine for women my age, I’d call it Less.
The second possibility is that I am cursed. Like many of you, I have a large collection of the nicest possible rejection letters from all the major and minor names in publishing. My favorite is from an editor who loves my “natural, honest voice—something our readers could really relate to,” who can’t stop gushing about my “narrative arc” and my “emotional tug.” I made copies of that e-mail and put it in every room in my house. The next day the editor was fired.
The third possibility is the most disturbing: maybe I’m a terrible writer. Maybe the editor at my one publication was drunk. Maybe there is some sort of writer spinach between my teeth that everyone can see but me, and all of you reading this at your computers are saying, “Someone ought to tell this poor woman to save her stamps!”
Am I a one hit wonder? Perhaps, but I haven’t given up yet. Each morning I sit at my desk, and see on my bulletin board some great advice from a teacher at the University of Iowa Writer’s Festival:
If at first you do succeed, try to conceal your astonishment.
-Sheryl Cohen Solomon
