Last Chance to get published this year! SUBMISSIONS FOR 2025 ARE OPEN THROUGH 11.02.25.
The Old Scratch Press team asks that all fiction/non-fiction pieces adhere to a word count of 500 words or less.
Topics/themes for 2025
GRAVY is our 2025 winter holiday theme. Give us your best holiday gravy fails, mishaps, ridiculous gravy encounters (any December holiday, from Hanukkah, to Solstice, to NYE, etc.) or your best funny work about gravy, in general. The point of the end-of-year issue is to be light-hearted to downright silly.
Submissions close NOVEMBER 2, 2025; the issue will publish DECEMBER 1, 2025.
By R. David Fulcher, Old Scratch Press Founding Member
I love all things pumpkin, including pumpkin spice. However, I understand even fans of this seasonal gourd have their limits on just how much pumpkin spice is too much pumpkin spice.
Readers are the same way.
Even fans of scary stories have their own personal limits in terms of exactly how scary, how gory, or how unsettling a story they can bear.
Therefore, I’ve taken three of my pumpkin-related stories and rated them in spiciness, from the most mild to the most extreme.
Mild Spice: “Pumpkin Night at the Pinkstons”
In “Pumpkin Night at the Pinkstons”, from my book The Movies that Make You Scream!, a teenager discovers the secret behind his homecoming date. Full of gooey teenage love, this is the mildest of my pumpkin-themed stories, something like one of the Goosebumps tales by R.L. Stine.
I’ll call this the Pumpkin Spice Latte Level of story.
Here is an excerpt from “Pumpkin Night at the Pinkstons”:
I don’t know exactly how much time passed before realizing that something was very, very wrong. The texture of her kisses changed, becoming clumsy and pulpy in taste. Her smooth gums became loose and stringy, and when I tried to pull away, I realized she was attached to me like a barnacle adhered to the side of a boat’s hull. Long, pointed fingers now clenched my nose shut and I began to get dizzy as that sickening, fruity-vegetable stench began to overwhelm me.
But more horrible were the physical changes taking place to the body I embraced, a grotesque squishyness of the torso and organs like the skin of a rotting tomato.
Medium Spice: “Pumpkin Seed Spit”
In “Pumpkin Seed Spit”, from the Devil’s Party Press anthology Halloween Party 2019, three friends go trick-or-treating and make a horrible deal with an ancient spirit to ensure their survival. Although the protagonists are also teenagers in this story, the stakes are higher, and the final implications for humanity much darker.
I’ll call this the Pumpkin Muffin Level of story.
Here is an excerpt from “Pumpkin Seed Spit”:
Upon reaching the first house near a dead end, they knocked and said in unison, “Trick-or-Treat!” As fifty-year-old Henry Armitage opened the front door, Brian unearthed his bag. The middle-aged man frowned at the kids before starting to mutter something about the lateness of the hour. Armitage gazed into Brian’s bag of seeds and was immediately mesmerized. An orange energy tendril spiraled upward, carrying a single seed into Armitage’s mouth.
Brian, Matt, and Ria wanted to scream, but found it impossible. While their souls were wrenched into knots by the horror they witnessed, outwardly they stood emotionless, even tranquil, as layers of skin and flesh melted away until all that remained of Henry Armitage was a living skeleton.
When the transformation was complete, they advanced to the next house. Ria shared the seeds, and Asenath Waite, a young mother of two, was hideously transformed into a witch with boils, green teeth, and a trail of lesions across her forehead.
Matt was next to present The Pumpkin Tree’s offering to the world. Three seeds were received by a couple and their young baby. Within moments they became a trio of giant pale, eyeless larvae that oozed and squiggled out of their clothes.
Extra Spicy: “The Pumpkin King”
In “The Pumpkin King”, from my book The Pumpkin King and Other Tales of Terror, a man ignores the rules of Halloween to his own detriment. The protagonist is an adult, and this tale has the most shock value of the three.
I’ll call this the Pumpkin Imperial Pale Ale Level of story
Here is an excerpt from “The Pumpkin King”:
I spun around and made for the door, half convinced I was hallucinating if not dreaming. I unlatched the deadbolt, but it clicked back into place as soon as I started to turn the latch. I turned back to the jack-o’-lantern.
“An easy trick, but effective,” the jack-o’-lantern said, its orange light flashing in time to the latch on the deadbolt as it clicked back and forth at will.
“What do you want?” I begged.
“I want you to think on this. There is but one expectation of you this time of year. One simple obligation: To carve pumpkins. To pay homage to the king.”
“What king?”
“Samhain, the King of the Dead.” Its demeanor began to change. Its voice deepened and the reddish-orange glow rose like an enraged fire.
“This is ridiculous!” Now I was beginning to lose my fear and was feeling pissed. This thing, whatever it was, was in my house. I turned to climb the stairs and grab a baseball bat so that I could smash the talkative piece of vegetation into a hundred juicy bits. I was an educated man, and I knew of the myth of Samhain, the Lord of the Dead who arrived every fall to put nature in balance with the deadly strokes of his sickle. I also knew it was pure bunk.
I had only reached the first step when I heard a sound far worse than the maddening click-clacking of the door latch: the metallic whisper of a kitchen knife being drawn from the butcher block.
I turned back to the pumpkin. “Okay. You’ve got my attention. What do you want?”
“I want to carve you,” it replied simply.
So whatever your personal threshold is for pumpkin spice, pay homage to the spirits of All Hallows Eve, and savor the spice before it’s gone!
Happy Writing!
R.David Fulcher, Founding Member of Old Scratch Press
In a world overflowing with information, it can feel almost impossible to hear the quiet murmur of our own inner voice. From the moment we wake, we are bombarded: endless news updates, social media scrolls, texts, and the constant hum of opinions vying for our attention. All of it fills the space where intuition—the whispering language of the subconscious—once thrived.
Yet, as writers, intuition is one of our greatest tools. It’s what allows us to leap into a story we don’t fully understand yet, to follow a surprising character down an unplanned path, or to trust an image or phrase that arrives out of nowhere. Without it, we risk writing only what we already know, instead of what wants to reveal itself.
Fall: The Season of Listening
October, with its crisp air and longer nights, brings a natural invitation to slow down and listen. Folklore tells us that in autumn, as the veil thins between the seen and unseen, intuition becomes easier to access. Shadows stretch differently, the wind carries voices, and we sense the tug of what lies just beyond.
This is the perfect time of year to tune in. The season itself seems to whisper: pay attention, the unseen is speaking.
Why We Lose Touch with Intuition
Intuition is quiet, subtle, and often inconvenient. It rarely announces itself in bold type. Instead, it flickers in images, hunches, gut feelings, or sudden questions that surface in stillness. When we drown our senses in constant input, we crowd out those fleeting signals. It’s like trying to hear an owl’s call on a windy night—you know it’s there, but the noise drowns it out.
Our culture rewards speed, productivity, and certainty. Intuition asks for slowness, stillness, and trust. It feels risky to follow because it rarely comes with a guarantee, but instead with a nudge: “this way, try this, pay attention.”
Reclaiming the Lost Art
The good news is intuition can be reawakened. Like any art, it thrives with practice:
Silence the noise. Even a few minutes of quiet each day—no phone, no media, just breath—can make space for inner knowing to rise.
Notice the body. Intuition often lives in the gut, the chest, the skin prickling on your arms. Writing down where and how you feel things can help you recognize its signals.
Follow the odd image. When a strange metaphor or unexpected detail shows up in your writing, resist the urge to explain it away. Let it lead you.
Trust the detours. If you sit down to write one thing but another insists on being written, follow that tug. Intuition often works sideways.
One of my favorite ways to access this hidden reservoir is through freewriting. When we put pen to paper without censoring, judging, or editing, we bypass the noisy critic in our head. Freewriting allows the subconscious to slip through, offering images, insights, and connections that often surprise us. It is a way of honoring the intuition that we so often ignore. In the flow of words that tumble out, we begin to recognize patterns, truths, and directions that were there all along, waiting to be heard.
Tuning in to our intuition is not about achieving perfection or following rules. It is about reclaiming an ancient art: the art of listening inwardly. As the veil thins, perhaps it is time to sit with the page, quiet the outside world, and let your own inner compass
Intuition as a Writer’s Compass
The deepest writing often doesn’t come from logic or planning alone—it comes from the subterranean river of memory, dream, and imagination. Intuition is the compass that guides us into that underground place. When we let it lead, we discover connections we couldn’t have forced, truths we didn’t know we were carrying, and stories that surprise even us.
This October, let the season itself be your reminder. As the veil thins and the shadows lengthen, practice listening for what arises in the quiet. Intuition is not a luxury—it is the thread that ties us to the mystery of creativity itself. To follow it is to reclaim a lost art, both in writing and in life.
(And if you are interested in learning about intuitively understanding your surroundings check out the books by writer Tristan Gooley, like The Nature Instinct or The Natural Navigator.)
Thank you for reading this post and visiting the Old Scratch Press Blog. Next Saturday October 25th at 5:00 p.m., three members of the Old Scratch Press Team are participating in a special online reading from their newly published books. FREE. Read more about it here. And follow us on Facebook.
Ellis Elliott, Founding Member, Old Scratch Press Collective, Author: Break in the Field and A Witch Awakens: A Fire Circle Mystery available on Amazon. Bewilderness Writing : http://bewildernesswriting.com/
Old Scratch Press Short Form and Poetry Collective is pleased to announce that Beatriz Fernandez has recently become our newest member. “I am thrilled and honored, “she says, “to join an online community of fellow writers from around the globe who support each other’s work, provide feedback and share our various skills and strengths.”
Although she didn’t try to get published until she was in her late forties, Beatriz has been writing all her life.
“I write in both form and free verse, both mainstream and genre, and have recently begun to write flash and short fiction. In poetry, I favor historical persona poems written in the voices of women, whether historical, mythological, or fictional figures. I also write speculative poetry and short fiction. I try to include my love of robots, androids, or time travel in most of my stories.”
Over the past ten years, Beatriz Fernandez’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart prize four times, and has been published in anthologies and journals as various as Label Me Latina/o, Prime Number Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Whale Road Review. She’s authored three poetry chapbooks: the most recent, Simultaneous States, (Bainbridge Island Press, 2025) included some poetry set in Puerto Rico and some speculative poems. Her eco-science fiction flash fiction piece, “Flow Time” was published this summer in a special Florida themed anthology by Gaslamp Pulp, a division of Nat 1 Publishing. That publisher also just accepted her Puerto Rican Frog Prince adaptation titled “The Coquí Captain” for a children’s anthology of reimagined fairy tales.
Beatriz grew up in Philadelphia, Spain, and mostly Puerto Rico and then came to Florida to attend college. During her junior year she established her Florida residency, met her husband, and began working in libraries. “I fell in love with all three,” she says, “and subsequently found no reason to leave any of them!”
Describing herself as a late bloomer in both her library and writing careers; she became a professional librarian in her mid 30s. On the way, she obtained an M.A. in English literature but found herself to be too much of a generalist to focus on a dissertation topic.
“During this time,” she says, “I seemed to be under the impression I was a budding novelist while the reality was that I was writing more poetry than anything else. My lightbulb moment came when I won a Writer’s Digest poetry contest that I entered on the very last day. That stroke of luck seemed to finally put me on the right road and actively seeking to improve my poetry style. I embarked on a long-distance phone tutorial with poet Andrea Hollander, who is a brilliant teacher and mentor, for several years; she helped me find my true voice. “
“Many writing classes, confabs and workshops later,” she says, “I’ve published almost every poem I’ve ever written! Now I feel I have come full circle—after starting out my writing career with long-distance tutorials, I’ve joined an online community of fellow writers.”
To learn more about Beatriz and to hear her radio interview on “Here and Now,” you can visit her website here
Thank you for reading this post and visiting the Old Scratch Press Blog. Next Saturday October 25th at 5:00 p.m., three members of the Old Scratch Press Team are participating in a special online reading from their newly published books. FREE. Read more about it here. And follow us on Facebook.
by Nadja Maril, a founding member of Old Scratch Press Collective
A few months ago, I read a book purely for escapism, a cozy mystery populated by Jane Austen Characters entitled The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray. I didn’t have to think too hard as I’d already met: Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Darcy, Marianne and Colonel Brandon, Anne and Frederick Wentworth, and Fanny and Edmund Bertram. Already familiar with the English country homes so well described in my favorite Jane Austen Novels: Emma, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, I merely had to get to know the two new characters Jonathan Darcy (son of Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth) and Juliet Tilney ( daughter of Northanger Abbey’s Catherine and Henry) who team up together to solve the murder.
Combine characters created by other authors with AI (artificial intelligence) and we stand on shaky territory.
What is it that makes human writing truly unique ?
The novel started me thinking about where writers find inspiration, because certainly this particular set-up would theoretically be the perfect candidate for an AI (artificial intelligence) generated book. A good portion of the plot of The Murder of Mr. Wickham relies on tropes and scenes frequently present in other Jane Austen books.
As to be anticipated, in this cross between an Agatha Christie whodonit and a Jane Austen novel, we have a series of misunderstandings between couples, friends and romantic prospects as well as a grand ball, a visit by the gentry to the village where they are shunned, a church scene with more snubbing, and conflicts that center on income and social class. While I was curious to find out the identity of the murderer, with so many characters possessing motive, I found myself more interested in the potential for a romance to develop between Jonathan and Juliet.
Is picking up ready-made characters cheating? Certainly, the use of characters who have already proven themselves to be favorites among readers, give a writer an advantage when looking to find a publisher. What is the difference from taking a character or storyline from the Bible or a popular fairytale vs. taking a fictional character such as Sherlock Holmes or Sir Lancelot casting them in the starring role of your next short story or novel.
Folktales and Myths provide plenty of ideas for new versions of old stories. Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com
One thing I’ve noticed is the different ways a popular character can be used. Minor characters in a well-known fairy tale, perhaps one of the step-sisters in Cinderella may have a very different take on why Cinderella was not allowed to go to the ball. The Genie locked inside a bottle could probably tell a series of funny stories about badly chosen wishes. In the Broadway hit musical “Wicked,” partially adapted from the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Glinda is not the spotless white witch she purports herself to be when one hears the tale from Elphaba’s prospective.
Anything that spurs new ideas is fair game, as long as borrowing a character or a plot is not plagiarism. The plot or the characters must have evolved and changed. The characters themselves must be unique (not duplicates of another author) and not protected by copyright rules.
As a general rule, for works created after January 1, 1978, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years.
Thus, favorite characters such as the Harry Potter gang, are relegated to fan fiction only, meaning the work is “unauthorized” and cannot be used for monetary return.
Taking inspiration from classics can be a creative endeavor if not taken up by computers. It can make a great writing prompt.
You can use this prompt to write short stories and poetry, material that would be appropriate for a chapbook as well as specialized literary magazines.
Maybe Goldilocksbrings three bowls of Creme Brulee to the bears as a peace offering. Photo by Gerardo Manzano on Pexels.com
WRITING PROMPT
Think of a favorite folk/fairy tale such as The Three Bears. What if Goldilocks had the opportunity to apologize for her rude intrusion into the Bear’s Cottage. Imagine and write down what might happen. If the men who pretended to sell invisible cloth to the emperor were to tell the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes, would they tell it differently than the traditional fairy tale? Try different approaches. Have fun.
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Nadja Maril is an award winning writer and poet who has been published in dozens of online and print literary journals and anthologies including: Lunch Ticket, Spry Literary Journal, Invisible City Literary Review, Instant Noodles and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts. She is the author of Recipes From My Garden, published by Old Scratch Press (September 2024), a Midwest Review California Book Watch Reviewer's Choice. An Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. She has an MFA in creative writing from Stonecoast at USM.
Check out Nadja's chapbook of flash memoir and poetry below.
There’s a certain stereotype about writers: distracted, dreamy, maybe a little moody, often lost in their own heads. Then there are those of us whose third-grade teacher writes on her report card, “Ellis is very sensitive. She says she doesn’t feel good when she doesn’t want to participate and sometimes puts her hands over her ears.”
What we don’t always name is that many of us identify with something more specific—ADHD, anxiety, depression, OCD, autism, bipolar disorder. In other words, neurodivergence.
Far from being a barrier, these brain patterns often come hand-in-hand with creativity. Our ability to notice connections others overlook, to hyper-focus on a project for hours, or to sense language at a heightened level can all be part of what makes us writers. (Doesn’t everyone have a list of words they hate simply because the way the word feels in their mouth?)
The Double-Edged Sword
Of course, the same brain that gifts us with creative leaps can also work against us. ADHD can make finishing projects feel like climbing Everest. Anxiety can whisper that nothing we write is ever good enough. Depression can steal the life-force necessary to even begin. The very sensitivity that makes us attuned to metaphor and meaning can leave us overwhelmed by the noise of the world.
Reframing the Narrative
Instead of treating neurodivergence as something to battle, what if we reframed it as part of the writer’s toolkit?
Hyperfocus can become a superpower for deep revision. Or help you finish the book!
Restless energy can fuel bursts of freewriting that break past creative blocks. That, and dance breaks.
Heightened sensitivity can deepen character work, dialogue, and description. As long as you remember to take breaks.
The key is learning how to manage the edges—finding rest, support, and strategies so that the gift doesn’t become a burden.
Practical Ways to Support Your Creative Brain
Chunk your writing time. Short, timed sessions (15–25 minutes) can harness focus without overwhelming you.
Write rituals, not rules. A small ritual (lighting a candle, stretching, a playlist) helps train your brain to enter writing mode.
Name the inner critic. Literally give it a name or persona so it loses power over you.
Seek community. Writing groups, workshops, or even online spaces help balance the solitary nature of the work.
Honor rest. Brains that run hot need recovery time. Pushing the pause-button isn’t failing—it’s part of the process.
Why It Matters
When we share openly about the link between writing and neurodivergence, we create permission for others. Permission to stop beating themselves up for struggling with deadlines. Permission to see their “quirks” as part of their artistry. Permission to make choices others might not understand. Permission to write anyway.
Do you identify as a neurodivergent writer? How does it show up in your creative process—both the gifts and the challenges?
Ellis Elliott
Founding member Old Scratch Press Poetry Collective
Author of Break in the Field poetry collection and A Witch Awakens: A Fire Circle Mystery.
Steps Toward Your First Acceptance in a Literary Journal
To my fellow writers out there, I began submitting prose and eventually poetry to literary magazines in 2014. Since that time, I have been published over a hundred times. How did I do it? I learned the ropes and never gave up. More importantly, I never wrote for the purpose of being published. It’s an honor, a wonderful feeling, to have a piece accepted, but in the end of the day, the real joy for me as it is for most writers, is the creative process. Publishing is a very small piece of this magical puzzle. Even so, as writers, most of us would like our work to be read so here are some tips I learned along the way.
Present your best work always. If you have written something, set it aside for some time and return to it later for perspective. ALWAYS have feedback through a professional writing group. One or two friends reading your work will not do. You need professional critique and then you must listen and learn to edit accordingly. None of us can judge our own writing. We simply cannot. Don’t let your ego get in the way of your success.
Prepare a third-person biography. Include information like your location, your publications if you have some, your social media handles and website. If you have not been published, simply say nothing about that or mention that this would be a debut publication. Don’t try to be funny or clever. Be professional.
Prepare a cover letter and keep it simple and professional as well. Address the editor by name if you can. Start with something like: I appreciate the opportunity to submit my fiction story titled “Wind Warp” of 4900 words. Follow with your biography. End by thanking the editor for considering your work. That’s it.
Make a list of journals where your work appears to be a fit as you prepare to submit your work. This will mean reading some of the work the journals have accepted in the past. Lucky for us, many journals are online now or have some excerpts online. Consult resources by Erika Krouse or Clifford Garstang for a ranking of literary journals.
At first, I tried to select mostly smaller, well-respected journals for the bulk of my submissions. Once I got some traction, I aimed higher. If you can find a local journal that limits submissions to local writers, even better. One example of this is Philadelphia Stories, a journal that only publishes writers who are living in or originally from Pennsylvania, Delaware or New Jersey. A smaller pool helps your odds. There is nothing wrong with submitting to a new journal either. In fact, I recommend it. New journals need our support.
I would send a piece to at least twenty journals to start with and see how it goes.
Use standard manuscript format 12-point font Times New Roman. Double Space prose. Single Space poetry. And don’t forget page numbers.
Be encouraged if editors write you a personal note about enjoying your work even though it was not accepted or asking you to submit more work in the future or telling you that you made it to the final cut. All of these are a very big deal so be happy!
You will receive a lot of rejections. I submitted for about a year and a half before I received my first acceptance. Since then, I have had times where I have been “hot” and times of drought. Don’t give up and don’t get discouraged. There are many reasons a piece is not chosen that have nothing to do with the quality of the writing. You get used to the rejections. Promise me. The way I look at it is this writing that I am submitting is what I have to offer. I’ve got nothing else! This is me. I write what comes to me and what I want to write about. Above all, I just hope to tell a good story. I give every poem or story my all. There have been stories that I never placed, and I am okay with that. Some of these did get out in the world in later collections of mine alongside published stories. Be true to yourself and what your heart wants to write about and you will be fine.
Do not follow up with inquiries about your work after it is submitted. If you don’t hear anything for a year, consider the piece unaccepted and move on.
Make sure you keep a list of all the places you submit a piece so when you do have an acceptance, you can quickly withdraw it from other journals considering your piece.
Remember too that when submitting to always follow the guidelines such as whether the journal wants to read blind or not.
Set up a Submittable account because most journals use that now for submissions although some still have their own Submission System or they accept submissions via email only.
Another good idea is to go out for dinner and some glasses of wine with fellow writers submitting their work to share your experiences. Laughter is the best medicine, and you can learn from each other.
I wish all of you the very best in your writing journey!
Virginia Watts is the author of poetry and stories found in The MacGuffin, Epiphany,CRAFT, The Florida Review, Reed Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Eclectica Magazine among others. She has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut short story collection Echoes from the Hocker House was short listed for 2024 Eric Hoffer Grand Prize, selected as one of the Best Indie Books of 2023 by Kirkus Book Reviews, and won third place in the 2024 Feathered Quill Book Awards. Please visit her.
Virginia’s new book is now available from Old Scratch Press:
Alan Bern is more than just the author of DREAMS OF THE RETURN—he’s also one of the founding voices of Old Scratch Press, a collective born from a group of terrific writers with a deep love of traditional and hybrid poetry, prose, and art. As a retired children’s librarian and cofounder (with Robert Woods) of the fine-press publisher Lines & Faces, Alan has long pursued the merging of word, image, and place.
In DREAMS OF THE RETURN, he turns his lens to Italy—in particular the South—bringing to life landscapes both storied and luminous through his own photographs and through classic Italian poetry, delivered both in its original form and in his own translations. The journey is lyrical, immersive: it’s not merely a travel guide, but a portrait of longing, place, memory, and beauty.
And that’s something Alan does beautifully—his artistry weaves together what he’s done throughout his life: poetry, prose, photography, memoir, all fueled by a love for Italy. Within the OSP community, he is known for “photo-poems,” a daily practice in which images and language overlap, inviting the reader to travel with him across geographies and inward, into self.
In addition to poems and photographs, DREAMS OF THE RETURN also includes intimate personal essays that layer history, memory, and lived experience. In “The Good One,” for example, Alan recounts a walk through Naples’ Quartieri Spagnoli with his friend Marco. What begins as a conversation about Jewish philosopher Don Isaac Abravanel and the sacred geography of southern Italy turns into a heartbreaking encounter with a community altar for “o’ Bono”—a young man accidentally killed during a New Year’s Eve celebration. Through this story, Alan reveals how place, tragedy, resilience, and human connection are intertwined in ways both profound and ordinary.
A true perfectionist, Alan (pictured left) worked closely with his good friend, Peter Truskier, to ensure that the photos selected would sparkle in the book just like the locations did in real life.
DREAMS OF THE RETURN is, in effect, another way Alan invites us to travel: through light and verse, through time and place. It’s a book to savor—start with a wind-soft sun, ruins, olive trees and history; consume it slowly with pizza margherita and red wine; linger into the evening with the sweetness of roccoco napoletani and an espresso kissed with Sambuca. You can order a copy of your own here:
Clearly the owner of that journal is not doing a good job of compiling her collection because on her journal is a slice of orange she is attempting to dry out, three crystals, and a paintbrush. The book is open and written in with a pencil, not good for preserving writing as (being a teacher for one-zillions years I can tell you) pencil smudges overtime to become indecipherable. She’s also got a pile of vintage mail (definitely older and already been mailed to her, to someone), which is deliciously tantalizing, and reading is much easier and more fun than writing.
Who is this mess of a woman? That’s a stock photo, but it could easily be my desk, with a few dozen highlighters and yesterday’s coffee added to the milieu.
It’s difficult for me to have a clean desk, no lie there. It’s difficult for me to spend time cleaning my desk, and not because I am not a neat person, but because I push my own things back. In fact, though I think of myself as a generally nice and “in a good mood” sort of person, I can get snappy when I feel tooo squeezed out.
I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.
JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)
What a great bit of writing that is!
So I have made the bold assertion that I will publish my collection of poetry through Old Scratch Press in 2026. There. I said it to the group, and now I said it to you. I swear I’m gonna do it. I am going to occasionally clean my desk, and push in some room to get my collection together by pushing other things back (other things probably being sleep! Ha!). I just took on a new tutoring student, a few pro bono editing projects (my daughter’s school has a non-profit component to it, and I donated some editing to the auction, and it got bought!), a half dozen or so sample edits, in addition to the regular amount of edits, which is many hundreds of pages per month, and I signed up for a singing course with a friend, have a relative needing assistance for cancer treatments, a teen in need of a lot of “staying on track” help with school work and she is also involved in some theater projects her dad or I need to be the transportation for (and, in general, making sure she eats, remembers her glasses, etc.), and a business to run and a home and family, in addition to trying to squeeze in a daily run. I would love to run well enough to participate in a 5K, and I have been thinking of joining a thing in my neighborhood where I could get a running trainer. Of all of those things I am doing there is nothing I do not want to be doing, except for wishing my relative didn’t have cancer, of course. One friend had told me recently she was stepping back from a project, and I had anticipated it about four months earlier, actually, and I completely get it. My relative, who is staying with me this week and last for her treatments, woke up today and told me she is spending the last few days she needs to be local for her tests at a friend’s because she needs a change of scenery. I had expected that too, and I had prepared a to-go coffee for her before she woke up. However I have a HS friend on FB who is every bit as engaged in politics as I am, and worried about the general state of what we see as the slide into authoritarianism, and another HS classmate said to him, “We liked it better when you just wrote about your kids and scouting. You don’t have a lot of chapters (she actually wrote chapters!) left; don’t waste them on this.” and I could not agree less. Age, chapter of life, has nothing to do with wanting to accomplish things and caring about things outside of ourselves, so, no, I do not think he should stop fighting the good fight. Yet I feel that I do have an understanding that we literally cannot do it all, and don’t want to, and I respect it, and think it is a good thing, and I flatter myself that I am especially good at reading the room, and can see when change is coming. But, I’m not good at, “No.” I’m not good at giving up on something I’ve begun, even if it does not realize my own dream. It’s an obstacle because in order to publish one of my many projects, I assumed I would have to come up with a good, firm, “No.” And I simply can’t. So I have decided instead to come up with a good, slightly quavering, “Yes.” I’m outing myself that I am going to put my damn book out. I am saying it, and affirming it, and treating it, as much as possible, as a done deal. I think if I normalize it, the way I normalize all the other things, I will simply do it because it has a due-date, or a do-date. Both!
And so, here is my question to you:
If you have been writing short stories, short non-fiction, flash, poetry, for some time now (I’m not going to say I’ve been writing for decades, but at least since the synth-pop craze and the resurgence of skinny ties (the best kind of ties)), how do you choose what to include, and what to leave behind, resting, forever lost in a permanent dream state in the “my writing” file on your desktop? Though the synth-pop craze wasn’t what I would describe as a serious time in the world, I was a serious writer; I took myself very seriously, and I think that “me” has somehow stuck around, and I judge that writing to be more profound, when in reality for pretty much all of us our early writing is awful. I remember writing a poem laden with love and portent that was about a page long and contained only the word “baby” written over and over again in different combinations with possessive pronouns and a few sappy adjectives. Songs, when sung, can add meaning through cadence, tone, etc., but, with that “baby” experiment I learned that mere words on a page cannot do that. It was a piece of absolute dreck. I do not regret deleting it!
So, those old pieces hold special meaning for me, but most are not very good (I confess I still think some of them are genius!), and almost all are not even remotely relevant to who I am now. Though I am still a whiny liberal with a moral bent, and that still is there, even in the new pieces.
And this is it, my one chance to publish my poetry, to put it out there in the world. When I was in my MA and MFA programs I knew who the “it” poets were in the world of poets who published, and I wanted to join them, to earn their respect. And as I tried I very much felt borne farther away from them. Primarily by life circumstances and that inability to say no, that pushing back of my own things, more than anything else. And that very much was a tell (an inadvertent behavior or mannerism that betrays) that I didn’t belong among them. Writers who are successful (and success looks different for a poet than a novelist, or self-help book author, etc.) almost all have a modicum of selfishness that allows them to push things away that don’t serve them, and also leads them to self-preserve. They’re not going to be dumb enough to share their “baby” poem with their thesis advisor. Selfishness belongs on the seven deadly sins list, IMHO. But success almost needs it, like a plant needs water, to survive.
So, for better or for worse, committing a deadly sin or not, I am going to get this thing done as if it is not even my thing, so I will not be being selfish; I will simply be doing another job on the list.
But, again, I have this question: if you could put together a collection of your writing (or publish one of your novels, if you write long-form) how do you choose? How do you group? How do you look back over your body of work and say, “This goes; this doesn’t?” And if you could have your book published next year, what would you want on your cover, and why? While working with OSP one thing that has continually surprised me is that the authors seem to know what the cover needs to be. How in the heck….?
So, what about you? Would you know? I’m super curious to hear! Drop me a comment below!
Perhaps it was the illustrations that captivated me when I’d pour through the fairytale books, the dragons and the princesses with long gowns and tresses, but of all the picture books in my room when I was a young child, I liked the fairytales the best.
I can still remember many of those books, the way they looked with their ornate borders and their detailed portraits of the handsome Puss N’ Boots or the angry face of Rumpelstiltskin as he stamps hard enough to crash through a floor and into oblivion. Styles evolve and change, and the animated images of the Walt Disney studios who’ve popularized many fairy tales by converting them into cartoon movies, don’t have the same depth of detail as those old illustrations. I love the old woodcut and color plate illustrations, but many contemporary artists add new magic and perspective to an old story. When you read a fairytale or any story for that matter, the possibilities for elaboration are endless.
“Happily Ever After” isn’t always the case in some of the Hans Christian Anderson Tales, such as “The Red Shoes” and “The Little Mermaid.” But as fairy tales have been told and retold so many times, multiple versions circulate. Children today probably have no idea that the original “Little Mermaid” is a tragic story of desire and loss. The little mermaid was unable to permanently become a human. Her attempts at transformation cause her to lose her life as a mermaid. What remains, is her hope that one day she’ll become part of the eternal universe.
In the hands of the Disney writing team, however, “The Little Mermaid,” became a story about family conflict, friendship, love, and fulfillment. The result is a story with a happy ending.
What story would you like to write?
But that’s okay, because fairy tales are part of our oral tradition and why not use the familiar tropes from our childhood as building blocks to create new stories or retell old ones. I think it is important to remember and learn from what went before. However, the stories of our lives keep evolving. So, what story would you like to tell?
To get you started, I’m sharing the work of several writers who were and still are inspired by fairy tales.
Many poetry enthusiasts will probably be familiar with the poem “Goblin Market “by Victorian era British poet Christina Rossetti(1830-1894). It utilizes the folklore of goblins to set the scene with lines like these:
"Pricking up her golden head:
"We must not look at goblin men
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?”
“Come buy,” call the goblins
Hobbling down the glen."
To read the entire poem and learn more about Christina Rossetti, click here.
Another writer, Anne Sexton (1928-1974) took fairy tales as a launching point to reimagine social norms.
American poet Anne Sexton is considered a pivotal figure in the confessional poetry movement that emerged in the mid-20th century. Her work holds nothing back as it shares her personal struggles. Themes she explores include: mental illness, sexuality, and the complexities of womanhood. Her poetry collection Transformations contains seventeen poems inspired by Grimm Fairy Tales, that include Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and CInderella, that challenged the prevailing norms of her times. I highly recommend adding this volume of poetry, the contents of which are unavailable online, to your library.
“The Cinder Girl Burns Brightly” by Theodora Goss is a different take on the Cinderella fairytale, told in poetry. Hungarian American author Theodora Goss (1968–) is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poetry and essays, and more of her work can be accessed at this link.
And finally I share a short story by American writer Michael Cunningham, famous for his novel The Hours, this little story, Wild Swan is inspired by the Hans Christian Anderson fairytale “The Wild Swans.” Brilliantly he takes the premise of the original story and creates an alternate re-telling set in modern times that focuses on one of the enchanted princes.
Need a writing prompt? Just read a favorite fairytale and think about how you’d like to retell it differently or take just one character or element and spin it into a poem or story.
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Nadja Maril is an award winning writer and poet who has been published in dozens of online and print literary journals and anthologies including: Lunch Ticket, Spry Literary Journal, Invisible City Literary Review, Instant Noodles and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts. She is the author of Recipes From My Garden, published by Old Scratch Press (September 2024), a Midwest Review California Book Watch Reviewer's Choice. An Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. She has an MFA in creative writing from Stonecoast at USM.
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