Farewell, 2024

taking stock of the good and the not-so-good

Let me begin with a thank you.

Thanks to @zepelinmoon for so much inspiration in 2024. This image reminds me of the community of gay bears Hiro and I had when we lived in British Columbia. All of them called me Mama Bear.

As you might remember from last week’s issue, I am running a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for two crucial writing goals: to attend the Kenyon Online Writing Workshop, which I was accepted into, and the AWP LA Writing Conference, for which I was offered a working scholarship.

I am delighted that donations from friends and writing colleagues have pushed me over the halfway point. I have less than $900 to go before meeting my goal of $1800. Thank you to those who have given so far, and thank you to those considering a donation, too.

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If you’ve been a subscriber for the past year, you know that I’ve had more than a handful of writing successes. Five of my essays were accepted by different publications, and I returned to the book review habit. (There’s a complete list of publications here.)

But I should share a little bit of the effort involved. Literary magazines rejected me 87 times, so my acceptance rate was just over five percent.

Comparing those numbers against my 2023 results? I submitted to roughly half the number of literary magazines, 46, and recorded zero acceptances. I was named a finalist in three different competitions, though.

And when my proposal was revamped (thanks to the course taught by

Greg Mania

) and my manuscript overhauled once more, I started querying agents for the fifth time.

I submitted 99 queries in 2024 (with an average of three per week), a significant increase over previous years. (I submitted twelve queries in 2021, 60 queries in 2022 (in three separate rounds), and fewer than ten queries in 2023.) Of this year’s 99 queries, I am still waiting to hear back from thirty agents. The remaining 69 either indicated that they wouldn’t feel confident marketing the manuscript to publishers (40) or failed to respond within the timeline noted on their agencies’ websites (29).

This year also marked a new approach to querying. In addition to reaching out to agents, I am reaching out to smaller publishers. Two of the nine publishers I’ve contacted so far rejected my manuscript. In 2025, my list of publishers will more than double that number. (Attending AWP LA will also let me directly connect with smaller publishers, hence the crowdfunding.)

Side note: I have considered self-publishing, but I also work a full-time job and would have neither the time nor the energy (nor the money for a marketing budget) needed to self-publish successfully.

The numbers are rough, and there were plenty of days when I needed to kvetch with writing colleagues and old friends.

But there are two lessons I’ve learned from my many different writing teachers over the past three years.

1. Persist.
   Giving up accomplishes nothing.
   People have lamented that the memoir market in publishing is bleak, but I’m not writing a traditional, chronological memoir. My manuscript has been described as a memoir-in-essays and a collage memoir. There is a lot of research into the history of sexuality in Japan, the history of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the early history of queer rights movements in Japan. And there’s the rejection letter that gave me a lot of hope (as weird as it is to say that):
   
   I always hate sending a rejection letter when a manuscript like your long essay, "Closets," is so good and makes it all the way into the final round of consideration.
   

   I want you to know how much I enjoyed reading this essay--it's written in exactly the form I love most in narrative nonfiction: the collage or lyric. Your use of outside texts gives an added dimension to the essay that I love mingled with the personal clips/scenes. It raised so many excellent questions. The narrative pacing is handled well, and I know this story is headed some place really wonderful. I will look forward to seeing this book in print when its complete-in fact, l'd encourage you to send it to our First Book Prize with TTU Press if you haven't already published a full-length collection of prose. For our purposes with the Long Story competition, this excerpt just doesn't feel complete. It feels like the opening section of a longer work--there's nothing wrong with that at all. It's just not what we're looking for. We wanted it to land somewhere--even if that landing is something that happens later in the actual full memoir.
   

   But we did like this manuscript so much that we named it a finalist: it made it through a board of Associate Editors, then my managing editors, and then me. So we want you to know there's a lot of love for your work in our office, and while we are not accepting this manuscript, we hope we'll see more of your work in the future.

2. Desist.
   The temptation exists to keep editing and revising the manuscript.
   But without concrete feedback from a rejecting agent, I’d be groping in the dark.
   In 2023, I received great feedback from an agent and a mentor, which prompted me to revise my timeline—to focus on my ten years in Japan—and to revise my structure after I was asked to read You Could Make This Place Beautiful by

   Maggie Smith
   .
   The revisions I made in 2024 are solid. The word count came way down, the focus is tighter, and the structure reflects my evolving ability to sit with my emotions while living in Japan.
   And a certain queer author I idolize told me earlier this year that there are too few queer men over forty writing nowadays. There is room for my voice to be heard.

Let me also paraphrase my friend Kate’s excellent advice:

The clock is ticking. Focus on two things: publishers and writing something aside from this memoir.

What else is there to write? More essays. (Which is why the crowdfunding for Kenyon is so important to me.) And I have three ideas for the next book: a second memoir on marriage equality in the US and Japan, a graphic novel on a famous queer couple from Japan’s history, and a children’s book about wild goats on the Big Island of Hawai’i. I haven’t decided which to tackle first, but I know inspiration will guide me.

This was a lot of how-the-sausage-gets-made. Part of me wanted to write it all down to lighten my liftoff into 2025. But the most essential point is:

I’m grateful.

Thank you to the friends and colleagues who support me.

Thank you to the literary magazines that printed my essays this year.

Thank you for the advice I continue to receive from mentors and teachers.

Thank you to my husband, who has also agreed to translate my manuscript into Japanese.

May the new year bring us all gratitude. I’ll be back with the next issue in 2025.