What Was It All About?

Published 'Roadworks' 2003

What Was It All About?

That’s what they used to ask, in the good old days.  And re-reading some of my stories I can understand why they thought about asking the question.  This is the answer.

 

The “Small Press” is a name that should sit proudly in any consciousness.  And we all share the same one, said Jung.  Maybe.  We do not need any posh terms concocted to aggrandise the Small Press, I feel.  Not because Small is Beautiful (though it is), but Small connotes unpretentiousness and art-for-art’s-sake, like writing something simply because you mean it.

 

A pretentious quest for unpretentiousness, then -- or vice versa?

Whatever the case, since 1986 (when I discovered the Small Press at the then age of 38 and managed to get my first story published), I have really enjoyed the ride, as I believe many others have done the same – reading, writing, being part of the publication world.  And publication exists as a communal as well as corporate dissemination; we Small Pressers just concentrated on the former.  After all (and this is perhaps the core point), only a microscopic percentage of the world’s population can become professional writers.  A hard fact to bear?

 

Because of the Small Press, some of my stories managed to get into Professional outlets, which wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Indeed, because of technology, there is now less demarcation between the Small and the Big.  As a result, I now try to edit and publish a print outlet myself.  Still unpretentious, though!

 

The Rite of Passage of which this is intended to be a brief taste began with a story entitled ‘Padgett Weggs’ (named after a piece of music I once improvised with my kids a few years earlier); this was published in ‘Tales After Dark #2’ in 1986.  And that magazine’s title gives you a definite taste of the many wild and fearless banners under which I enjoyed being published through the late eighties and all the nineties.  Thousands upon thousands of them, it seems, in hindsight.  A whole obsession..  (Please excuse the staccato memories – because truth comes in small doses).  I am an obsessive person but I don’t try to analyse things that simply are (or were).

 

 Invasion of the Sad Man-Eating Mushrooms was another magazine.  Well, I could go on forever. ‘Roadworks’ brought my feet back to the ground, by asking me, here, today, to review these distant experiences – and this makes me realise that my head has always been in the clouds and it’s good sometimes to shrivel back the wild imaginings.  Good to reconsolidate.  And that’s what I’ve been trying to do in the last two years, I suppose.  Retrench.  Get back to Ground Zero.  To Nemo.

 

But that doesn’t help me give you a taster.  It doesn’t help me give *myself* a taster … because I’ve forgotten what it was like.  All those submissions – by Royal Mail! – with countless International Reply Coupons.  Combing Scavenger’s Newsletter, Light’s List, Zene etc for clues as to my stories’ destiny.  A whole panoply of crazy paper chases.  Contributor’s copies and Rejection Letters literally littering my doormat on a daily basis.  What *was* all that about?  Some manic craving for fame?  Or simply a need to get my bursting creativity out there somewhere?  After all, some of the magazines were probably read by only two or three people, at the most! 

 

I meticulously recorded by hand all those submissions, then highlighted subsequent acceptances in pink, and crossed out the titles that were rejected. Some that were ‘accepted’ sadly never saw the publication (as far as I know!).  But, imagine my joy when a story that I had given up hope on unexpectedly saw the light of day on my doormat in a magazine or, even better, discovered in a shop -- for sale!  But, even sadder, perhaps, those stories that I celebrated being accepted never subsequently seeing publication – unless, of course, they are still in the never-ending pipeline?  Have you got a story of mine that you promised to publish ten years ago?  No wonder simultaneity was a forgiveable sin.

 

I still have sheaves and sheaves of these dog-eared lists of submission history. I also carefully typed out and maintained a DFL Bibliography of actual publications, as far as I could discover. Too long or too short, it was something I prided myself about, of course. And files upon files of weird and wonderful rejection letters from all over the world, some humorous, some, I recall, being heartbreaking.  Yes, it *does* hurt sometimes.  Don’t let anyone tell you different.  But when I started getting various DF Lewis Specials being published (the ‘Roadworks’ one being the last of these) and ‘Best Of …’ appearances etc, it all seemed to make it worthwhile, giving the whole Rite of Passage a spurious purpose.  But, really, what was it all about?

 

Well, it was about what it is still about.  Enjoying company, going to conventions, sharing stories, supporting great magazines like ‘Roadworks’.  But I did go to the edge, it has to be said.  The edge of madness.