Tag: FLM

Smash Lits with Rose Andersen

Sara CrowleyLeave a comment

I published Rose Andersen’s wonderful nonfiction flash – “Dating Profile” over at FLM. Do give it a read. And I interviewed her too. She has excellent taste in TV detectives and swear words.

1) What is your favourite biscuit?

A just warmed chocolate chip cookie. (I am assuming that biscuit in this case is what us silly Americans call a cookie)

2) What was the last text you sent?

“Beautiful! Love love love”

3) Who is your favourite Sesame Street character?

Oscar the Grouch. I think I liked that he was so openly, well, grouchy.

4) Bacon VS Tofu—who wins? Why?

This feels like a turtle and the hare kind of scenario and that I should say tofu but I just can’t see bacon losing out. Mainly, because I think tofu is horrid.

5) Your writing is music, what style is it?

Instrumental and terribly sad.

6) What is the oldest piece of clothing in your wardrobe?

A ratty NOFX shirt I was given when I was eleven.

7) What’s your worst habit?

Self-doubt or biting my nails.

8) You’re stuck in a lift with a writer of your choice—who?

Jonathan Carroll, so I could ask him about talking dogs and other magical things.

9) What is your favourite swear?

Fuck bucket.

10) Mermaid, dinosaur or unicorn?

Dinosaur. 100%. (I could literally eat mermaids and unicorns for breakfast.)

11) Who is your favourite TV detective?

This one is hard because I watch an unhealthy amount of crime TV. Veronica Mars is up there. But I’ve recently become obsessed with Eve Polastri on Killing Eve.

12) What word (or words) makes you cringe?

Flaccid. Bulbous. Mrs.

13) Do you actually like cottage cheese and fruit at breakfast? (It sounds like punishment food to me.)

I do, actually. I add a bit of brown sugar and I mainly put fresh berries in it, if that makes it sound more appetizing!

14) Who is/was your unlikely crush?

Casper the friendly ghost. Totally had the hots for him when I was about ten.

15) How do you know when you’ve reached the end?

When I can’t feel anything anymore.

16) What is your favourite smell?

My husband’s neck. Aren’t I disgusting?

17) What is the last thing you googled?

“How to sleep with sciatic pain.” Sexy, I know.

18) Have you ever had your fortune told? Has it come true?

I have several encounters with psychics that have been eerily on point. For a few years now, I have been looking into the suspicious circumstances around my sister’s death and a psychic told me a couple things that were eventually revealed to be true.

19) What’s the best flash you’ve read recently?

A MOVIE THE NEIGHBORS COULD WATCH BY ERICA PEPLIN, published on Jellyfish Review. I love how visual this piece is.

20) Give me a question for the next Smash Lits interview I do.

“What does love look like to you?”

Submissions (it’s all subjective yada yada yada.)

Sara CrowleyLeave a comment

As Managing Editor of The Forge Literary Magazine, I read a lot of submissions. As a writer, I send very few. I am really bad at sending subs out. If I get a rejection my reaction is along the lines of thinking my story isn’t good, instead of thinking perhaps it simply didn’t chime with whoever read it. The coolest writers I know tell me they send their work out many, many times until it is accepted. I know how ridiculous I am, but I usually wait another few months (six months, maybe a year) and then send the piece out to another venue. Two form declines and that piece is dead to me. Which is obviously stupid. I am vowing here and now to change that. I think I actually get a bit ashamed when my work is rejected as if I was delusional to think it was publishable. At the same time I know I am a good writer. It’s yet another of those fucksy things that co-exists and makes little sense.

Every time I read for FLM I am hoping the piece will be brilliant. I imagine that’s true of all editors. I mean, why read if not to discover wonderful writing? An immediate acceptance is super rare at FLM (although I did just that recently when I accepted a piece nobody else has read because I simply loved it and it was exhilarating to read something that good.) More likely is a yes vote on an admired piece which takes it to the Editorial Table where the Editors of the Month consider it. The majority of pieces sent to us are declined, but if someone gives a maybe vote it will then get passed to another editor for their opinion. Two maybes is a pass to the Editorial Table. I am telling you this because I voted maybe on a flash a couple of months ago. Another editor also voted maybe so it has been under consideration for a while. People have read and commented, but nobody has said they want to keep it and today, when I was going through the stories we’ve hung on to, I figured I’d decline. I read it again and was blown away. This isn’t a maybe piece, this is a hell yes piece. It’s terrific. Apparently I can’t even trust my own judgment to remain consistent. This is one of those revelations which is obvious, I know, but it feels useful enough to me that I’m hoping it might be useful to someone else. I can’t count the number of times I’ve told people that writing and reading is subjective. As is music. As is film. As is… etcetera. And yet I take rejection as a personal judgment rather than someone’s subjective opinion. Two months ago I gave a considered maybe vote to a piece that today I want to publish. Nothing has changed in that time, the words remain the same. Perhaps the first time I read it I was tired, I was in a different mood. But good writing is always good writing. This is why it’s useful to get more than one opinion. But although others liked this flash they too gave it a maybe. Today it’s a yes. A definite yes. I will remember that the next time I get a no.

Smash Lits with Megan Rowe

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I recently published a wonderful flash by Megan Rowe at The Forge Literary Magazine; Communion. Do give it a read.

Megan kindly agreed to take part in one of my Smash Lits interviews.

1) You are wallpaper. What is your pattern? 

Definitely a Damask pattern. When my son was first born, I lived with my mother in a suburb of Chicago, but when I finally moved out and got an apartment, I painted the walls a dark turquoise and stenciled on a mustard-colored damask pattern. It took forever, and a quarter of the way through I really wanted to give up, but I was too stubborn. It was really ugly, but it was the living room of my son’s first real home.

2) What was the last text you sent?

“I mean, that’s weird.”

3) Bacon VS Tofu – who wins? Why?

IMG_4947

I really like tofu, but bacon wins here. It’s just delicious, that’s why. Plus, my dear friend Eddie would kill me if I chose tofu.

4) What colour is Tuesday?

Stoplight yellow. Not nearly through with the week, but it feels like it’s possible to run through it if I get enough energy.

5) What makes the wind blow?

Your skirt.

6) Do you have a favourite pen?

I do not, it’s just whatever pen I can find at the bottom of my backpack. Often, I can’t find a pen at the bottom and have to ask friends for one—I don’t know where all those pens go, probably where the sisters to all my socks live.

7) Do flowers scream when you pick them?

Does a cat lick its butt?

8) Have you ever written an angry letter/email to a magazine or newspaper?

No, however, a lifetime ago I was a journalist and an organization took out a full-page ad in the newspaper I worked for that was a rant against an article I wrote. I took it as a compliment: Someone read my article??

9) Have you ever woken up laughing?

Yes, frequently. Most recently I had a dream that I was betrothed to a poetry professor at my school (he’s very much married), but I wanted to get out of it, so I told him we probably shouldn’t get married. He cried because he’s an extremely sensitive man, but I could tell he was relieved.

10) Are Cheerios your favourite cereal? If not, what is?

My favorite and least favorite cereal is Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It’s always in the house because it’s my oldest son’s favorite, and I’ve eaten it so much I’m really sick of it, but when I’m binge watching something late at night I almost always turn to it. Oh yes, I give my children bowls of sugar, crucify me.

11) What is your motto for life?

Goddamnit, just apologize.

12) If your life story was made into a book, what would be the title?

Well, that didn’t work.

13) Did you have an invisible friend when you were younger?

No, but I talked to myself a lot (read: I answered) while staring into mirrors.

14) Have you chosen your funeral song?

“Into the Mystic” by Van Morrison. When my father taught me to drive, all we ever played was Elton John and Van Morrison.

15) Who is your writer crush?

Dorothy Parker—she has so many good lines. A good one: someone asked her to use “horticulture” in a sentence and she said “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.” Plus, she donated her entire estate to MLK Jr.

16) What sandwiches would you make for a picnic with Lorrie Moore?

We’d grill hotdogs together, does that count as a sandwich?

17) What’s your favourite swear?

Cunt. I like how it sounds on the tongue.

18) Can you knit?

I can, but I have absolutely zero follow through. I’ve only completed one scarf, but I’ve started a dozen at least.

19) What is the most beautiful word?

Naptime

20) What question should I have asked you?

Well, my fiction professor said that the best stories are based in shame, so I suppose you should have asked me what I’m most ashamed of. Good thing you didn’t.