Not much novel progress to report this week — though I did, in my research, come across a book called Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums and yes I ordered it — but I do have two newly published things to share.

One: Ladies, Look Alive, a story about a group of customer service workers caught in the crossfire of a corporate acquisition. This story took YEARS to place, but I love these characters and I believed in it and I’m so glad I started reading Adroit Journal during those years and decided to go for it. This was how I felt when I got the acceptance last fall:

Shayne Terry @shaynester

A story I have been actively submitting for 3+ years just found its perfect home. 😭

November 13th 2021

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The first draft of this story was titled “Women’s Work.” I guess that’s just a fun fact.

Two: This conversation with my writing mentor and friend Sara Lippmann about her story collection Jerks, which came out last month. I love what Sara says about how regularly submitting work is just part of being a practicing writer:

Which isn't to say we need to be burdening submissions queues by sending out half-baked stories willy-nilly. But when they are ready to go out in the world, the most generous thing we can do for our work is to let it go — to participate in the larger conversation, find readers, connect.

I hope that Sara’s love and wisdom are evident in this interview — I did my best to show the world how great she is. So many thanks to Barrelhouse for publishing it.

And so back to the novel. The other part of being a practicing writer is writing, but I am in desperate need of my next breakthrough with this project. Daydreaming of scrapping the whole thing (again) but instead channeling that feeling into new stories and revisions of old ones while I wait for the energy to resurge.