I love the holidays. Just don’t find enough time to write, and I ache for it in and amidst the wine, the vodka, the heapings of meat, the desert tray. Find my best ideas float to me when I least expect them. I woke up this morning and I was positive about one of them. I was sure that I needed to take a serious writing risk.
I look back on 2023 and realize that I decided to take things seriously. I’m not a serious person. If you meet me, you’ll likely think that I’m immature. That about half my jokes land. That I like to pull pranks. But 2023, I took the writing seriously. What I mean by that is that I actually submitted with intent. Stuff happened. In the past, I’ve submitted here and there, but it’s been like a hobby or something. This changed when I got ‘Titan Arum’ published in Grain. That one instance altered my perspective and focus.
Hmmmm…. ‘Titan Arum’ is about a bearded Chinese girl that gets sold into slavery in Canada. She takes a risk and frees herself, and ends up at the Toronto Zoo to see the so-called corpse flower. It blooms every twelve years, and smells like death. She gets there, and later thinks on that flower, how beautiful it is, how poisonous the smell, as she watches her wonderful boyfriend twirl his bum. Serious girl that she is.
I’m not her, she’s not me, and it was a risk of a story. I feel like I have more like that. Risks. What do you lose by taking a risk in writing? I don’t think you lose anything. It’s the one place where risk-taking is eminently permissible. Risk is a subjective word, of course. A risk for one person is the butter on the bun of another.
I don’t know why I’m writing this. People are banging about outside the door, getting breakfast ready. I’m going to go help them. If I haven’t divulged this before, I’m a pretty shockingly decent cook. I love cooking, the creativity of it, the directions you can take it. So much fun. I should go help. Some part of my brain will be whirring, though, taking that next risk.
I do actually know why I’m writing this. I remember now. If you’re a writer and you don’t submit your stuff, just do it. You have nothing to lose. As soon as you hit that button, you win, no matter what happens. So please just do it. Be brave. Be crazy. Be wild and wonderful. Take the risk. Embrace it, and don’t worry too much about the outcome, a million things affect that, most of which are outside your control. But only one thing affects your ability to hit ‘submit’. It’s you.
Trent Lewin 
I submitted a few things here and there over the years, but I found it to be a tedious process requiring a good bit of research (finding the right home for one’s work and such) and quite a few i’s dotted and t’s crossed. I didn’t score on any of my submissions and kind of lost interest in the game. But I’m glad you got serious, TL. I feel like you “scored,” and that scoring motivated you to submit more, and score more. Good show, good sir. Jolly good show. You certainly deserve to be widely published and even more widely read. Keep on keepin’ on, my man.